Page 19 of Caveman Alien’s Horn (Caveman Aliens #26)

19

- Cora -

One day passes after another. Sprisk and I build the loom, experiment with various ways to prepare food, and fantasize about all the improvements we’ll make to the clearing and the hollow tree. We make love at least twice a day. We’re both insatiable, and the only thing that limits us is my soreness and our exhaustion after building the loom for hours every day.

I’m surprised about how easy I find it to work for so long, just separating threads and trying out the various pieces we make for the loom. Back in my old tree, I could maybe work for an hour at a time before I had to rest. PCOS can be tough like that, making me feel weak.

It gradually dawns on me that this is my home now. Here, in the clearing, with the mushrooms and the hollow tree and Sprisk. This is really all I could ever wish from a life on Xren — a safe place, a steady and varied supply of food, and a good man who makes sure I have all those things. Okay, so he abducted me because he didn’t think I was safe. He thought he could give me a better life. And he was right.

One day Sprisk calls me over to the campfire from where I’m standing, just admiring the almost finished loom.

“Hungry again?” I ask. “We just ate.”

He holds up a bone. “What is this?”

“That is bone of a gresk.”

“Yes!” he beams and gets out a sharp stone. “Look.” Placing the sharp edge of the stone against the bone, close to one side of it, he knocks on the flat end with another rock. With a few careful taps, the edge goes through the bone until a narrow disk is cut off the end.

Sprisk holds it up. “See this?”

“A small part of gresk bone,” I identify it, mildly confused. “Very well done. Good work.”

“Now look.” He extends his horn, inadvertently setting off some tingles in my lower regions. Then he places the small disk against the tip and pushes. The horn goes through the middle of the bone disk, so that the marrow is pushed out and splats wetly on the ground.

He hands the rest of the disk to me. “What do you think?”

The bone’s diameter isn’t circular, but rather a rounded pentagon. But that doesn’t matter for my purposes. What I’m holding is an irregular ring of bone, as hard and thin as I could ever want my heddle rings to be.

“Wonderful!” I exclaim. “Perfect! Now only need many more.”

He hands me a bundle of gresk bones that he must have been collecting for days, a sharp stone and a rock to hammer it with. “Then we’ll get to work.”

I sit down next to him and do as he says. It’s really hard to get the sharp stone to go through the bone without the bone cracking, but Sprisk has an instinct for how it should be done and shows me how to angle the stone and how to pick the right spot to cut.

“It helps to have a horn,” he admits. “I usually know exactly where I should pierce something.”

“You sure know where to pierce me , anyway.” I mutter as I work, adding to my near constant arousal.

“Hm?”

“Never mind, Sprisk. It was just alien speech.”

It takes us hours to make a hundred rings. Sprisk probably makes eighty of them, thin and perfect. Mine are thicker, but I don’t think that’s important. The loom will work anyway.

“Let’s try,” I decide. “Will need many more later, but this is good start.”

“Success!” Sprisk beams and holds up his massive palm.

I give him a good high five. “Best success yet.”

We rinse the rings in the creek, then let them dry in the sun while we go inside the hollow tree for some ‘pleasure’, as our rules state.

The rest of the loom is ready, and it doesn’t take me long to tie the heddle rings to the strings. And then I can test it out, with Sprisk as an interested audience.

“Okay,” I begin as I sit down on the separate bench we’ve built. “For now, we use wood shuttle with stone inside for weight.”

“ Okay,” Sprisk echoes. “We’ll find a better one later.”

“This is the warp ,” I tell him, touching the long, lengthwise strings. “I now put shuttle through, between the two rows of warp yarn .”

“I see.”

The shuttle slides easily on the mushroom threads, hardly slowing down after a quick push of my hand. “Now the shuttle is on other side of warp. What to do? If now push shuttle back, this thread also go back.”

“It’s useless,” Sprisk says. “Back where you started.”

“Yes! