- Emilia -

“Much further?”

We've been walking for a long time, and the sun set a good while ago. Ar'ox has given me food and water, but still we keep going. The thunder from the bobont stampede is now just a distant buzz. I guess we got away from them. Which is good, because now I have to force myself to take each new step. I've never been so exhausted.

He points. “We'll rest there.”

It's a grassy hillside with a cluster of trees, huge things that have trunks so thick they remind me of the redwoods in Sierra Nevada back home. They're insanely tall, too, and their crowns must be a hundred feet up.

We walk the final yards until Ar'ox stops and looks around. It's dark, but a blueish moon that Ar'ox calls Yrf has risen and is giving pretty good light to see by.

I plop down on the grass, not caring too much about what I might be sitting on. Thankfully I'm not stung or bitten.

Ar'ox spreads his blanket out and I lazily move over to it, then accept the water pouch he's holding out to me. It's pretty stale, but still refreshing. Not enough to bathe in, though, and I don't feel too fresh myself.

“No water nearby,” I comment.

As a reply, Ar'ox draws his sword in one fast motion.

I freeze. Shit! Did I offend him?

But he isn't looking at me. He walks over to the closest tree trunk and puts the point of the sword into the bark, then leans all his weight on it to force it in. Then he wiggles the blade, and suddenly a thin jet of liquid shoots out and hits him in the chest, drenching him. He gets out of its way and calmly picks up a twig that he inserts in the hole like a cork. “There is water nearby,” he says and smirks at me. “Very clean, too.”

I get up and check out the hole. The bark is extremely smooth, and it has to be thin, too. And I guess the tree contains a whole lot of fluid.

Ar'ox pulls out the twig again, the liquid shoots out and I put my hand into the stream. It looks clear, and I taste it. Yep, it's water, and it's pretty tepid. But it's sweeter than tap water.

“I stand corrected,” I say in English. “How much water in tree?” I continue in cavemanese.

Ar'ox looks up the trunk, and so I do. It's a very tall tree. If all of that is just one huge water tank, then it's probably enough to serve a small community for months.

“There's a lot of water,” he says finally. “Emilia can drink all day.”

“Not is danger?”

“It's not poisonous. There are many of these salen trees in my village. Clean, good water.”

I drink my fill of the sweet water. Weird how something so simple can seem so decadent on this planet. Then I peer up into the treetop. The leaves and branches are extremely high up, like on a coconut palm. And in the moonlight I think I can see something yellow, way up there among the leaves.

“There is fruit, too,” I state. “Good fruit?”

“Salen is sacred fruit,” Ar'ox informs me while gathering firewood nearby.

That sounds good to me. If it's sacred, it probably doesn't taste terrible. I mean, you wouldn't say something is sacred if it's crappy, right?

Or would you? Maybe you'd say something nasty was sacred, so that you wouldn't have to eat it.

Okay, now I'm only confusing myself. But if those yellow salen things up there are even somewhat good to eat, then I want to know. Really nice fruit is uncommon here, which I can't help feeling is pretty weird for a jungle.

I search the ground nearby in the moonlight, but none of the fruits have dropped from the tree. I place my hand on the trunk, but the bark is so slippery and smooth that I can't get any kind of grip on it. So climbing up is absolutely not for me, even though Delyah says that the gravity here is a little less than home on Earth.

I stare longingly up at the vivid yellow things. “How get fruit?”

Ar'ox noisily dumps a large bunch of firewood on the ground. “We can't get it. The tree doesn't want to lose its colors.”

Its colors? Well, it is a very bright yellow. “But what if promise to just eat fruit flesh and then leave the skin or shell very nicely on ground right by the tree?”

Ar'ox already has the fire going. “No one can get salen fruits. Very dangerous. The tree will try to kill anyone who tries to take them. Except the gray ghosts.”

I sit down by the fire and feel that I could fall asleep at any moment. It's not been a long day measured in hours, but measured in experiences it feels like I've been up for weeks. “What are gray ghosts?”

He takes out his pots and some dried leaves and prepares to make the nib soup that smells like coffee to my confused mind. “I'll pray to the Ancestors that Emilia never finds out what gray ghosts are.”

I move closer to him until my shoulder touches his arm. That's all it takes to send the familiar tingles to my pussy. But if that part of me wants anything to happen tonight, it has to defeat the pretty intense drowsiness I'm feeling. “Okay.”

I still bask in the sense of safety that Ar'ox instils in me. Even looking at the bobont stampede I never felt like I was going to panic. I think I've been running on a pretty bad sleep deficit for the past weeks before I met him, and now that I'm not twitching in fear every second, my brain wants to take advantage of it as much as possible and get its rest while it can. And I'm totally going to let it.

I lean my head on his muscular shoulder and feel my mind just closing up shop for the day. “Wake me up when it's ready, okay?”

- - -

My eyes fly open and I know something is wrong. I'm lying down on the soft blanket, and it's partly wrapped around me. I have no idea how I got here, but I suppose Ar'ox must have carried me here without me waking up. The fire has burned down and is only embers. Hours must have gone by since I leaned my head against the caveman.

It's still night, and the moon Yrf has travelled high up in the sky. The jungle is bathed in its blue light, and it's very quiet.

Too quiet.

I feel Ar'ox's heat and unmistakable presence next to me.

And I hear a sniffing sound.

That's what woke me up. Something is sniffing the air nearby.

