- Emilia -

“Aurora!”

I can't believe my eyes. It's definitely her. And she has a big, wooden bow that she must have used to shoot that nasty little not-dactyl that almost took me.

Ar'ox crawls in under the tree and embraces me. He's sticky with blood, and I fear that too much of it is his own. He's breathing more heavily than I've ever seen him do. “My love,” he wheezes, and pulls me out so I can stand up.

Then Aurora is there, and she still has the bow in her hand, with a new arrow notched and the string pulled half back. My heart swells with pride. In her brown skins and with the primitive weapon in her hands, she looks like a real hunter. She reminds me of Xena, Warrior Princess.

She stops at a careful distance and nods at Ar'ox and Alice. “These are friends of yours, right?”

“Yes! Totally friends. Don't shoot them.”

She stands there and looks at me, much thinner and paler than I remember. Her clothes are dirty and torn. Then she gives me a cautious smile, and there's a heartbreaking shyness in her face and her whole posture.

I free myself from Ar'ox's grip and run over as fast as I can, my lower lip trembling. Then I can finally embrace my friend. “Aurora!”

She sniffles in my ear. “Emilia ... I thought ... we thought ...”

“I know,” I sob. “You thought I was dead. I'm so sorry, Aurora. I didn't mean to vanish!”

Then we both bawl our eyes out for a while, as Alice and Ar'ox quietly watch and exchange glances. Well, Earth girls are weird, I guess.

“I'm sorry I stormed out,” I sniffle. “And then I went missing. It must have been terrible for you.”

She takes a deep breath and wipes her nose. “It was pretty bad. But now I feel a whole lot better. Stars, Em, who's the hunk?”

“Ar'ox. My fiancé.”

She stares unashamedly at him. “You're kidding! He's gorgeous.”

We both look at him, and I grin. Many things can be said about my caveman, but 'gorgeous' isn't really one of them. Unless you mean from the neck down. His face is caked with irox blood, and it's still very alien. He's maybe not a beauty on the outside. But the inside?

A deep, happy sigh escapes me. “Yeah. He really is.”

- - -

We walk for another couple of hours, and then we get to the cave.

Aurora and I walk ahead of Ar'ox, who's so exhausted he stumbles and walks slower than I've ever seen him do. Alice bounces around us and seems like she doesn't have a care in the world. Which I guess she doesn't. Yeah, I don't know what makes her tick.

Right before we get to where we can see the cave, Aurora stops and raises her eyebrows. “Yeah. So. Two cavemen in one cave.”

I catch her drift. I'm not sure we want to spring Ar'ox on Jax'zan as a surprise. They may be mortal enemies, for all I know.

I put a hand on Ar'ox's huge arm. “Almost there. My love, how do you feel about tribes with red stripes?”

He frowns and points to his own chest. “Red stripes.”

“No, yours are more ... yellow red,” I decide, because I can't remember if cavemanese even has the word for 'orange'. This planet sure doesn't have that fruit.

He asks the obvious question. “Why?”

“There's another man here. From the Rexvi tribe. He lives with us. Heard of it?”

“Rexvi? No.”

I turn to Aurora. “I think their villages are too far apart for them to know about each other. But if Jax'zan decides he doesn't like other cavemen here, then we might have a problem. Ar'ox is totally exhausted. He can't defend himself right now. It would be murder.”

She nods. “That was my thinking, too. Yeah, let's run this by Sophia first. She'll take it up with him. Will he be okay here on his own while we go check?”

I just shake my head. “He won't be here on his own. I'll wait here, too. If Jax'zan doesn't want company, then your tribe doesn't get me, either.”

She smiles. “I thought so. I won't be long. This should be settled in a couple of minutes. Damn, Emilia, your cavemanese sounds great. You're totally fluent.”

She walks towards the cave and I sit Ar'ox down with his back to a tree.

“There are four more girls here. Sophia, Heidi, Caroline and Delyah. And one man. Jax'zan from the Rexvi tribe. He's Sophia's husband. We just want to make sure he won't attack you as soon as he sees you.”

He juts his jaw out and I hold around his shoulders. I don't think anyone in the cave has any objection. More guys is totally what we need. And I'm not leaving Ar'ox's side ever again.

Aurora returns immediately. “He's confused about the stripe colors, but he assures us that he won't attack anyone. Come on, guys.”

All the girls are outside the cave, standing there and looking at us walking towards them. Then they all come running and we're a big huddle of hugs and tears and laughter and all kinds of great things.

“Gods, Emilia, we thought you were dead!”

“What the hell is that monkey thing there? It's adorable!”

“Oh I'm so glad to see you! You have no idea!”

“The cave is so empty without you!”

“Ohmigod are those pants? Did you find a Gap somewhere?”

“Your caveman is crazy hot. Are there more? Has to be, right?”

“You're engaged? Congratulatiooooooons!”

Then Jax'zan comes slowly out of the cave and looks over at Ar'ox, holding his hand on the hilt of his sword. For three heartbeats the whole jungle is dead quiet.

Then a little smile passes over the corner of Jax'zan's mouth, and he lets go of his weapon. “Tribesman.”

