- Heidi -

I wake up and stretch. The sun is just coming up over the hills, and there's a nice smell of fried turkeypig in the air. I must be getting used to sleeping on the bare ground, because I don't have as many aches as I would have expected.

I sit up and rub my eyes. Dar'ax is by the fire, frying turkeypig and making a stew. He's naked apart from his sword belt, and that cock of his is almost as impressive like this as it is when it's inside me.

I scratch my butt. Huh. I guess I'm naked too.

I lazily grab my dress from the ground and pull it on, then sashay over to Dar'ax and place my hand on his meaty shoulder. “You cook food.”

“Heidi very smart,” he says and continues his work. “Notice food, even spot huge fire from three hands away.”

I lightly punch his arm. “You be nice to Heidi. Ride brave warrior very nice last night, then honor with sleep on shoulder.”

“Is true,” he replies in the same grammarless way that I'm talking. “Heidi ride very well. Brave warrior also very nice, let Heidi ride until scream and then sleep and then food and fire.”

There's a smirk around his mouth and a glint in his eye that I haven't seen before now. He's gently teasing me, and it makes me happy. The warm feeling from last night comes back, just slightly tempered by the light of day.

I point at his rapidly hardening cock. The second one I guess only comes out when it's time. “Seem warrior also enjoy, now ready for more scream. In early morning! Very scandal warrior.”

He shrugs. “Innocent warrior easily harden from think of Heidi scream. Heidi scream very nice. Warrior still deaf in one ear.”

“Well, warrior lucky. Heidi very sore in slit. Warrior mate big and hard.”

He smirks again and holds out a skewer with a perfectly cooked slice of turkeypig on it. “If Heidi nice and eat food now, maybe warrior mate more with her.”

I take the slice and enjoy the beef-like taste and the spicy sweetness from where the juice has crystallized. He's a good cook, too.

“Maybe,” I agree as I chew. “And maybe Heidi show warrior more nice ways to mate. If warrior is very good and give Heidi drink and also salad?”

Actually I wouldn't mind being bent over and fucked right now, but it's true about my pussy being sore and I want to give it a little while to recover. I think the next time will maybe be better if my body can recover a little before that.

He reaches over with a leaf full of an expertly prepared salad of the best leaves and herbs this jungle can grow, as well as a deeply cupped leaf with clear water in it. Since he had to leave his big bag with the deadbites, he can't make all the good stuff he used to. But this is fine with me.

I sit down next to him and gaze in the direction where I think Bune is. It has to be far away if I can't even see its top in the horizon. What are the girls doing right now? They must still be getting used to not living in the cave anymore. The ancient spaceship isn't really that suitable a home, and there's a bunch of not-dactyls nearby. I hope they're okay and that they're not too worried about me.

There's not much I can do about that right now. We decided in the beginning, right after we were dumped on this planet, that we needed the help of cavemen to survive here. Ideally a whole tribe, but that has turned out to be difficult. It looks like our strategy should be to catch one caveman at a time and create a tribe from them and us. Well, I'll do my best to catch this one.

I glance over at him. His face attracts my eyes, more than before, now that he smiles occasionally. He'll maybe never be a model on Earth, except from the neck down. His face is too alien. But he's the most beautiful man ever to me.

How would he take to our tribe? Jax'zan and Ar'ox were both important men in their tribes before they joined us, and they have become good friends. But Dar'ax hasn't had a tribe for years. He's lived his adult life alone and is very independent. I like that about him, but I get the feeling he might not be a good match for any tribe.

I finish my breakfast and wipe my hands on the ground. “What plan for today, brave warrior?”

He puts his arm around my shoulders in a way that's very possessive and which I like a whole lot. I also like that he smiles. He has a great smile. “Today, Heidi will ride.”

I groan theatrically. “Yes, fine. We agree maybe Heidi ride Dar'ax if Dar'ax very good boy. But can't ride all day long. Heidi scream so much, she killed dead from sore slit.”

