- Aurora -

So I guess I've been running on a sleep deficit for a while, because the last thing I remember is Trak'zor placing a fur over me and then me deciding that I would get up to drink a bowl of water.

Well, that never happened. Now the sun is rising and my mouth is parched.

I stretch between the furs that keep me warm, but never let me get too hot. We have the same kind of furs back at the cave, just not this large or thick. I usually prefer not to shoot smaller not-sheep, because they give me more work when it comes to skinning them. But I think now maybe they would be worth it. This fur is denser, but somehow lighter.

My hand is on something hard, yet soft and warm. Trak'zor is beside me, still fast asleep, breathing calmly and sending impossibly slow and powerful heartbeats up my arm from his chest. His sheer size and manliness make me want to embrace him.

So I do, feeling the firmness of relaxed muscle, the smoothness of his skin and the rougher texture of his stripes. My hand wanders down to his bare crotch, because nothing has ever called to me in quite the same way. His morning hardness fills my hand and then some, sending sweet barbs of hotness to my pussy. The things he can do with this ...

But he's asleep and I have another pressing need.

I get up and pull my old clothes on, making a mental note to maybe get some new threads soon. Maybe Trak'zor will let me convert his fabric garments to something that might fit me?

I look up and out of the house to check for dactyls, absentmindedly wondering if I'll ever be able to quit that habit, even if I get back to Earth. People will think I have some kind of airplane phobia if I'm always nervously looking to the sky, as if I'm expecting to be abducted by some extremely silent helicopter. Or UFO.

I shudder. That was how I got here in the first place, and being beamed into a flying saucer by the damned Plood aliens is not something I wish to ever do again. We still have a vague hope that they will come and pick us up again to take us back home, but if they came now, I'm not sure I'd cooperate.

I see no saucers or dactyls, so I march out into the sun and over to the shielded pit that's similar to the one we have back at the cave. Then I clean up in the creek, feeling another little wave of horniness when I recall what I did here last. Fuck, that caveman makes me feel sexy.

I dig into the ashes of the fire for embers, use them to light up a handful of dry grass, and then the fire is burning and I can start cooking breakfast. Trak'zor deserves the best food I know how to make.

I open his food store and feel a strange sense of wealth. The selection and the quality of the food he's collected here is quite sensational.

I help myself to some vegetables, some roots and a little heap of spicy leaves. I find some turkeypig slices I'll try to fry like bacon. If I had flour and yeast, I'd totally try to bake a loaf of bread, but I don't think anyone on this planet has ever seen those things. Except mustn't they have yeast if they can make alcohol? Maybe in the bottom of the this store ...

I lift a little packet of meat wrapped in green leaves.

Underneath it is the stone orb that Trak'zor wouldn't let me open. Perhaps it contains yeast? Maybe it's considered a magic and secret substance here, one that works in mysterious ways to create booze.

I reach out and grab it. It's heavy and polished to a perfect roundness. It must have taken someone a long time to-

“Better if you don't touch that.”

I'm so startled I almost drop the orb. Trak'zor is standing right behind me.

“Just want see if contains ... important things,” I try.

He reaches out and takes the orb from my hand. “It does. So important that not even Aurora may open it. It was given to me by the Ancestors.”

Thankfully he's not angry, just serious, like a father telling a four-year-old why she shouldn't stick her hand into a fire.

“Okay. But is something that put in juice to make ... nice? Feel good and little crazy?” I point to the jar he poured from last night.

“No.” He carefully places the orb back in the food store and closes the lid. “That juice is made in another way.”

“How?”

He takes some of the food from my hands and walks me back to the fire. “Pick gorel fruits and leave them alone for a while in a shady place until they have the correct smell and flavor. Then press them and filter the juice through fabric. Leave juice in big jar for some days. Carefully filter again and pour into smaller jars. Then serve to nosy woman who shoot innocent man with angry sticks and always try open Trak'zor secret container.”

I squeal as he pinches my butt. Then he sits down and starts stripping the bark from a sapling, giving me a blue glance with an unmistakable glint in it.

I sit down myself and sort the foods I've got. “You be nice to Aurora, not call nosy even if true. Also, you know what happen if mock speech. You were warned. Now Aurora speak English only.”

I take a deep breath. “So I really liked the way you fucked me last night. You're the best lover I've had. You're sensationally good. And you're just spectacularly hot. And you seem ... I don't know. Good, I guess. You have a big heart, it seems to me. But I've been wrong about guys before. Like, totally stupidly wrong on a fucking basic level. Except I don't think I'm wrong about you. You know how they say that character is what we do when nobody's looking? Well, nobody's looking at you right now. Nobody knows I'm here. You could have done whatever the fuck you wanted with me. And you did. It's just that what you wanted was to feed me and make me safe and make me feel good about myself. That's your character. I kind of like that. A lot. As in, I'm totally falling for you. Did your shaman tell you about love? Or just the sex and the Worship? Oh, and you don't have to wait for me to strip. You can just bend me over and fuck me anytime you want. I'm always ready for you. I kind of want you to be rough with me, because I like seeing that part of you, too. You're the man of my dreams. You make me want to totally surrender to you. I've never felt that before. And I'm going to enjoy it to the fullest for as long as I can.”

