- Caroline -

“I guess we can't complain.”

Heidi comes out of the cave rubbing her eyes.

I stare at her for a few heartbeats, trying to grasp what she means.

Nope. I'm not that sharp right before dawn. “Complain about what?”

She waves her hand towards the jungle and the valley and Bune in the distance where the sun is lighting up its peak in bright orange. “You know. Stuff. This whole... thing. Being here.”

I turn back to the pot of water over the fire that I've just lit outside the cave opening. “Uh-huh. You know, I'll give it a shot. For instance, this damn water isn't boiling yet. After ten fucking seconds over the flames. It's an outrage. See? I can complain just fine. Maybe it's just you?”

She cuffs my shoulder, acknowledging that she gets and appreciates my weak joke in pretending to take her sleepy statement literally. “Maybe. It's just, I'm looking out at this early morning, and I'm thinking, was I ever that much happier back on Earth? If ever I saw the sunrise back then, it was because I had an early class, or I had to get up at the ass crack of dawn for some reason which was usually not pleasant. There was always a bunch of swearing involved. Now, not so much. Hey, I don't know. I'm pretty sleepy still, Caroline. I'll be spewing bullshit for another fifteen minutes yet. Unless that water of yours is being prepared for some real coffee that you miraculously found during the night?”

I stir the tepid water with a stick just to do something. “Oh, sure. I drink coffee every night. Only problem is that it's in my dreams.”

“I knew it,” Heidi says and walks towards the woven screen that gives us some privacy for calls of nature. “I could swear I heard someone slurping.”

“Me too. It's just, I think it was Aurora and her new husband. And I don't think it was coffee.”

“Yeah, it did kind of sound like Worship.” Heidi giggles and disappears behind the screen.

I sigh. I have a pretty clear idea of what it means when a caveman Worships his wife. It involves his alien tongue and her nether regions. And Heidi gets that on a regular basis. Of course, she's not going to complain that much about things here on this alien planet where we were dumped after we were abducted from Earth. She has a husband who adores her. A huge, strong, and insanely capable caveman.

Just like Aurora's. And Sophia's and Emilia's. After Aurora got married yesterday, only Delyah and I in our little tribe remain unmarried.

Before Aurora got hitched to Trak'zor, there were some little hints that a schism was beginning to form. Between the three married girls, who were pretty content, and the three unmarried ones, who were anything but. But that was mostly because of the temperamental Aurora. And now that she's deliriously happy with her cavedude, which I absolutely understand after overhearing what I think was him eating her out last night, I guess Delyah and I will be the tribe's spinsters.

That's fine with me.

Sure, the cavemen are strong. They're kind and generous, and they love their wives like no men I've ever seen. If the whispers are to be believed, then they're sensational lovers too. Not that the girls whisper when they go out in the jungle with their husbands on some mysterious errand. Some of them get so loud out there we're not sure if it's the call of some kind of new dinosaur we haven't seen yet.

But they can be as well endowed as they like. They're still cavemen. With swords and leather loincloths and huge muscles and freaking stripes all over them.

That was never my type. I always liked the bookish, quiet guys. The kind of guy who wouldn't knock you over with their faked bravado or cocky bullshit, but who could suddenly say something so profound and intelligent that you'd be reeling for days after. The kind of guy who doesn't have any silly tattoos or fancy motorcycle but who would make you feel good about yourself with a single, casual statement so honest that you'd just glow.

The cavemen are fine for keeping us safe among the dinosaurs. But they're not thinkers. And I don’t want an alien. I want an ordinary Earth guy. One with a big heart and a quizzical look in his eyes.

Heidi comes back and sits down on a rock.

I lift my butt, take the not-sheep skin I'm sitting on, and hand it over. “Here. Very fancy cushion, pre-warmed by genuine Norwegian ass. You don't want to get some kind of UTI from the cold rock in your state.”

She takes it and puts it between her and the stone. “Thank you. Yeah, good point. They say the risk for that is pretty high just about now.”

Heidi is pregnant and showing it fine. So is Emilia, except about a month further along. Aurora is in a motherly way too, but she's only been for a couple of weeks so won't be showing for a good while yet.

Bubbles are forming in the bottom of the pot, and I keep stirring.

“But the risk of everything else is lower. Feels like we're all breathing easier now. After Sophia's delivery, I mean. Now that we have Trak'zor's magic gel, that's a decent-sized load off our minds.”

“A load about the size of Bune.” Heidi sighs and indicates the mountain in the distance, which is really an ancient spaceship. “I sleep really well now for the first time since I got knocked up. No waking up in the night to a cold sweat about that, at least.”

“One less thing to complain about,” I agree. “Me, I'd be off like a shot if we had a chance to leave this planet. And I'd laugh happily all the way home.”

“M-hm,” Heidi says non-committedly. “I know how you feel.”

I start cutting up some leaves with a small knife. But you don't feel it anymore. “Still, it's a decent little tribe we've made.”

“I know, right? Best on all of planet Xren. Water and food and iron. Now including a newborn even. The first girl born on this planet for who knows how long.”

“Right.” I gaze towards the horizon. The sun won't be up for a while yet. But I should get going.