He juts his chin out in a way that is the cavemen's way of nodding. “Yes. Heidi is insatiable now. I understand. If Heidi is also a very good woman today, perhaps rewarded with riding Dar'ax later. Before then, Heidi will ride.”

I scratch my head. I don't get it. “Ride on Gerk?”

He juts his chin out again, and now his smile is downright mysterious. “No. But also yes.”

- - -

We walk into the jungle, and before long Dar'ax raises his hand and I freeze. We're clearly looking for something, and from the way he moves, I think we're looking for something that's alive.

He signals to me to get down behind a bush, and I hurry to do it. Then he moves very slowly in among a cluster of trees and comes out again with something large, black and oval that he has to carry in both arms.

I've never seen one before, but it's obvious to me what it is: it's a dinosaur egg.

He tiptoes towards me with it. I shrink away, because I've seen the Alien movies and I'm very suspicious of eggs that have that leathery look.

“What that?” I hiss and make sure he knows I want nothing to do with it.

He just smiles merrily and walks back to the clearing with me following him, looking over my shoulder all the time. Because if that egg's mother is somewhere nearby, then she's probably some kind of alien queen and I'm not going to get between her and her offspring without a flamethrower ready.

Dar'ax puts the egg down on the grass and then directs me to climb into a nearby tree on the other side from where we got the egg. He gives me a good boost, and I feel marginally safer up here among the branches. Except of course most of the dinos I've seen on this planet are twice as tall as the tree.

Dar'ax seems to have no more interest in the egg itself, and he climbs up into another tree beside it. He sits there with his sword in his hand, and now I guess we're just waiting for something?

It doesn't take long for that something to come out of the jungle. And if I thought it would only be the egg's mother, then I was optimistic. It's a whole herd of not-raptors, the dinos that Sophia and Emilia were both almost eaten by and that look a lot like the velociraptors from Earth, while still being very different.

They're coming out from among the trees, running fast but almost without a sound, even though they're all the size of a pickup truck. Their eyes are slitted and emotionless and their claws are many and sharp. They look a little like smaller T. Rexes, except they're more slender and have smaller heads.

I instinctively pull my feet closer up under me, although I don't think they can reach me up here.

They're running straight for the egg, at least eight of them.

I'm starting to wonder what exactly Dar'ax's plan is here when he suddenly drops down from his tree and lands on the back of the last raptor in the herd. I squeal and my hand goes to my mouth, because that's the most dangerous thing I've seen him do.

The other not-raptors run over to the egg and take it with them without slowing down, and then they're running back into the jungle with it.

The one that Dar'ax dropped down on is also running. But it's running in circles, fast and hard, digging up the ground with its strong legs and claws so the dirt and grass is flying around it.

Dar'ax is on its back, sitting like on a horse, holding on to its neck with one hand and holding his sword in the other. He looks a little like a Civil War soldier on a very big, two-legged horse, with a long, shiny saber held out from him.

The raptor is snapping its teeth after him, but despite its long neck it can't turn its head around fully. It can't reach him with its short forelimbs, and while the tail is long and flexible, it doesn't look like it can swing around that far. If Dar'ax can just stay on its back, there's not much it can do to get at him.

Its friends are long gone. I guess those things aren't too concerned with the fate of each one of them. Except their eggs.

The not-raptor seems to be in some kind of mental lock where it can't do anything other than run in a very tight circle, around and around, while trying to see what's on its back and trying desperately to remove it. It's dug a pretty deep circle in the ground already, and still dirt is spraying from its claws. The only sound is its incredibly fast steps and the ripping sound its claws make as it's digging its way down. And the hard snaps of it's teeth.

Dar'ax is still sitting there, in the same position, clearly concentrating on not falling off. The raptor may be going in circles, but it's not calmly running like a well-behaved horse would – it's jumping and bucking, too.

