- Heidi -

Sophia strokes a lock of hair out of her face. “What does it feel like to be married?”

The afternoon is almost turning to evening, and the jungle is bathed in the orange light from the sun. We're sitting in front of the cave, enjoying the old view of the valley and Bune beyond. I'm still in my wedding outfit, which consists of a new dress that Caroline made in a couple of hours plus a sparkling white ribbon in my hair, made from the fabric that Emilia brought home from her adventures. It's more than enough to make me feel special. Just for today.

“I think that depends on who you're married to,” I reply and gaze over at Dar'ax. He's sitting with the other two caveman a few feet away, chatting and laughing at caveman jokes. It warms my heart to see. “And I think I lucked out pretty good.”

“I think so, too,” Sophia says, following my gaze. “I still can't wrap my mind around him living all alone for years. And then he goes and tames dinosaurs. Like it's nothing.”

“He's cool,” I agree modestly. To me, he's beyond amazing. “And he took the pregnancy thing pretty well.”

“Don't they all? These guys really like having kids. Or the prospect of it, anyway. It'll be interesting to see what happens when they actually become fathers. I sometimes try to imagine Jax'zan holding a baby in his arms, and the image is so powerful I just melt.”

I nod. “I know, right? They're so big and tough and scarred and deadly. It makes my head explode just thinking of Dar'ax trying to feed a baby. I mean, his hand is the size of a whole infant. It'll be beyond hilarious. Shit, I wish we had a camera for that!”

“Tell me about it. I don't think Delyah has figured out how to make that alien pad record video, although it obviously could. But heck, I'll be over the moon as long as the baby turns out okay.”

“And as long as we don't die,” Emilia adds and sits down between us, squeezing both our shoulders gently. “Stars, Ar'ox was really worried there for a moment.”

I squeeze her wrist. “Dar'ax too. It's cute. They have no idea about how any of it works. And when they hear it, they just blanch with horror. As if the mechanics of giving birth is the worst thing they've ever heard, even though they have lived their lives on a jurassic planet with death lurking under every rock.”

“It kind of scares me too,” Sophia says quietly. “In the old days, mothers died in childbirth all the time. The babies, too.”

“I still have a hope that we'll get off this planet before that,” Emilia says and looks over at Bune. “Even if that spaceship acted so weird we had to leave.”

Bune looks so innocent and ordinary in the warm sunset light. “What happened, exactly?”

Sophia stretches her legs out in front of her. “Right after you vanished, Caroline discovered another room. Wide and round and ... just different, somehow. At first we were totally shocked about what had happened to you, so we didn't explore it until the next day. Delyah went inside, and her pad came alive with all kinds of graphics and sounds. So we thought that it was probably some kind of control room. We tried to make sense of it. Or actually, Delyah did. We just stood there gawping. But she thought she understood some of it. Then we noticed that it was getting harder to breathe. As if the air was thinning out.”

“That door you went out through had closed,” Emilia continues. “All by itself. So we were worried that the main door we came in through might have closed too, and that we were trapped. We ran back to it, but it was still open. But on the way there we noticed that a lot of lights had come on, and some of the alien machines or whatever they are looked like they had been turned on. It was totally creepy.”

“It felt as if the ship had woken up,” Sophia says. “And that maybe it wasn't that happy about us being there. So we realized that now we could never be safe while inside it. Would the door close, and would we be trapped inside it while the air was being sucked out? So we decided that we'd go back to the cave. Also because the tracks from Dar'ax's T. Rex didn't show a bunch of them, just one. So it was probably not a whole tribe after all.”

Emilia tosses a little pebble at a tree. “And we thought that there might be a chance your abductor had taken you there. But then the dactyls followed us and attacked us and chased us, and we came to realize that we were screwed, and we might as well just stand and fight. And you know the rest.”

I shudder at the thought of that dactyl attack when I was sure we would all die. “I do. Shit, if he hadn't abducted me, we'd all probably be dead by now. Hi, Caroline.”

“This planet works in weird ways,” Caroline says and kneels behind me with her hands on my shoulders. “If Dar'ax hadn't taken you, those dactyls would have killed us all on our way back to the cave. We got really close to being wiped out. But instead, now we have one more super competent guy in our tribe. And another baby on the way. I'd say we won big. Stars, he's a great cook, your husband.”

Dar'ax helped cook the wedding dinner, and he impressed everyone with his turkeypig and the breadfruit and the salad.

“He is,” I agree, because just today, I'm not going to be too modest about him. I'm delirious with happiness. “And he's promised to make booze for us, too.”

Caroline squeezes my shoulders. “My dancing stars. I can't wait. Is there anything he can't do?”

I scratch my head. Is there? “I'm not sure he's a great singer. But that's all I can think of.”

