A large gem, with an irregular surface, glows against a backdrop of snow. Three dinosaur-like children, Ilsa, Mila, and Mar, rush through a crowd. The Keeper, who resembles a triceratops, tells them that the light stone in the Tower went dark last night. A young mother, Verna, asks how her brother-in-law will be brought back safely. The children scour their book collection, looking for their Grampa’s diary. Verna, who is holding her newborn child, asks the children what they are looking for. She tells them that Grampa’s diary is in his chest. The children find the diary, which includes a chapter about the light stone. Ilsa packs her bags to go look for a stone. Before Ilsa and Mar leave with Ilsa’s father, Helmer, and Mar’s brother, Elex, Ilsa gives the diary to Mila. Mila gets frustrated while looking for clues in the diary. Verna, her mother, suggests looking in the shed. Mila’s breath freezes in the cold shed. Mila scours the shed, looking on shelves, in pots, and among tools. When she opens a trunk, she finds something amazing. Elex and Helmer decide to make camp. The travelers are bundled in winter clothes, including puffy tail-covers. After building a fire, they hear a call for help and find a traveler stuck under a fallen tree. The travelers heave the fallen tree away and help the wounded man back to camp. More travelers join the camp and their leader decides that they must reach town before the snow worsens. Mila shows her mother, Vera, that she found a light stone in Grampa’s shed. The Keeper and his assistant tell Vera that a storm is coming, but they sent agilisaurs (flying reptile-people) to find her family. Vera tells them that Mila found the light stone. The Keeper orders everyone to the Tower to install the new light stone. They rush through the snowy street past bonfires in front of houses. The travelers, on their way back to town, cannot see their previous tracks. One wants to make camp, but the leader is scared that they’ll die if they stop. An agilisaur woman glides in and offers to guide them before the storm worsens. Agilisaurs shares warming stones with the travelers. Mila and Vera race up the Tower’s spiral staircase, but the Keeper is out of breath at the bottom. Mila installs the light and a distant agilisaur spots it. Mila is excited that her family has returned. Helmer hugs Vera and his children. The family, Keeper, and guests share a meal and stories of their parts in the adventure. Nora is a humanoid parasaurolophus, with long hair, and an infant, named Lil, in a carrier. Maverick, the Tower Keeper, is an old, humanoid triceratops, with a twisted, wooden cane. Hudson is a young, humanoid triceratops, with baggy pants and a short-sleeved shirt. Ilsa is a juvenile, humanoid parasaurolophus. She has a braid over one shoulder and a knee-length dress. Mila is Ilsa’s younger sister. She cuddles a stuffed animal. Mar is their cousin, a four-armed dinosaur-person, with a beefy tail. Elex is Mar’s older brother, two heads taller than Mar. Helmer is Ilsa and Mila’s father. He wears a coat, boots, and tail-cover.

Credits

We created this comic as a Christmas gift for family members. It is a work in progress. Seth gave Autumn a story prompt and she wrote the script. Seth edited the dialog and helped with the lettering.

The computers used on the project ran free software atop GNU/Linux. To illustrate and letter this comic, we used Krita and Inkscape.

We’re grateful to these artists for creating the fonts and assets we used in this project.

Arima Madurai is licensed under OFL-1.1 by NDISCOVER.

Overlock is licensed under OFL-1.1 by Dario Manuel Muhafara.

speechbubbles template is licensed under CC-BY-4.0 by David Revoy, www.davidrevoy.com

TeX Gyre Chorus is licensed under the GUST font license (GFL) by B. Jackowski and J.M. Nowacki (on behalf of TeX users groups).

TEXT © Autumn Patterson and Seth Patterson CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0

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