- Heidi -

The sunlight and the breeze are making me drowsy. We're out in the open in a meadow on a jurassic planet, and I should be shivering in fear. But Dar'ax makes me feel safer than I have since I was back at the cave, before we left for Bune.

My cup is empty, and I'm tempted to reach it out for a refill of the tea. It was really good, and it must have some kind of calming effect. But I don't do it. I'm still the victim here.

Dar'ax gets up, gathers his stuff and then turns towards the jungle and growls, a long, drawn-out sound so deep that I can feel my chest tremble.

Then he turns around, places rocks on top of the dying fire and heaves his sack onto his shoulder.

The T. Rex comes out of the jungle and straight towards us, its gape open and its unblinking eyes focused on me. I squeal and crouch down behind the caveman.

The huge predator seems to aim right for me, and the terrible thought crosses my mind that maybe this isn't Dar'ax's dino, but another one!

Then the rex stops right in front of Dar'ax and lowers its gigantic head to the ground, all teeth and rotten smell and giant, emotionless eyes and cold breath and a distant rumble that I realize is its breathing.

Dar'ax takes my hand and leads me very close to the rex's side.

“Foot here,” he says and points to a fold in the thick skin on the dino's leg. I look up the wall of living skin. It does actually look like I could make it up, and if this was an actual rock face, I would feel pretty confident. But this wall is living, breathing and moving flesh, and who knows it the thing will stay still while I climb it.

“Um. I don't know about this,” I state uncertainly and look up on Dar'ax. “You don't have a cherry picker or something like that? A crane of some kind?”

The rex turns its head and they both stare at me with their yellow eyes, and suddenly Dar'ax looks very closely related to the dino. I get the impression they're exchanging exasperated glances: chicks are crazy. And they don't understand English, so they don't even know how crazy I am.

No, of course he doesn't have a cherry picker. I know that, I'm just trying to postpone this.

But okay. I represent Earth and all of womankind, and I have to find some courage.

I place one foot right where Dar'ax pointed, and to my surprise I get a really good foothold there. The dinosaur's skin has a texture like sandpaper, and there's no chance I'll slip. My hands also grab onto folds in the tough hide.

Encouraged, I find another place to set my other foot. Dar'ax gives my butt a good boost so I can get up to another obvious spot to place my first foot, and then I'm actually making my way up the dinosaur's side pretty easily. A part of my mind is very conscious that my kidnapper is getting a perfectly good look up my dress, but I am wearing underwear, and anyway I don't mind it too much. It feels kind of sexy, in a way. Dar'ax has been, if not the perfect gentleman, exactly, then at least not a total barbarian. He hasn't touched me in a way that seems sexual. He's just curious, that's all. And it's not like I have an easy time keeping my hands off him, either.

I reach the top of the dino and sit down with my legs crossed.

Now in daylight, with some food inside me and having gotten to know Dar'ax a microscopic amount better, I realize that this is actually one of the coolest things that's ever happened to me. I'm riding on a freaking T. Rex! Or a very close facsimile, anyway.

I turn my head and grin into the jungle so he can't see it. I want him to know I'm still miffed, but I'm enjoying this more than I thought.

Then he's up, too, fastening his sack among the other ones behind him and then sitting down behind me. This time he leaves the rope in his sack and doesn't try to bind me. He grabs hold of the long stick, gives a command, and the huge and lethal dinosaur starts walking as if it were a well-trained little pony.

It's a pretty impressive display of total control, especially because Dar'ax is so matter-of-fact about it. He's not trying to impress me at all. This is just what he does.

I take a deep breath and settle in to the rex's calm gait as the trees and bushes pass by underneath and to the side. The trees are not as tall here along the river, and I can see over the tops of many of them.

I can see more about how Dar'ax controls the dino, too. That stick that's tied to the rex's side ends about two thirds down, and there it appears to be fastened to something. It actually looks like a part of it continues through the creature's skin and into its body. If that's the way it works, then it explains how he can control it. Trying to guide the dino from the outside would be impossible with a skin as thick and rough as this. But if you can somehow touch it on the inside of the skin, then the rex can probably feel it.

