- Aurora -

I squeeze the bow and arrow in my hand and slowly make my way further inside, moving like detectives on crime shows when they search a building for a suspect. I keep close to the wall and aim the bow in front of me, arrow pulled fully back, ready to shoot at a moment's notice. I even remember to look behind me every few seconds. I don't want an Alien monster to sneak up on me.

The thought alone makes me tense up. Think of something else.

Okay, I'll stay positive. Maybe I'll make some vital discovery that'll give us an easy way home. A control room or an instruction manual for this ship or just about anything else. A decent bathroom, maybe. A coffee machine. Heck, I'd relish just a paper cup.

Now there are doors in the walls. They have no obvious opening mechanism and they don't react when I go close to them, but at least it tells me this ship isn't all corridor.

That Alien monster sure liked to hang out in spaceship corridors, all slimy and deadly ...

Pull yourself together!

No sign of life yet. You'd think I'd start to feel more confident, but I'm getting more and more on edge as I inch my way into the spaceship. Every foot further inside with no surprises makes it more probable that anything that happens will be bad.

I frown. Is that even a logical thought? Or is it nonsense?

I'm too highly strung to even tell.

“Nothing to it,” I whisper. “Just exploring an ancient spaceship all on my ow-”

I have a heart attack as a door I'm tiptoeing past suddenly slides open. I trip over my feet and land silently on the floor, barely avoiding skewering myself on the arrow.

I scramble to my knees and fumble with the bow and arrow, aiming for the open door with hands that shake.

I stay like that for two minutes, just aiming and trembling and hearing my own rapid heartbeat like thunder in my ears. 

Nothing. No sound or movement.

Hey, some of these doors still work. That has to be a good sign. Right?

I'm not sure. Logic isn't my strong suit here and now. Shit, I wish I hadn't thought of that monster from Alien. Because that's all I can imagine.

I steel myself for getting my face bitten off, sneak closer to the door and peek inside.

That's not a corridor. That's an actual room. And it's dark.

I take a deep, trembling breath. I'm about to enter a dark room in a crashed alien spaceship. If I see leathery eggs, I'm going to run out as fast as I can and the vital secrets in here can go screw themselves.

The dim light from the corridor lights up the parts of the room closest to the door. I take a quick step inside so I'm standing beside the door.

There's stuff in here. Very alien things. There are round, transparent objects as big as old-fashioned phone booths, tall and narrow. There are round consoles with no obvious function; there are pipes and hoses and cables hanging from the ceiling and a whole lot of stuff I have no hope of ever identifying.

The whole place gives me a vaguely laboratory feel.

There's more light further in. This room has to be huge.

I'll explore this room and then I'll take a break to consider what to do next. I've made progress now. Something I can proudly tell the girls back at the cave. My day hasn't been wasted, even if this is all I discover.

I slowly walk into the room, trying to stay close to the wall. The mysterious equipment in here doesn't allow me to walk in a straight line, but I do my best.

I reach the lit section of the room. There are 'phone booths' here too, round and oval and made of something very much like glass.

I go up to one. It's very sophisticated. The glass has all kinds of embedded metallic threads in it, and the whole thing is suspended from the very high ceiling with white tubes.

It looks like it should contain something. Something big. Something about the size of a large human ... or an alien monster.

I reflexively draw the arrow further back.

Suddenly a shadow moves over by the wall. At the same moment, my foot slips on something and there's a crunching sound of stepping on broken glass.

I yelp and lose my balance, and I reflexively let go of the arrow to support myself with my hand as I land on my butt.

I stay down and try to not move or make a sound.

Two second goes by. Then I hear a now familiar sound.

“AAAARRRRRRGGGGHH!”

Shit! I shot another caveman!

Suddenly there's an explosion of movement and sound, coming closer fast.

I try to ready another arrow, but before I can notch it, there's a huge shadow towering over me.

I freeze and hardly dare look up. The breath sticks in my throat.

Ah. Those are legs. Human legs. Very, very powerful legs, so muscular and stringy they'd put any bodybuilder to shame.

