- Caroline -

“So not a pool then.”

“A pool?”

“Never mind.” Yeah, this is a project I can get behind. That dragon had a really menacing presence. I mean, the other dinos just do what they do because attacking anything that moves is how they get food. This dragon had more of an evil air to it. Like, it hunted and burned us because it enjoyed it.

I will totally help Xark’on catch that thing and make the jungle safer.

Sure, it will keep me close to him for another day or maybe two. But of course, that was not a factor in my decision. No, no. Not at all. No matter how his forearms swell when he puts his hammer back in his belt. Or how his butt flexes inside those pants.

“There’s a forge not far from the tree house,” he says. “It hasn’t been used for a long time. The tribesmen don’t go into the jungle while Troga is alive. We will go there, and I will forge a shovel. Do you know how to forge iron?”

His question is totally sincere. Like he thinks Earth linguistics chicks often moonlight as blacksmiths.

“I’ll just watch you,” I suggest. “I left my anvil at home.”

But he’s obviously holding me in very high regard, and I’m really flattered.

He nods very seriously. Then he smirks a little and knocks on the head of his hammer. “This weighs five times as much as one Caroline. Maybe better if I do it.”

I nod thoughtfully. “Maybe.”

We walk back the way we came. But for the first time, he turns around to see if I’m following him. Somehow that little gesture sends a warm little surge to my heart.

And to my pussy. Because it looks like he has a permanent bulge in his pants. Gods, he’s hot in such an innocent way, like a man who discovers lust for the first time and has no idea what to do with it.

Maybe someone should show him.

It’s not that I’m an expert. That fucking depression that hits me at uneven intervals made any kinds of romance almost impossible. And uninteresting. Nothing matters when I fall down that black sinkhole. But I’ve had one or two relationships. I could show this guy how to do it.

Kissing, at least. I was pretty good at that. I think. Way back when.

So we’re walking again, me admiring Xark’on’s back and butt, and him striding with more confidence now that he has his sledgehammer. He reminds me a little of Thor, except he has darker hair. And stripes. Green, vivid stripes that are in fact incredibly sexy, now that I’m allowing myself to think in those terms. Like he’s always wearing war paint. It makes his alienness more pronounced, which is good, because his behavior is totally human. Except more so.

I can’t get over how quickly he’ll accept my suggestions and let me show him stuff. He has a real thirst for knowledge, like most of the guys I liked. And he’s willing to set his ego aside for it. It may be just me, but I always thought there was something so manly about that.

Or maybe he accepted my shovel suggestion just because he wants me to hang around. That works too. When I think of the cave, I get a heavy, gray feeling. Not that there’s anything wrong with the girls, but the hopelessness back there is making life feel a little stagnant, and I’m more and more alone about it as the other girls keep marrying these cavemen. Here, with Xark’on, I don’t have to think about being stuck here. I can stay in his bubble of safety and admire his actions and his energy and his presence and his confidence and his tree house.

I really didn’t want to fall for this guy. And I’m not sure that’s what happening. But I like him, I want to be close to him, and he turns me on.

I look around and ahead. I suddenly don’t like the way we’re going.

I walk faster and catch up with Xark’on. “This is close to where Troga burned you.”

“The shortest way to the forge goes along her furrow.”

“Furrow?”

He stops and points to the side, and I take a couple of steps to the left to see what he means. Ah. Beyond the bushes, there’s a steep hill going down. Just like the one we desperately scrambled up yesterday, when we escaped the dragon. And down there is a smooth, glassy trench that pretty much has to be the same one where the dragon was yesterday. Or very similar.

It’s not just glassy, I realize. It’s glass. As if some great heat has melted the sand and turned it into a mottled, yellowish layer of glass.

From here, it looks like it continues far ahead, and also far back. And it seems to be branching off in many directions, a little like a maze consisting of deep, wide trenches dug into the ground.

“Is that her furrow?”

Xark’on has his hand on his hips and scouts up and down the groove. “She never leaves it.”

“No? Then how does she terrorize your tribe?”

“When she first arrived, she burned the first furrow. It happened right next to our village, burning six tribesmen to death. She sometimes stands in her furrow and makes certain sounds that penetrate the ears in unpleasant ways. Our lives are less good because of it.”

