...of uncertainty

She turned and said: 'Nice and cool, isn't it?' She went on conversing amiably, the usual remarks one makes to strangers, asking me if I came from far away, if I had run into rain on the trip, or if it had been sunny. I would never have imagined it possible to talk like that with non-Dinosaurs, and I was tense and mostly silent.
'I always come here to drink,' she said, 'to the Dinosaur...'
I reacted with a start, my eyes widening.
'Oh, yes, that's what we call it. The Dinosaur's Spring... that's been its name since ancient times. They say that a Dinosaur hid here, one of the last, and whenever anybody came here for a drink the Dinosaur jumped on him and tore him limb from limb. My goodness!'
I wanted to drop through the earth. 'Now she'll realise who I am,' I was thinking, 'now she'll take a better look at me and recognise me!' And as one does, when one doesn't want to be observed, I kept my eyes lowered and coiled my tail, as if to hide it. It was such a strain that when, still smiling, she said goodbye and went on her way, I felt as tired as if I'd fought a battle, one of those battles we fought when we were defending ourselves with our claws and our teeth. I realised I hadn't even said goodbye back to her.
I reached the shore of a river, where the New Ones had their dens and fished for their living. To create a bend in the river, where the water would be less rapid and would hold the fish, they were constructing a dam of branches. As soon as they saw me, they glanced up from their work and stopped. They looked at me, then at each other, in silence, as if questioning one another. 'This is it,' I thought, 'all I can do is sell my life dearly.' And I prepared to leap to my defence.

[The Dinosaurs, The Complete Cosmicomics, Calvino, I.]