Aurora quietly comes over and sits down beside us. She caught the bridal bouquet that I threw, and she's turned it into a nice wreath that she wears on her head. “Meanwhile, any plans for that dactyl? I mean, fine, it's an awesome pet. But every time I see the shadow on the ground I get a heart attack.”

The dactyl Dar'ax tamed is often seen over the cave, and sometimes it lands on the hill above it. Dar'ax has only ridden it once after that first time, and that was to get some breadfruits for the dinner.

“I don't know,” I confess. “It might stick around for a while. It keeps other dinos at a distance, anyway. I think it would be hard to chase it away, too. It will do anything it wants, I think.”

“I can't believe he was able to tame one of those things,” Sophia says. “As long as we have it here, we don't have to worry about other dactyls. Sound about right, Delyah?”

Delyah wipes her mouth and tosses the pit of a salen fruit into the strategically placed basket we have for that purpose. “I have no idea. It might keep them away or it might attract them. I guess we'll find out soon enough. For now, I like having it around. I've never seen one from this close. It's a fascinating species. They seem more intelligent than they should be.”

We all sit and gaze over at Bune as the sun sinks towards the horizon. I'm with my tribe, and it's my wedding day. For once I don't mind that I might be stuck on this planet.

“What are we planning about Bune?” Aurora says right into my thoughts. “I mean, I'm not ready to give up on it. It's our only hope.”

We're all looking at Delyah. I guess we're all counting on her brains to get us home someday.

“Well,” she says slowly, “on one hand, it appears to have more life in it than we thought. On the other hand, it sucked the air out of its insides. That's not necessarily a bad sign. But it makes it hard to go inside it. As in, we'll probably die if we try.”

“I'm willing to try to find another entrance,” Aurora says. “Or to try using some of those alien controls or machines or whatever. I mean, anything. We should explore it more. We can't give up on it.”

“And we're not,” Delyah says mildly. “But we have to know more about what we're dealing with. I'm making a little progress with the pad, and I think I understand something about what happened to that ship. I would suggest a systematic approach.”

Aurora isn't satisfied. I know she really wants to go home. “A systematic approach from here? Miles away? There should always be some of us up there, exploring and analyzing. That ship is the most important part of our lives right now.”

I get to my feet. This discussion is absolutely valid and interesting, and I absolutely understand both Aurora and Delyah. But this is my wedding day, and business has to wait.

I smile at the girls and sashay over to the three cavemen.

My husband follows me with his yellow eyes and stands up, towering over me. “My wife is a wonder,” he states calmly.

I put my palm on his chest and look up into his laser eyes. “What a coincidence. My husband is one, too.”

“Maybe they should meet,” he deadpans.

I punch his arm, glad that we're joking with each other. “I think they already have. And now they're impossible to pry apart. Totally smitten.” My cavemanese has improved a lot over the past couple of days, and now I'm able to talk to him with almost perfect grammar.

“That's what I heard, too,” Dar'ax says and nuzzles my hair. “So, my beloved wife. What do Urth traditions state about the time after the ceremony and dinner?”

“Oh, they say wonderful things. Our wedding night is approaching. It's a time for being apart.”

He frowns with boyish disappointment. “Apart? But we just got married! I don't want to be apart from you now!”

I smile innocently. “Of course you won't be apart from me. But you and I will be apart from the others.”

His face brightens. “Ah. Far apart, perhaps?”

“Yes. As far apart as possible. Oh, if only we had some kind of transportation ... Something to ride on ...”

He looks at me emptily for three heartbeats. Then his face brightens. “But we have the irox!”

I feign surprise. “Do we? Yes, of course. But do you think ...”

He makes that weird, rumbling sound with his chest and mouth, and before I know it, there's a chilling sound of bat wings in the air and the dactyl comes diving down, landing on top of the hill over the cave.

Dar'ax takes my hand and leads me up the hill, and we climb up on the dactyl while the others just stare in amazement. The monster throws itself off the hill, and then we're soaring up into the darkening sky. I wave at the girls, and they wave back, probably glad to see the dactyl flying away.

We're flying right into the sunset, and right now, there are only the two of us in the world. I turn around so that I'm sitting with my back to the wind, and in this position I can just about reach up to Dar'ax's shoulders so that I can pull him down and kiss him.

“You're mine,” he growls as I pull my dress up.

“Sure,” I agree and take his huge cock out of his loincloth. “And here's something for you to think about: you're mine, too.”

The dactyl flies over the jungle with lazy beats with its wings, and we're about to make love on its back. It's too much for my mind to handle. So I'll just enjoy it.

He lifts me easily and sets me down on his manhood. It slides into me, and I whimper in happiness and red-hot horniness.

He bores his yellow eyes into me, penetrating both my sex and my soul.

“Yours. Forever.”

- - -

© Calista Skye 2017