“Can’t you move the village?”

He sighs. “Not easily. The location is very good, and we’d prefer to keep it. There’s water and a natural protection on two sides. It’s very hard to move the Lifegivers. And we’d have to go into the territory of other tribes. There would be war.”

“Huh. How long has that been going on? I mean, Troga?”

He turns and walks down from the ridge. “About three seasons.”

I give the glassy trench a last look and follow him.

Dealing with time is surprisingly easy here. The cavemen use seasons as their main measure of time passing, and one season is the same length here as three Earth months. Delyah says that the moon Yrf is pretty different from Earth’s moon, except it too completes one orbit of Xren in thirty days. Three seasons is nine Earth months, or about how long the girls and I have been here on Xren. Feels like lots of strange things happened here around the time we arrived.

We keep following the scorched trench as it snakes through the vibrant jungle like a deep burn. That dragon’s fire has to be pretty hot if it can burn its way through the ground all the way down to the sand layer and then turn the sand to glass. The soil is mostly old organic material, of course, thousands of years’ worth of fallen leaves and dead trees and insects and dinosaurs and bacteria. But still, it would take gigantic heat to actually burn this groove through it—

I suddenly freeze in my tracks. There’s a sound from down there in the trench. A thin, little sound, like from a lost little puppy. I’ve never seen any animals even remotely resembling dogs here, but that sound can’t be anything else. Unless it’s a human baby.

I walk back to the rim of the trench. It’s steep and rounded, and I can’t see what’s at the bottom on this side. The trench has a U-shaped cross-section.

There’s another little whimper, so thin and scared it just about breaks my heart. There’s definitely a young creature down there somewhere. I inch slowly closer to the edge. I’ve got one foot on the smooth, dirty brown glass now, leaning over the edge, but still I can’t quite see.

I inch a little closer, leaning out. I can almost see this side of the bottom now. Just another inch...

My foot slides on the glass as if it’s been greased. I yelp as I struggle with my balance and realize I can’t recover. Then, a thick bar of something hard catches me from behind and knocks the wind out of me as it pulls me back, fast.

Then, I’m sitting on the grass among the trees, struggling for air with Xark’on standing over me. He leans down, drags me into a sitting position, and slaps my back once with exactly the right force to let me breathe again.

“Thank you,” I wheeze, not quite able to make sense of what happened. But he saved me from falling into the glassy groove. “There’s something down there.”

“There is,” Xark’on agrees. “We call it Troga.”

For a moment, I luxuriate in being able to breathe. “No, no. Not the monster. Something else. A baby or something.”

He takes my hand and gently drags me up to a standing position. Then he points. “There’s your baby.”

A dark shape comes out from behind a corner down in the trench. And yeah, that’s not a puppy. That’s the dragon. A chill goes down my back.

“It’s devious,” Xark’on informs me as if I’m a child. “It can make the sound of a little creature. We lost two tribesmen to that before we understood. They thought one of the tribe’s small boys had fallen down there.”

It’s not huge from this angle, just about the size of a hatchback car. That makes it a small-sized dinosaur on Xren. It’s also much more beautiful and better proportioned. But somehow that also makes it more menacing. The usual dinos are just scary. This thing chills me down to the bone in the same way that the dactyls do. It has an air of evil.

Another sound reaches us. This sounds almost like a chuckle, like the one I heard the first time I saw this thing. It’s a laugh that says ‘you got away this time, but I’ll get you yet’.

Gods, it’s beautiful, though. That rainbow shimmer all over it, those eyes with a light in them, a stronger light than the caveman have in theirs. It moves with such elegance, making a prowling panther seem clumsy.

It’s sad that it appears to be trapped down there in the trench. Perhaps if it were helped up from there, it would turn out to be really nice—

There’s a hand over my eyes, and I’m filled with sudden anger that someone would deprive me of the sight of the dragon.

“Don’t look too long. It will use its magic to freeze you until it’s close enough to burn you.”

Shit. The flash of anger is gone in the same moment. I was totally taken in there, and the dragon is now much closer.

