Excerpt: The Monarchs of Paradise.

It was a dark and stormy night. The wind whistled across the island, and the Tuatara felt the cold to its bones. The Tuatara was a reptile, and cold blooded, but blue-blooded, of an ancient line that was once noble and proud, and controlled and ruled all that it saw, but it had fallen on hard times and was now exiles to a small and insignificant part of the world. A world apart, where the lost animals were. This part of the world lacked mammals, the usurpers that had stolen the tuataras world. It did have birds, but the birds seldom worried about the tuataras, so the tuataras didn't worry about the birds.
The birds did interest the tuatara this night though. Because the night and the birds had dug a burrow into the soil, out of the wind and the rain. So the tuatara went down the burrow. And down the burrow the tuatara found a Fairy Prion.
"Please, Mr Prion" the Tuatara said. "It is cold and rainy outside, and I have cold blood. May I stay down here where it is warm?"
"I don't know" said the Fairy Prion "You are a reptile, and your cold blood makes you our enemy. Won't you try and eat us?"
"My word no" said the Tuatara, "I eat insects and worms. I only seek shelter from the storm".
"Okay" said the Fairy Prion "If warmth is all you seek then you will find it here.
So the Tuatara went into the burrow, and sat with the Fairy Prion and his egg as the storm blew through the island. And the two animals talked through the night, and the Prion's wife came come and relieved the husband and talked also with the Tuatara. But the bad weather did not end. It did not bother the prions, because their blood was warm. And the Tuatara did not need to leave, because it could last many days without eating.
One day, many weeks later, the husband was days late and the wife was waiting to leave and hungry. She turned to the Tuatara
"You have absorbed our warmth and now I must ask a favour in return. My husband is late, and I need to eat. Can you keep the egg warm until he returns?
"Of course I can" the Tuatara replied.
So the wife left, and the Tuatara wrapped himself around the egg. But he had been down in the burrow too long without any worms or insects, and he was hungry, so he ate the egg. And after he had finished he was ashamed, because he had betrayed the trust of the prions and had shown that the reptiles could not be trusted. But he could not leave, because it was still too cold outside.
So when the male Prion returned he sat there, unmoving, unblinking. The husband asked him what had happened but the Tuatara did not reply. And the Fairy prion mourned the loss of his egg and the loss of the Tuatara, for he thought that both had passed on, and that he had lost his friend and his egg.
Prions live for many years, and Tuataras have to stay very still so that no Prion ever learns of their treachery. To this day no Prion, or any other bird, has ever seen a Tuatara moving.