I raise my gaze a little more

That's a loincloth. Made of black, scaly dinosaur skin, tied around narrow, but plainly strong hips. I can't help noticing the bulge. There's something behind that. Something pretty big.

I swallow in a dry throat.

That's a stomach. Or rather, a collection of very powerful muscles in that classic eight pack. All over them there are stripes. White ones, making it look as if he's been painting a fence and not been too careful with the brush.

That's a chest. The strongest, most perfectly sculpted chest I've seen, except that on the right side there's a strip of dirty fabric covering up something that has to be a wound.

My breath comes out like a hiccup. I think maybe I made that wound. Like, yesterday.

Okay. Now the face ...

Yeah. Caveman. Their faces have the wrong proportions to be downright beautiful or classically handsome, but they're characterful and striking. And this one is more striking than most. Strong chin, fangs up and down, darkly golden stubble and eyes so blue I swear they light up this whole room.

Well, I can't meet that gaze for too long. It's like being shot right in the face with a double-barreled laser. Yeah, he has every reason to give me a hard stare.

I have to do something.

“Good evening,” I say in the cavemanese I know, glancing quickly up at him “I hit you with arrow? I truly not mean to aiiiieeeee!”

Quick as a flash he bends over and lifts me onto his shoulder, squeezing my wrist so I have to let go of the arrow I was going to notch. All the arrows in my quiver spill out on the floor, I drop the food packs and my little knife falls out of its sheath.

I sprattle and writhe as much as I can. “Heyyy! Let me down, you brute!”

He walks through the room, crunching over broken glass. I'm pretty helpless here, carried caveman style. And his sheer strength scares me. He just lifted me from the floor as if I was made of eiderdown. Which I'm not. At all.

Then his scent fills my nose. It's a pleasant scent. Manly and spicy and clean. Musky, too, like a sweet tropical evening ...

Fuck! I'm being carried by a caveman who will very probably kill me, and here I am trying to determine what his smell reminds me of?

I renew my kicking and slapping and screaming. “Let go of me! You no honor! Bad caveman!”

He bends down to pick something up, and then he walks towards the exit, taking no notice of my efforts to get loose. Like I'm an object.

Real, cold fear rises in me. He can clearly snap my spine as easily as I could break a match.

The fear makes me angry, as usual. Where was that wound in his chest? If I kick hard with my knee right there ...

“Aaaarrrggh!”

He jerks and stops, and for a moment I think he's going to throw me off him. Then he bends forward and deposit me onto the floor, not too gently. His eyes are flashing bright blue with anger and pain.

“See, you can be reasonable,” I pant as I try to draw away from him. “Now just let me just get my arrows and no no no, don't!”

He grabs my ankles and pulls me to him, then quickly ties a thin length of twine around them and finishes with a small, hard knot.

Then he takes my hands and does the same, tying them together so tightly it makes me worry about the circulation.

“No, stop!” I squeal as he hoists me onto his shoulder again. “You don't have to! Can't we talk? I speak speech of caveman! You talk now! I talk!”

It's like he can't even hear me. He tramples out of the alien lab and back down the corridor I came from, holding firmly onto my legs.

I can't kick or slap him anymore. Trussing me up like this worked just the way he wanted.

Dangling over his shoulder I have a good view of his butt. And now I notice there is something sticking out from the loincloth, a little to the side.

It's my arrow. Yeah, that last one hit him right in the ass. I kind of understand why he might be a little bit miffed. I pretty much had this coming.

But the fact remains: I'm being abducted.

I keep writhing and screaming, but all it accomplishes is to tire me out. There's nobody here to hear me if I were to call for help. I'm completely at his mercy.

I can easily reach the arrow still stuck in his butt and jerk it around. That would get his attention fine. But it might also make him kill me. Almost certainly.

Suddenly it gets dark. We're out of the spaceship, and the sun has set. Ten seconds later we're deep inside the pitch black jungle. Here, I know I have to be quiet so I don't attract predators. I don't want him to gag me, too.

“We talk,” I try one last time, and now my voice cracks from fear. I sniffle. “Please.”

He doesn't reply.