The Yilanè are small, extremely intelligent dinosaurs (yes, I know everybody thinks of dinosaurs as universally huge, That's like thinking of mammals as enormous because there are blue whales and elephants. There are also shrews and marmosets. There were more small species than large.) They specialised in biotech, which meant they never had to develop mass production, because lifeforms (as any stock breeder will tell you) are willing, even eager, to see to their own production.

Biotech...

I've been straining to hang on to very small ideas recently (takes a very fine strainer). Why? Just in case they can be squeezed down to seventy five words, obviously.

So, 'that's a nice little idea. I wonder how long it'll be when I write it out?'

As I passed the hundred word mark, I wasn't worried; there's always some dead wood to be pruned. The five hundred mark was more alarming, and the story had the bit between its metaphorical teeth, heading for the horizon....

The Who said (in My Ge-ge-generation) "Hope I die before I get old".
I might still manage it..

What, the pedantry and the 'know it all' way I throw out facts? I achieved both of them in my late teens, so if they're proof of age, I was never young.

My mistreated body falling apart, held functional by cocktails of pills? More telling, that, as once upon a certain time ago, I avoided even asprin. But not a proof; certainly my memory is not what it once...