And then the tension is released and we girls chatter happily as we enter the cave and sit down around the fire at the opening. The two cavemen look at each other, Ar'ox points at Jax'zan's sword and asks a question, Jax'zan shows him the blade and then they talk about caveman stuff until I drag Ar'ox away and force him to sit down so he can rest and I can clean his wounds with the antiseptic herbs we have.

The cave looks much the same as before. Even my little pottery wheel is still there.

The girls give us food and water, and I sit back against the wall of the cave and my arm tangled in Ar'ox's and just feel the tension drain from me as I dab at his cuts with a soaked rag.

“Of course we were hoping you'd come back, but we were pretty sure you wouldn't,” Sophia says. “Aurora went on long walks every day to search for you. When she brought back your spear, we were sure that was it. But she wouldn't give up.”

Aurora shrugs. “What can I say? I'm stubborn.”

I reach out to grab her hand and squeeze it. “And then she saved my life. I'm so sorry, guys. I stormed out and then disappeared. So many dinos chased me, I just had to run. And then this guy saved me. And then ... well, it's a long story.”

“Best kind,” Delyah says and leans back against the wall.

So I tell them the whole story and they're just listening quietly. It takes a long time.

“... and then Aurora shot the thing right in the face and I was fine.”

The cave is quiet for a good while as the girls digest my tale. I look up at Ar'ox, just checking that he's okay. He's dozing, and he's breathing slowly and deeply. I squeeze his huge hand.

“That's all sensational. But tell me again: they were afraid of that little thing?” Heidi points to Alice, who's right now climbing a tall tree right outside without any effort at all.

“They were. As in, totally scared out of their minds. In fairness, she can be pretty fierce and picks huge dactyls out of the air at will, but she's really just a cuddly bundle of cuteness. But girls, what did you do about the bobont stampede?”

“We heard them days before,” Caroline says. “Or actually, Jax'zan did. And it was clear that those things were coming straight for us. Along with all their friends. So we considered evacuating the cave and getting out of the way. Then Delyah says that this is the only cave for miles, and we should try to protect it. So she figures out a way to deflect the whole damn bunch of them away from the cave, just by placing rocks and branches in smart places. I still don't know how that worked.”

Delyah shrugs. “The principle is simple. It's the same idea as deflecting a threatening asteroid away from the Earth. If you get it early enough, when it's still far away, all it needs is a tiny nudge to make sure it misses. We just had to change the migration course by two degrees for them to miss the cave by a half mile. But then they got led into the valley, and that lead them even further away. They missed by many miles.”

We chat for a long time, and sunset comes and goes. It feels totally fantastic to be home with the girls again, and we laugh until we're weeping helplessly at some of the things that are said.

Finally I yawn. I absolutely need some sleep. “Caroline. Could you please wed us?”

“Sure. When?”

I glance over at my caveman. I can't wait to be married to him. As in, I'd marry him this second if it was possible. “Tomorrow? No, actually, make that two days from now. I've got some sewing to do."

“Fine.”

Nobody says 'are you sure' or 'so soon?' or 'you want to think about that for a few weeks?' the way that good friends would back on Earth. Here, there's nothing to wait for. Danger looms everywhere. Tomorrow may never come, so anything you want better happen as soon as possible. And they would all marry a hot caveman in a heartbeat, same as me.

Then I rummage around my dinosaur skin bag and pull out the alien pad. “Look at this, Delyah. Something Ar'ox found half buried in the jungle.”

I swipe my hand across the smooth surface to bring the thing to life, and all the girls go “oooh!”

I hand it over to Delyah. “I don't know how it works, really. It contains a recording of someone being attacked by the dactyls. Probably the original owners. And it has a map on there, too. I'm not sure if- oh my god!”

As soon as Delyah gets the little pad into her hands, she holds it for a second and then curls her hand over and around the screen with two fingers without touching it. Immediately the image turns from a chaotic mass of colors to a three-dimensional image that looks a lot more defined than before.

“Same people that made that,” she says and points over to the intricate wall paintings in the cave. “They have a weird way of expressing things. Kind of unusually complicated. They like to do things backwards. So to use this thing, you have to curl your fingers around to the other side than the one you're looking at. This looks like ... yeah, this is text in their language. They use three-dimensional symbols. That's why the wall paintings look so weird. You have to imagine what they would look like if you were to look at them from behind and with depth. Ain't easy.”

We're all leaning in to look at the pad. “What does it say?”

“Hey, I can't read it. I can maybe identify three or four of the same letters. That's it. I said it ain't easy. This thing might make it a little less impossible.”

I yawn again and stretch. “Well, have fun. I'm beat. Someone want to help me carry this caveman into my bed?”

“Oh, just look at that guy,” Heidi sighs. “Shit, there has to be more decent guys in his village, right? Can't we go there and adopt a few more?”

Ar'ox is adorably asleep, sitting up against the wall of the cave, and his mouth is half open so his sharp fangs are glittering in the light from the fire. The clash between the child-like innocence on his face and the huge, extremely powerful, scarred and striped caveman it's attached to is so charmingly mind-bending that it takes my breath away.

The girls murmur basic agreement with Heidi's scheme.

I slowly stand up. “Actually, that reminds me ...”

They all look at me. I was never one to revel in being the center of attention, but right now, I don't mind it at all.

I give them a little smile, happy that Sophia trod this path before me and that I know how the girls will react. “I'm pretty sure I'm pregnant.”