It keeps going for a good while without slowing down, and then it suddenly just collapses onto its side. Dar'ax must have been prepared for it, because he jumps clear of the falling dinosaur at the right moment.

Then he calmly walks over to a bush, cuts some branches off it and comes over to my tree.

“Heidi come down,” he says and holds out his hand to help me.

I point at the raptor, still lying down and not moving. “Is dead?”

“No.”

Not what I wanted to hear, but he seems so confident that I slowly climb down to the ground, making sure to have Dar'ax between me and the raptor. He walks back over to it while whittling the branches with his sword, stripping the bark from them.

I stop at a respectful distance from the raptor while he goes up to it and wraps the strips of bark around its muzzle, like you would with an alligator, so that it can't open its gape.

The raptor stirs a little, but otherwise it's stunned or totally exhausted or both.

Dar'ax kneels by the dino's side and uses his sword and the wood he's prepared. I look over his shoulder.

He's cutting a little hole in the raptor's thick hide, and then he inserts a short, pointy stick into its body. No blood comes out, so it's not a serious wound for the creature. Dar'ax then ties the short stick to another, longer stick in an arrangement I realize I've seen before – that's how he controls Gerk.

Ah. The 'Heidi ride' thing is starting to make more sense. But if he thinks I'm coming within ten yards of that thing, much less close enough to touch it ...

Dar'ax finishes up and fastens the longer stick to the raptor's side with the last of the bark strips. The dino is still on its side, just slowly moving its small, but probably still deadly forelimbs. The air above it shimmers with heat and it gives off a smell of rotting meat, just like Gerk. I can see it breathing too, and its chest pumps up and down so fast it almost makes me worried it's about to die.

I stay close to Dar'ax as he walks over to some other bushes and gets a bunch of berries that I know from experience are very sour and which Delyah said were 'inadvisable' to eat. Then he comes back and pushes each one into the raptor's mouth, between its razor sharp teeth, because it can't open even a fraction of an inch with those strips tying it close.

He's so sure in his moves around that deadly dinosaur, and he has a content look on his face, as if he's enjoying himself. If he was a different kind of guy, and if they had music on this planet other than simple lullabies, he would definitely have been whistling contentedly.

I realize that I'm thrilled watching him. My palms are sweaty and my heart is beating from being this close to the wild raptor, but at the same time I know that with him here, I'm perfectly safe as he does these impossible things. Right now, he's Superman to me.

He comes over and takes my hand again. “We will move a little further back.”

So we're standing a hundred feet away from the raptor and I like the feel of his large hand around my much smaller one. He makes me feel small, but in a good way. I never felt small and dainty before, but compared to his size and his strength, I am definitely both. Me feeling delicate and girly? That may be the hardest thing he's accomplished.

The giddy thrill I'm experiencing gets me to glance down at his loincloth. There's always some kind of bulge there, and maybe now we have time for a little fun before-

The raptor jumps to its feet in an explosion of claws and dirt and grass. I squeal and bravely shoot behind Dar'ax's back, grabbing onto the fur of his loincloth and just sticking my head out to see what's happening.

The raptor is standing there on two extremely powerful legs with the knees pointing backwards, swaying this way and that and somehow managing to look both confused, groggy and lethal. It's trying to reach its forelimbs up to its snout to remove the strips of bark, but it can't quite reach it. Then it tries to turn its head so it can see what's poking it in the side. It blinks with its slitted eyes and seems to be completely weirded out. I can completely sympathize. I've been feeling the same way for months.

Then the raptor goes crazy. It runs and stops and falls over and gets up again and then falls over backwards, gets up again, falls forwards with a mighty thud and scrapes its muzzle against the ground while it runs, sprattles its legs in the air and scrapes the ground like an insane, oversized chicken. If the ground hadn't been wet from the rainy season, there would have been a giant cloud of dust around it. It's a chilling display of huge strength and power kept completely helpless by some kind of mental block. It looks as if just plain running away into the jungle doesn't cross its tiny mind.