The painted head was Carnotaurus.

Two horns. Short face. The shape I had expected to make sinister.

The colours ruined that expectation. Blue under the jaw. Copper around the eyes. A sharp yellow mark that made the animal look alert rather than evil.

I touched the corner of the page. Dry.

The shine had fooled me. One sensible answer, finally.

I checked my brushes anyway. Clean. The paint pots were closed. I couldn't remember making the picture.

Then I recognised the yellow.

It was from an old photograph of mine. A strip of light across water. The blue came from another image. The copper looked like the texture I had used in a piece of artwork months earlier.

Perhaps the notebook wasn't remembering a creature.

Perhaps it was using what I already knew to make one.

That explanation should have settled it. Instead it made the familiarity worse. I could identify the parts. I still couldn't explain the whole.

I drew the fan of colour along the creature's back. In the sketch, it opened like a wing.

Fantasy, I wrote. No claim about the real animal.

The notebook added a line beneath mine.

You gave the wrong creature the right edge.

I turned the page.

There was no dinosaur on it.

Only a very long finger.