The water finally boils, and I add the chopped-up leaves to it to create an infusion that has nothing to do with coffee but which at least has about the right color after Trak'zor showed us a root to add.

“This should steep for ten minutes or so,” I state and get to my feet. “I'll go get some more herbs for the breakfast before the others get up. Saw a nice patch yesterday. It's far, but I have the spear.”

Heidi leans back and crosses one leg over the other. “Okay. You're taking really good care of us all. And you're being so discrete about it. I really appreciate it, Caroline. We all do.”

I give her a mechanical little smile. “Hey, we all do our best.”

Then I get my spear, tipped with a razor-sharp dactyl tooth, and walk across our yard into the still pretty dark jungle.

- - -

The morning dew is dripping from the trees, and it's so clammy in this stale air I feel dirty and sweaty after two minutes. But that's just the way the jungle is, and I don't mind it too much anymore.

I move as quietly as I can, always looking around and freezing at every sound around me, spear clenched tightly in my hand. And there are a lot of sounds. Clicks and rustling and screeching and snapping. There's no wind, so all of it comes from living beings.

Most of them are small and not too threatening. The bigger ones are the ones you have to watch out for. They'll trample you underfoot or stick huge spears through you or just feed you to their hatchlings.

There haven't been a lot of dinosaurs close to our cave for a good while now. We're not sure why. Maybe it's because all the human activity around our cave is chasing them away. But the cavemen in our tribe don't think so. Dinos are not afraid of coming right up to any human settlement or village, even ones that have been there for a long time. They think there’s something else here that's keeping the alien dinosaurs away, especially in this direction I'm walking now.

Well, I have my own theory about what that might be.

I follow a valley between two hills. The going is easier here than elsewhere around with fewer bushes and only low grass that can't hide some monstrosity that wants to murder me and use my feet to decorate its nest. Or something. I don't trust these things one bit.

I realize that the walking is easier here because dinos have been using this as a path for a long time. The first couple of times I came this way, I walked far up the hillside away from this obvious path. If there's a well-trodden path, it means the probability of meeting a monster is higher. But after a few times, I hadn't seen any dinos here, so I started using the path myself. I'm pretty sure I can see any creature coming from a little further away too.

Compared to the dense jungle everywhere else, this is as close to a highway as we get on Xren. Even while staying on my guard, I'm able to walk pretty fast.

And far. My destination for today is a good distance away. And it's not a patch of herbs like I told Heidi.

The sun is lighting up the treetops now, and soon the dusk will turn to day. Aurora and Trak'zor will be leaving for their honeymoon today, but I'm hoping they'll sleep in and leave me enough time to get back and say goodbye. But if they leave early, I can live with that. My errand is more important.

To me anyway.

The path starts slowly climbing and turns rocky. This part probably becomes a creek when it rains, judging from the round stones and the sand I'm now walking on. But it hasn't rained since the night Sophia gave birth to little Jaxia Aurelia, and it's dry now. It means I can walk even faster, even it it's uphill.

It's a pleasant, cool morning, but it's not really registering. The butterflies are starting to take off in my stomach in excited expectation. Not too long now.

The animal path crests a ridge and continues down, the easiest way. But I turn left, going up the side of a hill with hundreds of slender trees of the same type. It's pretty unusual to see this many trees of the same size in the same place in this explosively diverse jungle, so I'm pretty sure I'm the only one from the cave who's been here. Otherwise, someone else would have mentioned the weird forest with all the same trees. This is uncharted terrain.

I crouch down and crawl the rest of the way on all fours so I stay below the row of bushes that will shield me from being seen. There's no breeze today, so my scent shouldn't give me away either. God knows how I smell now, after nine months on a dinosaur planet with the closest shower gel forty thousand years' travel distant.

I reach the cluster of bushes, get up on my knees on the soft weeds, and slowly raise my head to peer between the leaves without touching them.

The hill dives steeply down into the jungle, and everything down there is more rocky than usual. The first time I stumbled over this, it was obvious to me that it wasn't natural. If my path here was like a highway, then that valley down there is more like an eight-lane motorway like they have in Europe. It's trodden flat and looks dug up, and the few trees down there are so thick, I don't think I've seen anything like it before.

But even so, this area here is special. Someone has dug up the ground and carried the dirt away, placing it in large heaps here and there. It would be a huge project that you'd need an excavator and a truck to do back on Earth. But here, the only thing with a similar capacity would be a large team of diggers with big shovels.

Or just one caveman. A really smart one.

Then my heart skips a beat when I spot movement among the trees down there.

Yep, that's him. My caveman.

He's big and insanely muscular like all the cavemen I've seen. He's wearing pants, unlike the loincloths that the other ones prefer. His hair is short and dark, unlike the long, blonde locks that I've seen on the others.

He has green stripes on his torso, which is probably better camouflage than red or white or yellow like some of the other guys have. But still I was able to spot him the first time I came walking. It's a very vivid green.

He's not mine, of course. He doesn't even know I exist.

