- Heidi -

We ride on Gerk for the rest of the day, and it seems to me we're backtracking and going roughly towards Bune. Fluffy follows with a carefree, bouncing gait that I'm starting to find endearing. Dar'ax fucks me many more times, and I love it every time I feel his cock in me. I guess we both had some catching up to do, now that we've finally found someone we really like.

I also find the time to have him cut a thin strip of tough dinosaur skin from the hem of my dress. I'm done with being unarmed here on this deadly planet, so I fashion a crude sling that I tie around my upper arm in a way that makes it easy to get to. Now I just need a couple of tennis ball sized rocks, and I can defend myself somewhat against very small predators. And I'm absolutely including other caveman in that.

At sunset we climb down, Dar'ax does that insane thing where he practically sticks his head inside Gerk's toothy gape, I ride around this new meadow on Fluffy for a few minutes, I collect a little heap of rocks for the sling and then we build a new little hut and a fire.

The grilled turkeypig tastes better than ever, the 'salad' of leaves and herbs seems crisper than before and I'm sitting on Dar'ax's lap, feeling his warmth and his scent and his strong arm around me. Again I marvel at how small and dainty this huge man is making me feel.

We don't talk much, but there's a good deal of looking deeply into each other's eyes going on.

Yeah, of course I'm in love with him. With my kidnapper, who turned out to be the best man I'd ever met. I guess it doesn't matter too much how badly things start when they turn out as wonderfully as this.

I tend to his wound again, finding to my great satisfaction that it's healing nicely.

“Heidi longs to go home to Urth?” Dar'ax asks into my hair, which he likes to nuzzle.

“Yes. And also no.” Using my limited cavemanese, I tell him about Earth and the Plood abducting us and dumping us on Bune and about Sophia and Jax'zan and Emilia and Ar'ox. I don't sugarcoat any of it. I really want to recruit this guy to our tribe, but I respect him so much that I want him to make his decision based on facts and not on me trying to sell him on anything.

He asks question about Earth and about me and my life and the other girls and the other cavemen and tribes we've encountered, and I answer as honestly as I can.

Then we're quiet again and I lean my head on his broad chest with its bright stripes.

I'm not going to nag him about abandoning his mission and coming over to us. Not today. Not on this perfect day with this perfect man. Now he knows all about me and what he will be choosing between.

Should be an easy choice, seems to me.

I doze off on his chest, and then I distantly sense him carrying me into the hut and laying me down on a bed of soft moss. Then he does that final patrol of the day like he uses to, comes back and spoons me from behind.

“Thank you,” I mumble, half asleep. And I really mean it.

Then I'm out like a light.

- - -

I wake up, but there's no light and Dar'ax is still behind me, breathing slowly and deeply.

There was a scream in the air, a screech that sends shivers down my spine because it was the first sound I heard here on Xren, the first living things we girls met. And they were almost the end of us.

Since then, I've seen many terrible things on this planet. But still they're what I fear the most.

Dactyls.

I sit up, completely awake and itching to escape. Of course I realize that inside this primitive hut, we're probably invisible from the air, so the dactyls have no idea we're here.

Another screech rends the silence of the night and I reflexively look up to the leafy ceiling of the hut. That was much closer.

Maybe the dactyls do have some idea we're here. We may have left some tracks that they might be able to interpret. The embers of the fire, maybe.

I turn to warn Dar'ax, but of course he's wide awake, with his hand on his sword.

“They can't see us,” he confirms. “That's why we have this hut.”

He's so calm I lie back down on his chest, curling up beside him. Even like this he exudes so much safety, the dactyls almost seem unimportant. Surely they're just passing by on some other errand.

There's another couple of screeches, and these seem to come from just above the hut. Dar'ax stiffens underneath me.

“They only scream if they have prey,” he ponders. “They're hunting something nearby.”

He sits up and slowly parts the leaves above us, peering up into the dark sky.

He sits like that for a minute, then slowly and soundlessly replaces the leaves. “Many irox circling.”

I know what that word means: dactyls. “They here for us?”

“No. Something else.”

