- Caroline -

It takes me a good few heartbeats before I’ve grasped what he’s just said. “It was flying? You saw it flying?”

He takes a step back and calmly takes in his picture. “The top of the mountain separated from the rest and slowly floated into the air. It hovered there, and I could see blue sky between it and the ground. It was high up. Then it sank back down. And then a rumbling noise came rolling, like thunder.”

“Bune ... hovered in the air?”

“I know it sounds crazy. I never told anyone. I suppose that’s why I felt a need to paint it. So I’d remember it. So I wouldn’t think it was a dream. It was real.”

“I believe you,” I say slowly. This is the kind of information that I really want to share with the girls. We know the mountain the cavemen call Bune is in fact a gigantic old spaceship that looks as if it’s crashed here. But if it still flies, then that gives us a lot more hope of going home to Earth someday. And now I see why I thought there was something wrong with the painting before now. Bune’s peak was depicted too high, too far up from the jungle around it.

Xark’on glances at me. “You do?”

“Yes, of course. Bune is not a mountain. It’s a very large machine for carrying people into space.”

He gives the sky another light stroke of blue. “Is it?”

“It is. When did this happen?”

“Two seasons ago.”

“About a season after Troga showed up?”

“About that time, yes. Indeed Troga was the reason I was up here then. After a season of her terrorizing the village, I wanted to get an overview of what she was doing and how long her trench was. But I couldn’t see her trench. Then Bune rose into the air and hovered. A clear sign from the sacred mountain, from the Ancestors, that I should rid us of Troga. I started looking for a site for the trap the next day.”

I’m not sleepy anymore. This is the kind of thing that Delyah really should be told. “Can you tell me more? Did it rise steadily? Was there something under it? Like a flame? Heat? Did it wobble? Fast? Slowly?”

“It was as I told you, Caroline. It rose. It hovered. There was thunder in the air. My heart beat maybe thirty times. Then it sank and settled where it had been. I thought at the time that it was majestic. Divine. Obviously the Ancestors. So dignified and calm.”

“It rose high,” I state, looking at the picture.

“It did. A whole mountain. Hovering. It was the surest sign I’ve seen from the Ancestors yet. Until then,” he adds and gives me a sideways glance that I can’t interpret.

“It happened after we were dumped there,” I think out loud. “And it had not happened before. Or not for a long time. There were dinosaurs there. They would not have been there if the mountain had just been airborne. They would have been afraid. Except the dactyls. They wouldn’t care. So three months after we were dumped. But before we got too settled in the cave. We would have seen it otherwise. These days, someone is usually sitting right outside the cave entrance, cooking or sewing or something. But for those first few weeks, we were running around in a panic most of the time...”

Xark’on looks at me emptily, and I realize that I was speaking English. “It’s okay, warrior. Just thinking.”

He keeps painting. “That was the language from your planet?”

I hide a yawn behind my hand. I don’t think it’s even midnight yet. “One of them, yes. So there was thunder when Bune hovered?”

“There was a deep rumble, like rocks rolling down a hill.”

I nod. That would fit. There was a lot of debris on top of Bune, probably from the crash. If it actually flew for a moment, some of those would roll off, no matter how steadily and majestically it rose.

But not all of it rose. According to the painting, the lower third stayed down. “Your painting—is that exactly the way it looked? I mean, not the entire mountain rose into the air.”

He shrugs. “This is the way I remember it.”

And a caveman like him, fiercely bright and with the extreme observational skills that are required to survive for years in the jungle, would not be mistaken in his memory. His mind would not be full of sci-fi movies or other things that he might unconsciously mix into the real memory and so distort it. This is what he paints because this is what he saw. Something inside that spaceship still works. Something that makes it fly.

I yawn again. This is important but not urgent.

At the same moment, Xark’on puts his painting stuff down and embraces me again. “Thank you for the brush and the blue.”

“You’re very welcome. It’s the least I can do after you’ve taken such good care of me.”

“But it’s not the least I can do.”

He lifts me in his immensely strong arms and carries me to the hammock, placing me on my back.

I pull my dress up to reveal my dripping pussy. Just being close to him turns me on so hard it’s almost like it’s hard-wired. But I don’t mind. I like being ready for him at any time. And I guess this is the time.

The caveman alien licks me and fucks me again, as skillfully and as deeply and as well as ever. But this time there’s more in it. This time there’s a tenderness that’s new.

Yeah, this isn’t just sex. This is making love. And it’s my first time to do that.

As I scream out my climax, I realize that Bune is not important. I don’t want to go to Earth. My home is here. Here with Xark’on. The man I love.

- - -

Over the next few days, Xark’on keeps busy forging the iron spikes that will stand up at the bottom of the trap and kill Troga. He uses the iron in his ax for it.

He's a lot less intense about it than about the digging. He takes frequent breaks from his work and comes out of the forge to kiss me and to chat and to just enjoy himself. It's like finishing the trap isn't as urgent to him now as it used to be.

I keep busy weaving the mat that will camouflage the trap. It starts as a wide mesh of long saplings, and then I fill in the mesh with thinner and thinner branches and twigs. The mat must be strong enough to hold up dirt and rocks, but weak enough to collapse when Troga steps on it. It can’t sag in the middle, either, so it has to be pretty stiff.

Every day we go to the pond to clean off after the workday. Every day I practice with the throwing stars. Every day I signal with the torch, hoping Heidi can see it. Every night we fuck like rabbits up in the tree house, Xark’on taking me with such intensity as if each time is the last.

And every morning, Xark’on is yawning because he’s been painting until far into the night. I’ve made another, fuller pot of blue for him, as well as a new brush, a little wider. And he’s using a little painting knife to extend his techniques.

Xark’on digs twenty long, cruel, and extremely pointy iron spikes into the sand at the bottom of the trap, making sure they’re anchored deep down to remain vertical even when the dragon falls on them. We place the mat on top of it and cover it with grass and soil and rocks, making it look like undisturbed ground.

These are the best days I’ve had in my life. I don’t have to think deeply to know that. It’s just true. Here. On a prehistoric, jurassic planet at least seven light years from home. That’s where I found my happiness. With a freaking caveman alien.