- Aurora -

We grab our oars and set course for the other island.

“Trak'zor keep careful watch,” I admonish. “If attacked by Water Big, you use sword and slice it to pieces.”

He could probably figure out that for himself, but I think his mutiny is over now, and I should reclaim my authority. Not that I had much in the first place.

We paddle towards the mysterious island, with all its black shards and jagged edges. We dip the oars slowly and quietly into the water, pull them through and then lift them smoothly. Apart from some drops that drip off the oars, we don't make much sound that could alert a monster in the depths of the lake.

If it is a lake. I can still not see the other shore, just the line of the horizon. This might well qualify as an ocean, and if so, the monster Trak'zor fought might well be miles away. In fact, it-

“Shit!”

Trak'zor whips around. “What?”

I stare into the water. “I think I saw something move.”

He looks down, too, one hand on the handle of his sword. “What?”

“A shadow. Dark.”

We stare down into the depths, but see nothing else.

“The Water Bigs will not attack,” Trak'zor finally says. “They might be curious about our raft, that's all. Aurora, get in the water. Now.”

“What?” I splutter. That's not a funny joke.

But Trak'zor is no longer looking down into the water. He's staring up at the sky. And I think I can tell why. There's dark speck in the sky, coming closer. And my blood freezes to ice in the same moment.

Trak'zor draws his sword. “Irox.”

- - -

I slide down into the cool water, feet first, with my skin crawling. Trak'zor holds my hand so I can be as quiet as possible. I swim under the raft and stick my face up between the middle logs. The raft floats high in the water, and there's daylight between the logs.

But not air.

I purse my lips and stick them up between the logs to try to get them above the water so I can breathe, but the logs are half submerged and holding me down.

I'm close to panic as I try to push the raft up, but I only succeed in pushing myself down in the water. I cling to the logs and the vines with fingers that are trembling with the fear of death.

Then the raft lifts me up as it suddenly floats higher. It's just enough to lift my face clear, and I gratefully suck in fresh air.

Trak'zor is beside me under the raft, and I'll be damned: that crazy-ass caveman is grinning. 

“The raft floats too low when I'm on it,” he whispers into my ear. “I was going to fight that irox, but I think it's better if we're both down here, out of sight.”

He grabs my waist with one strong arm, leans in and kisses me on the lips. And of course it calms me right down.

“You enjoy this,” I hiss. “If possible, you'd fuck me right here.”

Shit, this guy has the most mischievous grin. “Want to try?”

I peer up between the logs. The dactyl is much closer now, and it's definitely coming this way. Just the sight of that thing sends a shiver down my back.

“Horny steersman be quiet.”

He cups my ass, and for a moment I think he might be serious about fucking me here. The thought of his cock in my sore pussy again sends heat to my sex, but even Trak'zor can't be this horny.

I hold onto the raft and pull my legs up under me. I'm not thrilled about dangling my feet in the depths where we know for a fact that there lives at least one horrific monster. But the very real horrific monster now circling the raft three hundred feet up in the air is worse, if only because it's here.

We keep our eyes on the dactyl, and I sometimes suck in air, hold my breath and put my face down into the water to look for monsters from the deep. For the first time I consider the insanity of putting the human air holes so close to the eyes. It's never crossed my mind before, but now I realize that it's such a dangerous design flaw. I'll write an angry letter to someone.

The dactyl circles lower, but still keeps its distance. The raft has to be a pretty unusual thing on this planet, so obviously caveman-made. But hopefully the winged horror is too stupid to know that.

It seems hours go by while the dactyl circles in long, lazy sweeps around us. At least it isn't screeching and calling to its buddies that there's something to eat here.

Again Trak'zor's hand is at my ass, grabbing and squeezing.

“Yeah, yeah,” I whisper. “Later you can ravish me good.”

He glances at me. “Okay.”

Still he doesn't stop, and now he has to be using both hands. On my ass and between my legs. And my thighs and pretty much all over my lower half. Shit, he has some big hands.

“Hey, I know you like my ass,» I hiss. «You'll get it, too. But maybe not right at this moment?”

He just looks at me innocently. “I agree.”

“Then could you – oooh - take your hands off my pussy?” He's being very intimate now, and I reach down there to slap his hand.

But it's hard to get a good slap going under water, so I grab onto the hand and try to pry it off me. Yeah, those are some strong fingers. Thick, too. And hard. Are those scales?

Then I notice that both Trak'zor's hands are holding onto the raft.

My eyes go wide as I draw breath to scream.

But Trak'zor has realized what's going on, and he puts his hand across my mouth, stopping the squeal that would definitely have alerted the dactyl that there's someone here. Then he takes a lungful of air and dives down while unknown tentacles still hold on to my most personal parts.

It's too late. Strong limbs pull at my legs, and I hold onto the raft for dear life. But it's difficult to get a good grip on the slippery logs, because there's very little clearance between them.

The unknown attacker yanks at me, hard, and I lose my grip and get pulled down.

There's a flurry of activity around me as I desperately try to swim up to surface and hold on to what little air I was able to get into my lungs before I was pulled under. I only see glimpses: Trak'zor's face, his sword, the bright and glassy surface over me, the dark patch that's the raft, the myriad of dark tentacles tight around my legs.

Trak'zor holds onto my hand, hard, treading water and trying to pull me up. But I'm being dragged further down by a heavier creature.

My lungs scream for air and I realize that this is it. I'm going to drown.

Then the world is a complete and total chaos for one second. There's screeching, hissing, clanging of hard steel on hard scales. There are limbs, tentacles and water.

And air.

I gasp a huge lungful, then one more, because I'm on the surface, and if I don't breathe now I'll die.

Then I hear the flapping of huge wings, and the sun is blotted out by a large shadow.