I twist my head around towards the sound. All I can see is the shadow the salen trees cast in the moonlight.

Then I see that one of the shadows is not a tree, but clearly a person. Someone is standing there, just a few feet away, looking at me with two red eyes.

My blood freezes to ice in my veins and my whole body stiffens. I can't make out any specific features on the gray shape, except the eyes. And ... are those fangs?

Then the shape moves quickly in total silence and seems to disappear up the trunk of the closest salen tree, as fast as if it were flying.

I blink, and my heart is beating like a drum. What the hell? The shape was very elusive, and I can't even be sure that I saw something. But it scared me.

I want to sit up, but just when I tense my muscles to do that I feel a strong arm across my chest.

“Stay down,” Ar'ox whispers. “Go back to sleep. It's just a dream.”

“It's not dream,” I hiss. “Climbed the tree! Is ... other person!”

“It's not a person,” he whispers right into my ear, and his breath tickles on my skin. “Gray ghost. Stay still and it might not detect us.”

I stare up into the top of the tree where the thing disappeared. I can see movement there now, as if the leaves were moving in the wind. But there is no wind, not even a slight draft.

Yep, that's a living being up there. Not a ghost at all. Now that I know what I'm looking for, I can see that the thing looks more like a monkey than a person. If monkeys had eight thin and long arms. It makes the being look vaguely like a spider. But at the same time, there's something harmless about the way it moves, as if it's a little clumsy. Despite its ghostly appearance, it doesn't seem threatening to me at all.

“See that?” I whisper. “Is cute, only.”

Ar'ox doesn't reply, but I can tell that he's very tense and I wouldn't be surprised if his hand is on his sword.

I keep watching the creature doing its thing up there, and now I realize that it's not being totally quiet. I can hear it sniffing up there, and to me it even sounds like it's mumbling contentedly to itself. And I can see what it's doing – it's picking the yellow fruits.

And it's eating them, too. I can hear some very satisfied smacking of lips and slurping and sucking of juice, like someone noisily eating an orange. It reminds me a lot of Buster, an injured squirrel I found in the garden one day and then nursed back to health. He would sit in a corner and gnaw on corn on the cob, completely absorbed by it and still looking out at the world and being super happy and adorable.

I can't hold back a smile, and I chuckle quietly at the memory. I can feel Ar'ox is still tense beside me.

“You sure gray ghost is dangerous?”

“Let us be quiet,” he suggests through clenched teeth. Yeah, this thing's really got him on edge.

I guess I can understand that. This creature has a totally different feel from every other being here, where even butterflies seem like they're coming to kill you in some horrific manner. But the gray ghost only seems harmless, totally innocent and a little clumsy. If you've only ever known animals that'll do their damndest to kill you, you'll have to wonder just when and how this thing will show its true nature and murder you in the most gruesome way.

Well, maybe they really are super dangerous. I've not seen Ar'ox react like this to anything before. Even the bobont stampede didn't shake him. But now it feels like he's breathing faster and his heartbeat has picked up. It's still slow and strong in his whole body, but it feels just a little faster to me.

Somehow I find that very attractive. He's not totally unshakeable, but has the capacity to be scared as well. Also, I know that if he hadn't made me feel so safe, I would have been just as horrified by that thing as I am by everything else here, and I would right now by shaking like a leaf. It's like he's given me room in my mind to not be scared stiff of everything.

Maybe I can take his mind off it. I place a hand on his powerful chest and kiss him, enjoying the smoothness of his skin and the rougher texture of the tiger stripes, like smooth suede. The other hand I slide down his front and into his kilt until I'm grabbing his cock, feeling it grow harder and bigger fast.

Ar'ox stiffens even more and puts a hand on my shoulder. “The gray ghost is still present,” he hisses.

“Let's show ghost how not afraid we are,” I suggest and slide down his body until my face is just about level with his crotch. I untie his drawstring with one hand and take his huge dick out of there, then wet my lips and unceremoniously take it into my mouth.

For some reason this whole situation is turning me on a lot. Maybe it's because we kind of have an audience, if the cute gray ghost is even watching. The moonlight and the quiet jungle is also doing something really romantic to the atmosphere right now.

I use both hands and my mouth on his sensational shaft, again wondering what it would be like to feel it inside me. I want that, and soon. But this is great, too. I enjoy doing this for him, more than I ever have before. Also because he responds so eagerly to it, even now, when I know he's worried about the gray ghost.

Still it doesn't take him long to grunt in a way that turns me on even more. I gently slide my lips to the side and use my hands until he's done spurting, and then I kiss the tip and put his astonishing cock back on his abdomen.

I slide back up alongside him and grin. “Still worried about gray ghost?”

He gives me a look I can't interpret and is still breathing hard from the climax. “I ... Emilia ...”

“I'll take that as a 'no',” I say in English, because sometimes cavemanese doesn't have all the nuances I need.

I turn around and try to spot the ghost again. Yep, still up there and still chatting softly to itself. If I were a lonely caveman, lying under a tree at night and seeing something like that, in a jungle where just about everything is lethal, I'd worry, too. It's so different from everything here, and it does look human-like when it's on the ground. Not totally unlike a fluttering ghost, in fact.

I put my head on Ar'ox's chest and just enjoy his heat and his scent and his presence. And there's something on my mind. Many things, actually, but I don't want to overload him. Or me.

“Ar'ox?”