Dar'ax has the dino walk along the river, and the terrain is sloping softly upwards in gentle, rolling hills. I still can't see Bune in the distance, but I can see we're headed for mountainous terrain ahead, so I'm sure I can spot it from there.

I wonder what the girls are doing right now. They're looking for me, of course. I just vanished. One moment I was there, the next I didn't return and didn't answer their calling me. I doubt Caroline heard my screams, but if she did, it wouldn't have been much help. But now in the daylight, they can probably see the rex's tracks and guess what's happened.

They must be worried sick, just like we all were when Emilia didn't come back from her hunt. The mood in the cave was quiet and sad until she finally came home, trailing her caveman fiancé Ar'ox.

Being away from the girls turned out well for her. Will it be like that for me, too?

I half turn and glance at Dar'ax. I make sure not to smile, because he hasn't earned that yet. But I find that I enjoy looking at him. He's totally confident, standing tall and gently guiding the rex where he wants it to go. He reminds me of a captain of a ship, calmly handling storms and waves and dangerous shallows. Except the waves are hills and the shallows are more like trees. And the storms? Probably the woman he's acquired.

He's standing close behind me, and I can feel his shins touching my back now and again as the dino moves. I like the innocent touch.

The sun is shining on us, not too intensely. The breeze is blowing and cooling me down. The dinosaur is moving fast, but the moves are even and smooth and also remind me of a ship in gentle waves.

I feel totally safe. Nothing can happen to me up here. No terrible creature can hurt me. I doubt even the dactyls would dare try to snatch me off the back of a rex.

I lean more and more back into Dar'ax's legs until I'm really comfortable, just watching the jungle go by beneath me, as if I were in a low-flying helicopter. It gets me feeling pretty luxurious, and I relax.

- - -

I wake up and still feel the rex's leisurely moves under me. As I open my eyes and the world comes into focus, I realize I'm gazing straight up Dar'ax's kilt. And while I may be wearing underwear, he sure isn't.

“Oh my dancing stars ...”

Yeah. Now I kind of understand some of the noises I've heard Emilia and Sophia making in the middle of the night. Because if that's what I think it is, then it's fair to say that the cavemen are very richly endowed.

I straighten up and stretch out my legs in front of me, trying to not create fantasies about what that would feel like.

I look out over the jungle. We're pretty high up in the hills now, and when I turn around I can spot Bune in the distance. In the far distance, just barely peeking up over the misty horizon. The sight makes me feel cold. I had no idea we'd gone that far. I thought it would be a couple of miles, at most. But if we don't turn around soon, I might lose sight of it completely. Then how will I get home?

My good mood from before evaporates. I stretch out my arm and point. “I want go Bune. Dar'ax now take Heidi Bune. Home.”

I have no great hope of him actually doing it. But he should know what I want.

He does look down at me, and then turns to look where I'm pointing.

“It's a bad place,” he says. “Many irox live there. Evil spirits that make the sky dance.”

Well, at least now he's talking. And it's true that there are a lot of dactyls on Bune, and that the old spaceship will sometimes put on pretty wild light shows that illuminate the clouds. But I want him to understand this.

“Friends,” I object. “Heidi friends. Not spirits. Just ...” I don't know what 'spaceship' might be in cavemanese, or if they even have that word. “Just vessel. Star vessel. Old. Not bad.”

He turns back and keeps steering the rex along the stream. “Bune is an evil place with strange lights. Some say the Ancestors live there. The irox swarm around it.”

“Is Heidi home.”

He pierces me with his bright eyes. “Heidi's home is a cave a day's march from Bune.”