We're sitting still for a while, just listening, hoping the deadly flying creatures that look so much like pterodactyls will soon move on. Every screech sends a new wave of ice down my spine, and fear courses through my body.

Then I hear a new sound. Voices and running feet, close by.

“Someone comes!”

Dar'ax grabs my arm to make me shut up, and then many feet are running right past the hut, their steps resonating on the soft ground. I hear tight voices laced with fear and desperation, just a few feet away. Male voices, of course. There must be many men running past us.

“Nusin,” Dar'ax whispers into my ear. “Stay still.”

I try to make like a statue and freeze. I really don't want to be discovered by the Nusin. And even less by the dactyls.

Then one of the running men catches his foot on one of the branches that cover our little hut. He trips over it and rips it off, and suddenly half the primitive roof is gone and a caveman with dirty yellow stripes is on the floor right next to us, just staring up at us with wild eyes and a mouth that's open in astonishment.

He just lies there for three heartbeats, filling the air with an unhealthy stench. Then he scrambles to change the grip on his ugly, black spear so he can thrust it at us. But Dar'ax is much quicker and runs him through with his sword, right through the chest so the Nusin tribesman collapses to the ground, instantly dead.

At the same moment another screech rips through the air, my head jerks up, and through the now ruined roof of our hut I can see a dark shape in the blue moonlight. It's a huge dactyl, beating its wings lazily and clearly coming straight for me.

I squeal and crouch down, knowing it's too late and that the terrible flying dino with four wings and a long beak with an infinite number of razor teeth will get me.

Then Dar'ax is beside me, I see steel flash in the moonlight and the dactyl screeches again, from so close it feels like the horrible noise is filling my head. I clamp my hands to my ears and probably do some screeching of my own.

Then Dar'ax's big hand is on my shoulder. I look up. The dactyl is flying away again, less lazily now, and Dar'ax's sword is dripping with a liquid of some kind.

“That one won't be back,” he says with a tight voice, staring after the wounded creature.

But there are others, and while it's hard to separate them in the darkness, there's enough moonlight to be able to see that there's a pack of them.

The Nusin are long gone and I peek out to see if Fluffy is okay. But she's nowhere to be seen, and Gerk is also gone, like he usually is when we're not riding him.

I quickly grab two rocks for my sling, because I sense that we won't be staying put here for much longer.

“Let's get out,” Dar'ax says and takes my hand, leading me out of the ruined hut and walking fast into the jungle, where the tree trunks are dense and the dactyls hopefully can't see us through the canopy of green leaves.

Then I hear a suspicious noise from behind us, as of bat wings flapping, and I whirl around. There are three dactyls flying straight towards us between the trees, smaller ones that are only about the size of winged bears and not of airplanes, like most of them.

I fumble with the sling I've fastened to my arm, knowing that I won't have time to get it off. “Dar'ax!”

My caveman turns around and sees the danger, and he just has time to lift his sword before the first dactyl is on us. It veers slightly to the side when it sees the long metal edge waiting for it, and I feel the whoosh of air as its wingtip passes right by my head. It soars hard into the air, crashing into the leafy jungle canopy and leaving a big, irregular hole in it.

Its two friends are coming for us now, but now Dar'ax is ready for them, and he cuts the head off the first. The headless body tumbles wildly into the jungle and hits a tree with a leathery thud.

The other is smarter and keeps its distance to Dar'ax, drifting easily around him and then coming straight for me. The beak opens and it adjusts its four bat-like wings to come at me from above.

And I have a rock ready in my sling. The dactyl is probably inexperienced, and its much smaller than the ones I've seen so far on Xren. It scares me much less than the bigger ones.

I'm scared, of course, but I force it down and aim for the dactyl in just the same way as when I practice.

I swing the sling around twice to get it up to speed, and then I release the rock. It misses the dactyl's mouth, which doesn't really seem possible with a gape that big, but it strikes the root of one wing and seems to ruin the attackers rhythm. The wings start to flutter, disorganized and out of synch, and it first seems to break off its attack. It soars over me, and I think it's going to ascend through the same hole as the first one made in the treetops.

Then it screeches, a much thinner noise than the ones we'd heard before, but it still freezes my heart, because there is immense anger and menace in it.