He's just looking at me emptily. Yeah, a total stream-of-consciousness harangue in an alien language would confuse the shit out of me, too.

I give him a sweet smile. “You like? Aurora keep speaking English?”

And for the first time, I'm seeing him laugh. It's a deep, delighted laughter, genuinely amused and totally sincere because this natural man has no idea what pretense is. He lifts his hands, palms out. “Okay. Stop, stop. I take it back. You're not nosy. Only curious. Very slightly curious.”

“Much better,” I state and turn the turkeypig slices over on the flat rock that's our frying pan, contemplating just sitting down astride his lap right now to feel him inside me again. “Now you know what can happen.”

He chuckles and keeps working. “Crazy woman.”

I take a slice of turkeypig and raise it to his mouth. He deserves a reward. “You try.”

He chews the slice.

“Very good,” he says and raises his eyebrows. “More flavor than before.”

“Fry for longer than usual,” I explain. “Then let sit for little while to make it crispy, drain fat.”

It's not quite bacon, but it's the closest I can get without any actual pork at hand.

Trak'zor makes the asphalt brew which I'm starting to like, probably because he makes it. I still miss coffee, of course. And bread and pasta and pizza and everything else. But seriously, none of those things are in my immediate future. Or even in my distant future. For once, that thought doesn't make my mind cloud over.

I clean the cooking stuff, Trak'zor gives me the fishing rod he's made while we ate and then we're ready for the day.

When we get to the beach, there's no sign of the brak on the other side of the water.

“That's the jungle,” Trak'zor says calmly after he lifts the 'bridge' into place. “Dead beings are eaten by living beings in a very short time.”

He balances across to the other side, and we quickly get the remaining logs of the light wood onto the island side. Then I walk over to him. The only sign of the fight yesterday is the deep grooves that the brak gouged into the rock. Shit. If I ever meet one of those things, I'll just kill myself. Save him the trouble and myself the final horror.

I stay close to Trak'zor while we walk quietly in among the trees. Once more I miss my bow. It may only be good for taking down not-sheep and cavemen, but it made me feel a little safer.

Trak'zor stops by a tree of a kind that I've seen before, but never approached because the hundreds of moving vines that hangs from it always reminded me of a living spider's web and I was afraid of being caught up in them. But he casually cuts his way through, all the way in to the trunk, and waves for me to follow.

I tiptoe after him in among the thin, pale green vines.

He takes hold of a vine with both hands and pulls on it, then hangs from it with his full weight.

“Is tough vine,” I whisper. “Perfect. Cut some and let's go.”

He shimmies up the vine with an agility that nobody his size and weight should be able to display, and then he chops off another vine that falls down into a coil by my feet.

I nod in satisfaction. This should work just fine.

He cuts down more vines, and then he slides down. We collect the coils and carry them over to the island. Trak'zor pulls the bridge over to our side, and I breathe a sigh of relief. The safety of this island is starting to become necessary for me.

I survey the pile of light logs and the coils of vine. “You ever build raft?”

Trak'zor looks at me and raises his eyebrows quizzically.

It doesn't surprise me. This has to be the only lake in a very wide radius. Whenever the cavemen in this area come across water, it's always a creek or a waterfall or springs of some kind. There are some rivers here, but they flow too fast. All other volumes of water they can lay a tree trunk across or just swim. It's no mystery if the cavemen never invented the boat.

“Raft is thing for float on water, can travel without bridge. Can go to New Island, explore!”

He looks at the logs with new interest. “These will take us to New Island?”

I nod with a confidence I'm not really feeling. “Yes. We place logs beside other log, tie together. Will float, Aurora and Trak'zor sit on top, much happy and go around lake safely from Water Big. Probably.”

He scratches his chin. Then he fixes me with a very blue stare. “How do you know about these things?”

Finally. If he hadn't asked me that now, I'd have started to worry about his IQ. I've prepared what to say.

“I come from place with much water.”

“From the Ancestors?”

And that's the sticky point. I'm not sure if that question has a good answer. I've been pondering what to say about this, and I've concluded that I'll trust my own judgement of him. He's too bright to believe I'm the Woman from that Prophecy now, and he's too decent to chase me away. Or worse. Still butterflies take off in my stomach. So much depends on how he takes this.

I look into his eyes, managing not to wince from the intensity of his gaze. “No. Not from the Ancestors. The Plood abducted me from my world and took me here. Along with other women. We are six. We have tribe.” I point in the direction where the cave is.

He follows my finger. “Aurora is not The Woman.”

I take a deep breath. “Probably not.”

Those laser eyes bore smoking holes in my head, feels like. I have to look away.

Then he reaches out and lifts my chin, and I'm looking at the sexiest smirk I've ever seen.

“Good.”