The day I found him was the day after Aurora didn't come home. I was feeling pretty down because she'd rejected my offer to come with her. And then when she didn't return, for some reason I felt that I should have pressed harder to accompany her. So I wandered a little further into the woods than I usually would, taking less care to be silent and invisible to all the dangers, pretending to myself I wasn't looking for Aurora, feeling the old darkness tugging at the edges of my consciousness. But now, my standby stash of Zoloft is light years away.

That’s when I saw him, and I forgot about the darkness.

He had his back turned, so I just had time to throw myself down behind the bushes, my heartbeat suddenly banging through my whole body. When a few minutes had gone by, and I hadn't been abducted or killed or raped, and all I could hear was something like contended humming from below me, I slowly looked up.

And I've come back here every day ever since. Sometimes in the afternoons, sometimes in the middle of the day. But the best time is the early morning. The sun is behind him, and I don't have to worry about him spotting my shadow. And this hillside below me is well lit up.

I am totally stalking him. But I can live with being a stalker. I mean, it's not that creepy. I don't want to harm him or even talk to him. I just want to look.

Today he's continuing something he started yesterday, which is getting a huge boulder out of the ground. Yesterday he dug it free from dirt while I was watching, and then he just sat down on the ground and stared at it while rubbing his chin. At that point, I slowly crawled back the way I'd come and went back to the cave. I don't want to stay here for that long at a time, or the girls might get suspicious.

Of course, I should have told everyone about this. And I was absolutely going to that first time. But on the way back through the jungle, I changed my mind. It felt as it if was one thing too many. Everyone was really anxious about Aurora not returning. Heidi and Ar'ox were constantly flying around on their tame dactyl searching for her. Everyone else was also going into the jungle on foot searching for her. I was too.

I decided that I'd tell them the day after. No need to add to the uneasy feelings in our little tribe on that particular day.

So the day after, I went back here. Just to make sure. And there he was. Humming, digging with a stick, carrying gigantic rocks under his arms as if they were only bundles of laundry.

Then it kind of became too late to tell anyone. I told myself that I'd just find out more about him so there's more to tell them. What the heck it is that he's building, for instance. And what's the deal with the whole landscape further down that hill? It's looking so weird, like some kind of riverbed that shines like crystal.

Heck, it's just one caveman doing his thing pretty far away from our cave. It's not like a sensational event. We've encountered several tribes by now. Four caveman are living with us in the cave, for crying out loud. One more isn't going to matter.

And what would happen if I told them? Maybe one of our own caveman would walk here and talk to the guy.

Then what?

When we first came here, we decided that we needed the support of other tribes to survive on this lethal planet. But as it turned out, our little tribe quickly became the best one. We don't need any other tribes to help us out anymore. They can only cause trouble. We're painfully aware that a cave with six actual women living in it will be a temptation that some tribes and bands of raiders won't be able to withstand on a planet with no women of its own. We want to stay as secret as possible. Striking up a conversation with a random caveman for no particular reason is probably not a great idea.

So it won't make any difference whether I tell the others or not. When I figure out what exactly he's building, I might report on him.

Or I might not.

The thing is, I really like looking at him. He's so peaceful, happily doing backbreaking labor in the humid jungle. Humming and even whistling sometimes. So freaking strong and full of manly energy.

In the cave, everything is common property. I have nothing that's mine except my tiny little piece of the sleeping section with its thin furs. But this, this caveman and his project, is mine. For now. It's a part of my life that's like a refreshing break from the hard life we lead. A vacation from the homesickness and the hopelessness. And the occasional darkness that comes from out of nowhere, like it did back on Earth.

There are no other breaks for me. The married girls have their husbands and their intimacy. I don't. But I have this. And it feels good to watch someone else's life for a while.

The guy down there is chopping down trees and hammering their trunks into the ground with his giant hammer. Because that's what he's carrying in his belt. Cavemen usually have swords, but this guy has a damn sledgehammer with an iron head the size of microwave oven.

Right now, he's building some kind of frame and pulley system to get that boulder out.

It's strangely hypnotizing to watch, and I think I just have time to see whether he succeeds or not before I have to make my way back to the cave and be useful.

I slowly change my position so I'm sitting cross-legged on the ground, still peering between the leaves as I take a piece of fruit out of my pack and start quietly munching on it.

He's humming again, a deep, contented sound that travels pretty far and which is so badly out of tune it's really cute. Except I suspect that the notes we know from Earth may be specific to that planet, so I shouldn't judge. Maybe he's giving me a pitch-perfect rendition of some caveman chart-topper.

I enjoy watching the muscles in his back and arm flexing with each movement. I like his fluid motions and his casual displays of unbelievable strength.

Like other cavemen, he's not conventionally handsome. His face has the wrong proportions for that, and most fashion models on Earth don't have fangs. But I don't care. He's a spectacular specimen of maleness, an image that's unnecessarily underpinned by the considerable bulge in his pants.

I think he has to be kind and thoughtful. Cheerful and generous. A giving lover with a dominant streak.

I have a flash of me walking down there, stripping naked, and just offering myself to him. The very idea sends a thrilled little tingle to my crotch. It's been a long time since I had any action like that, or of any kind at all, and that guy down there—

I forcibly stop my train of thought before it goes too far.

So now I'm being a creepy stalker.