“Cave is not Heidi home. Bune home.” Then my cavemanese runs out again, but I still have a lot to say. “Yeah, we did live in the cave where you saw me that night. Then you just left. And then I guess you just stalked me all the way to Bune, instead of coming up to us in plain daylight like a decent man. Do you have any idea how much you scared us? We had to move just because of you!”

I hope he can hear the tone of my voice and that he interprets it correctly. I'm speaking calmly in English, but he has to hear that I'm not happy.

We lock eyes again, and I'm determined to not look away first. He seems like a stubborn kind of guy, but I've been known to not back down, too. Damn, those eyes of his can probably cut steel.

Finally he has to concentrate on driving the rex, so he looks ahead.

I don't count it as a win. He has to make sure this dino doesn't walk right into the river or under a tall tree that will scrape us off its back.

I turn my back again and sit stiffly upright. Now he knows what I want, and he's not giving it to me. I suppose I could expect nothing else, but still I'm disappointed. I would have liked to bring him to the girls and have him talk to Ar'ox and Jax'zan, maybe get him to join our tribe without all the drama that Sophia and Emilia had to go through. He clearly has a lot to contribute to any tribe, not least that he drives a freaking T. Rex. But now I don't think that's an option.

We continue in silence. The river is much narrower now, and the water looks completely clear. We could probably cross it any time Dar'ax wants to, and then I'll have a pretty major obstacle between me and the girls. I could probably swim across, but it flows pretty fast here, and I think there are rapids further up the hill. Further downstream, the water was brown and muddy and didn't really invite to swimming.

The sun is setting, and again I'm reminded about the day being shorter here on Xren than home on Earth. It's all so alien that it gives everything that happens a tinge of unreality. As if this is a dream, and I will soon wake up in my bed in the dorm, and I'll be annoyed that my roommate can never put her shoes nicely beside each other inside the door.

I usually don't have much time to think here on this jurassic planet. In the daytime, I do useful stuff for our little tribe and chat with the other girls, making sure to expend all my energy. And in the evening, I'm usually so tired from a full day's work that I fall asleep quickly.

All that is on purpose. I do it so I don't have the time to think about my plight here. About the fact that I'm probably stuck here forever. About the fact that there's probably no way off this planet. About the fact that my life will probably be much shorter here than on Earth. That all the work I put into getting my degree will probably go to waste.

But now I have time to think. And all those are in turn thoughts that I revert to so I don't go to the place in my mind I fear the most. But now it's coming, hard and fast, that painful little knot of a thought: I will probably never see my family again. My mom will never know what happened to me. She will never make macaroni casserole again, because it will remind her of our nice Fridays together, just the two of us and a really bad movie and a bottle of beer each.

My dad will miss me in his quiet way, going to my room once in a while and standing there, in the middle of the floor, frozen for hours and hours, because that's where he'll feel closest to me. That room in his little apartment that was only supposed to be mine for the weekends and vacations I spent with him, but that he would never let anyone else stay in because 'that's Heidi's room'.

And my big brother Alex, always stuck in some institution or other, with diagnoses that would change from one month to the next because nobody could figure out something I realized when I was nine: he's supposed to be like that. He's happy like that. Sure he's unusual, but he's not hurting anyone. And he can tell the coolest stories.

I will never see them again. I can never again tell my mom some secret I've kept so she can tell me about sometime in her life when she had that same thing happen. I will never sit on the back of my dad's Japanese motorbike again, going a hundred and seventy through traffic and feeling his total control of the machine, knowing he relishes my company just as much as I do his. And I will never again see Alex's eyes light up when he sees me coming to visit. Who'll see him now, and bring him the forbidden Kinder surprise eggs he loves?

And even that's all assuming that Earth wasn't destroyed in the alien attack.

“Scheisse.” Being half German sometimes comes in handy. The language has much better swear words than English.

My glasses are misty and I take them off, wiping them on my dinosaur skin dress and trying to keep my breathing normal. I don't need this damn caveman to see my weakness.

Then Dar'ax makes a bassy sound deep in his chest and the rex stops in its tracks.