It doubles up in the air and then shoots down again, its slitty eyes focused on me.

But I'm ready with my last rock in the sling, already rotating fast around my head, and I release it as hard as I can.

It flies right underneath the dactyl and disappears into the woods.

The dactyl beats its wings once to speed up towards me and I freeze up. I can't even yell. I'm defenseless now, and this attacker won't be fooled. I swear the dactyl smiles when it understands it.

Then there's a wild roar so loud the trees rattle. A dark shadow passes between me and the death from above, I finally have the sense to duck, and the next thing I know is that the dactyl is on the ground and Dar'ax stands above it, wildly hacking at its dead, wingless body, roaring in fury, sending dactyl blood and flesh spraying out in all directions.

It's his rage again, the one that was first ignited when the Nusin killed everyone in his tribe and which is now triggered by someone attacking me. I don't know what to do about it. It's horrific and repulsive, and I'm afraid to go near him when he's like this.

“Dar'ax,” I try. “It's dead.”

He gives me no sign that he heard me. I guess I'll just have to let him ride it out.

Then there's movement right at the corner of my eye, and I'm so highly strung right now I can't help squealing as I spin around. Then I'm staring right up and into a huge mouth that's all teeth the size of shovel blades.

Then Dar'ax is between and this new monster, and he roars wildly and hacks blindly at this new monster with his sword.

But in the same heartbeat, I realize that that's the wrong thing to do.

“Dar'ax! Stop!”

He's consumed with fury and keeps going, hacking and slashing like a ferocious windmill. The new dino has thick skin, and each stroke of the sword sounds most of all like steel hitting concrete.

It doesn't surprise me – I know it feels like sandpaper to the touch. Because I know this dinosaur very well, and I can see the wooden stick going down its side.

“Dar'ax!” I try again. “It's Gerk! Stop it!”

Only then does he freeze with his sword lifted, as if waking up from a deep, violent trance.

And Gerk the freaking T. Rex stands there for a moment. Then the giant dinosaur takes a step backwards, something I've never seen him do before and which I didn't even know he could. Then he puts his head down close to the ground and sneers.

It's the first time a dinosaur has sneered at me, and I'd prefer it if I never experience it again. I would prefer that very fucking strongly. Because I swear my heart goes still in my chest, and I definitely stop breathing from sheer terror.

But that's nothing compared to what happens a split second later: the giant T. Rex roars. And never mind not breathing – I clamp my hands over my ears, but still the sound rattles the teeth in my mouth and shakes my ribcage like the spin cycle of a gigantic washing machine. It's a sound that I can't even compare to anything else. I mean, a thousand cotton sheets being ripped end to end and then run through an angry moon rocket? Not even close.

I know the end of my life has come. No dino roars like that and doesn't mean to kill right after.

I grab Dar'ax's hand. But for once, even that doesn't make me feel safe. Gerk is just too big and terrible.

Then the roar is over and the jungle is more quiet than I ever thought possible. Everyone and everything is keeping their heads down, mortified to be the target of the anger behind that roar.

Gerk looks at us with his huge, yellow eyes. His immense teeth are dripping with pink slime, which is partly the blood of some kind of prey he's recently hunted down.

We stand like that for a breathless moment, the three of us old friends who are suddenly not on good terms anymore. Then Gerk calmly turns around, with a smoothness and agility that nothing his size should be able to display, and walks away. For once he just walks straight ahead, crashing into the jungle and leaving a wide trail of broken trees and trampled bushes. He scrapes his side onto a huge tree, and the control stick Dar'ax has fastened on him falls to the ground.

Dar'ax and I have to hit the ground to not be hit by the T. Rex's giant, swinging tail, and then Gerk is gone.

We sit on the ground staring after him for a good while. I think we both sense he'll never be back.

Then I get up and pick up a rock for my sling. I think I'll need ammunition from now on. “Gerk come to help us against irox,” I state calmly, although my insides are boiling. “Then Dar'ax attack him. Is that what Dar'ax think is honorable?”

He doesn't reply, and he doesn't look at me. That's fine. His rage problem just chased away the best friend he ever had. And I can't help thinking: when will he turn that fury on me?