I look up. I can't get any more dejected or panic-stricken than I am already. If that dactyl wants me, there's not much I can do now.

But the dactyl isn't swooping down on me. It's on the way up, beating its leathery wings furiously. From its talons hangs the lake monster.

It's an octopus, essentially. Except this one has a hundred tentacles, an impossibly toothy gape and is the size of an elephant. At least. It's only slightly smaller than the dactyl that's caught it. It looks terrible, misshapen and ugly in a pale, splotchy gray. I totally understand that it prefers to keep to the depths of the water where it will be out of sight.

I stare up and wipe the hair out of my eyes.

That dactyl ... there's someone riding on it.

Someone with long hair in a stream behind her head...

“Heidi,” I whisper, then give in to a coughing fit. “Heidi!”

She can't hear me, of course. I can't get my voice to bear. I doubt she saw me at all.

The dactyl climbs into the air, carrying its huge prey in over the jungle in the direction of our cave.

Trak'zor pulls me back onto the raft.

“Now you believe?” I wheeze. “You see that girl riding?”

“I saw.”

“That's my friend. My tribe. She can ride a dactyl. You ever ride a dactyl?”

“No.”

I take a deep, trembling breath, feeling pride in my friends swelling in me while the panic subsides. That was fucking majestic.

“Me neither.”

Trak'zor examines me carefully, prodding and poking the parts where the monster held onto me. But I'm pretty much okay now, except for the trembling hands.

Then he grabs the paddle. “You relax, and I'll get us home.”

But I'm not going to let a stupid lake monster ruin my plans. That's not what Columbus would do. Not the mention Xena. “No. We'll go to New Island.”

“You've had a terrible experience. There may be more dactyls.”

I lean back onto Trak'zor's powerful body, just breathing. “There won't. Other dactyls don't like ours. And we're halfway there. We'll go and explore. Let me catch my breath and we go.”

“Okay.”

I take some deep breaths and feel Trak'zor's warm skin against mine. “Oh, and thank you for rescuing me.”

He puts his arm around me. “I would not have let go of you, even if it meant we were both pulled down. We would have fought to the death, both of us.”

I grasp his hand and squeeze it with both mine. “I know that. That's the kind of man you are. And I suppose this is redundant, because you must have realized this by now: I love you.”

I look into his sapphire lasers. “I've met many men. I've known hundreds, of all ages. None of them are like you. You're the best of them all. By far. I admire you and I love you. You're proud, but you have every damn reason to be. You can be as proud as you want. I thought you should know that.”

He just looks at me, and it pleases me that I've been able to turn him speechless.

I kiss his mouth with the fangs in it, and then I smile. “Don't return that compliment. I know I am the best woman you've met. If only because I'm the only one. And yes, I know how to speak your language a little better than I have so far. Linguistics student, you see. I just thought it was better if I didn't let you know in the beginning. And then it kind of stuck. I guess I got lazy.”

He squeezes me. “I wondered why you sometimes seemed to forget things I'd already heard you say. My wonderful and mysterious Aurora.”

“You bet I'm yours. As long as you're mine.”

He kisses my hair. “I want nothing more.”

“Better not.”

We relax in silence for a few more minutes, and then Trak'zor paddles us over to New Island.

Even before we get there, I know what it is.

I direct Trak'zor to paddle around it. It's smaller than it looked from a distance.

I take a step onto the smooth, black material and climb higher up on it. At the highest point, I see exactly what I expected.

I pick up two small pieces and go back to the raft.

“Let's go home.”

Trak'zor frowns. “What is this place?”

I sit down and turn my back to the 'island'.

“This is how I got here. This was the Plood spaceship. The flying saucer they used to abduct us from Earth. It must have crashed here when you were gone from the island. That was the same day the girls and I were dumped on Bune, nine months ago.”

Trak'zor stares at the pile of wreckage, so large it grows up from the bottom of the lake to a hundred feet into the air. “The Plood?”

“You want to see a dead Plood, you can go up there. I don't recommend it. Half of it has rotted away. The other half is in water. Those alien fuckers were never much to look at anyway.”

I take the two pieces of black material and place them on the raft, three inches apart. They immediately snap together with a little click, like two strong magnets.

“See? This stuff isn't metal, but it has a strong affinity for itself. Probably that helps keep the ship together. That's why this wreckage isn't spread out over a huge area, but concentrated here so it looks like an island. It must have been blown to bits before it hit the water.”

“Alien things,” Trak'zor ponders. “So many alien things in the jungle suddenly. Women and tribes and saucers.”

I grab my oar. I see no reason to stick around. “And Bune. That's alien, too. Yeah, it's weird, all right. Feels like something is about to come to a head, doesn't it? Well, I don't think the Plood have much of a role to play anymore. Not these ones, anyway.”

Trak'zor lifts his oar, still staring past me at the huge pile of crashed saucer. “So that was it?”

“That was it. There's nothing here we can use.”

We paddle back home, slowly and still quietly. There might be more monsters here.

The Plood wreck totally extinguishes one of the two hopes we girls had for coming home. Our abductors will never return to pick us up and take us home again. They're dead and their ship is a pile of alien rubble.

Now Bune is our only hope. I think the girls should know. They're looking for me. I know that's why Heidi is out on the dactyl. And I really want to see Sophia and do whatever I can to help.

I'll finish my project, and then I'll be off. And I think Trak'zor just might come along.

When we get back to the shore of our island, the sun is setting.

Trak'zor pulls the raft onto the beach with me on it. Then he easily lifts me and carries me with infinite gentleness up the hill and into our house, before he puts me to bed between the not-sheep furs. 

“I love you,” I state again, just to make sure he knows. It feels good to say it. Now there's no need to hide it. It's out there.

He smiles and kisses me on the cheek.