Xark’on takes my hand and pulls me away from the brink. I like the feel of his hand around mine. It’s rough but warm.

We walk fast into the jungle again, while the dragon’s chuckle gets weaker behind us.

“I’m sorry,” I say weakly. “It just sounded like a small animal.”

Xark’on squeezes my hand. “Several tribesmen died like that. It’s a wily Big.”

“It feels like I’m being nothing but trouble for you.”

“Troga is trouble,” he says sincerely. “The jungle is trouble. Especially for those who are new to it. Caroline is not trouble. Caroline is a woman with a lot of secret knowledge.”

I squeeze him back in silent thanks. Gods, he just saved my life twice in two minutes, and he still doesn’t blame me. So of course I’m so moved I have to wipe my eyes.

“Thank you for saving me. Again. That dragon is the scariest thing I’ve seen. Worse than irox.”

He lets go of my hand. “Irox are worse. They can fly. And there are many of them.”

We finally walk out of the jungle and up a stony hill. There’s a little hut right by a rusty brown rocky hillside that looks like a quarry. A little creek trickles down the hill, looking pretty red and muddy. But there is some much lighter soil further away, and that interests me.

Xark’on points. “There’s iron in the hills. Before Troga, the tribesmen would often come here to forge weapons and other items. Now, only I come here.”

“The others are too afraid?”

“They don’t like the sounds from Troga. Now you know what those sounds are. And the furrow is right over there.”

I can see the trench about a quarter mile away, and I discreetly turn my back to it. “So now you’ll make the shovel?”

He walks into the wooden hut, but I stay outside. “First I have to fire up the forge. It must be very hot. Then Caroline must eat.”

He tosses me his sack, and inside I find various meats and veggies wrapped in leaves. I start munching on them, and then I go into the dark little hut and hand some food to Xark’on. He accepts it and just puts a whole slice of turkeypig into his mouth, chewing happily as he arranges various tools and things around his forge where the fire is already burning.

“What’s that?” I point to a thing he keeps stepping on, like a pedal. It makes a hissing noise.

“That is a pump that blows air into the forge. It needs a lot of air to burn as hot as I want it to.”

The hut gets hot too, and I walk out again and explore the quarry, especially that whitish soil. The hot forge has given me an idea, and I soon find exactly what I’m looking for.

And that in turn gives shape to another idea that’s been percolating at the back of my mind since yesterday. Some of the girls’ husbands back at the cave have shared some valuable knowledge that I think I can use. But idea number two has to wait. First things first.

I get busy with my first little project, and after a little while I hear banging and scraping noises and a general metallic racket from inside Xark’on’s hut. Once in a while, he’ll stick his head out and check on me, a cute little gesture that I respond to with a bright smile. All this attention and badly hidden care from him is flattering. It’s been so long since I’ve had this kind of male attention that it almost feels like unexplored territory.

Well, I’ll care for him too. As well as I can.

The day goes on, and I don’t hear any spooky noises from the dragon’s trench. I also don’t see any dactyls overhead, and there aren’t that many other dinos around. Twice I hear the unmistakable sound of a really big one passing not so far away, because it noisily tramples trees and bushes under it as it lumbers through the woods. Those truly huge dinos don’t bother me that much. They’re largely harmless to Earth girls. The smaller ones are worse, especially those that don’t make a sound until they’re right by you.

I’m not complaining. The less wildlife to deal with, the better. I can only assume that they’re all keeping their distance from the dragon, just like Xark’on’s tribesmen.

Now that I’ve had a chance to process that experience a little, I feel deep down that the dragon is just as alien here as I am. Something about it feels wrong. It doesn’t feel like a dino.

I continue my little project, and suddenly I find myself humming some Adele tune. I haven’t hummed contentedly since forever. But now it feels natural. In my old life, these things that have happened would have knocked me out and into some weird funk. Now, after the adrenaline shock has settled down after I almost fell into the dragon’s groove, I feel calm and even somewhat safe. I can hate this planet as much as I want, but I think it has been a little good for me, at least.

Xark’on comes out of the hut and dips a red hot slab of iron into the muddy creek, making it hiss like crazy and send a plume of white steam skyward.

Then, he comes over and shows it to me, holding it in iron tongs. “Don’t touch. It’s very hot.”

I keep my distance to the iron. “That’s a really nice shovel blade. It just needs a way to fasten it to a wooden shaft. Here. On the top. A round thing to stick the shaft into.” And of course my words immediately get me thinking of Xark’on sticking his other shaft into a very special hole.

He nods thoughtfully. And at the same time, the leather in his pants creaks as the bulge twitches. Even inside his pants, that thing in there is casting a freaking shadow.

I have no idea why this moment is so special. But this is when I decide that I’ll absolutely fuck this guy. I’ve never met a better man. Or one as good. Not even remotely. Nobody can compare to this. Is this what all the other girls have experienced with their cavemen? Then I totally get it.

Xark’on returns to his hut, deep in thought.

He’s being a little standoffish, but I’ll chalk that up to me being the first woman he’s ever met. His bulge speaks a language of its own. And his eyes that wander all over me.

I continue my own project, still humming. After a little while, I hear a deeper humming from inside the hut, only broken by metallic clangs and bangs. We’re both enjoying ourselves.

Xark’on comes out again and drenches the red hot iron in the creek before he shows it to me.

“That’s really good,” I state, examining the still steaming hot shovel blade. “Now you just have to find a thick shaft to put in there. By the way, is the forge still hot? You don’t need it anymore, do you?”

“I’ve finished this,” Xark’on says and surveys the result of my little project with interest. “And you have finished these?”

I carefully take one of the clay pots I’ve made and hold it up. “No, they’re still soft. They need to be heated for a long time. Overnight, ideally. Will your forge stay hot that long?”

He thinks with an alien frown on his face. “It will. Won’t they melt?”

I look at the ten little pots I’ve fashioned from the very light clay I found, wondering if they’ll stay as white and pristine after they’ve been fired. “I hope not. But yeah, your forge is probably a little hotter than what they need. It’s better if they heat up gradually. Will you help me build a kiln for them? There’s a lot of clay here.”

He carefully puts the shovel blade on a rock, and then we build a pottery kiln like the ones we have back at the cave, except smaller. It’s just a clay dome with an internal floor with many holes, so the heat and flames will reach the pots without them touching the burning wood. It has a tall chimney to effectively drag in more air from below, which Delyah has assured us is necessary for making it hot enough.

The clay is unusually white and soft and fine, and it doesn’t take us long to build the kiln. I show him how to make a primitive scaffolding with twigs and branches to give shape to the wet clay, something for it to cling to. I’ve done it a few times over the months I’ve been on Xren, so I’m pretty confident about it.

As we smooth down the chimney with wet, slimy clay, I’m reminded of a scene from an old movie. I move a little closer to Xark’on and let my hands slide close to his. Then, just as I’m thinking I have to be more obvious about it, he slides his large hand over mine and holds it there.

I look up at him. His deep violet but still somehow luminous eyes are staring holes in me, but I can take it.

“Caroline is remarkable,” he growls.

I take my other hand and place it on top of his. “Xark’on is more remarkable.”

For a moment we’re frozen like that. The clay is cold and slimy, but still this is the most erotic experience I’ve had since just about forever.

Then Xark’on strokes the back of his other hand across my cheek. “So soft,” he marvels. “So female. So many alien ideas. So... wonderful.”

The actual words aren’t much. Not something a guy at a bar would say to you and expect anything other than kick in the crotch in return. But from Xark’on, the feeling behind it is so raw and sincere it’s overwhelming. It’s worth a truckload of flowers or heart-shaped chocolates.

I smile up at him and focus on his generous lips. If he bends his neck just a little now, I’ll totally kiss him.

Then he kisses me instead. Just like that. His lips on mine, his scent in my nose, fresh and dry. His fangs at my soft lips, sharp and dangerous.

I put one clay-covered hand behind his head to pull him closer, opening my lips. He’s not bad for a beginner. A little demanding, perhaps, but I totally forgive him, considering I’m his first. I think he might be coachable.

We stand like that for a good while, just kissing.

Then, I disengage and smile sweetly up at him. “Did your shaman ever tell you about Worship?”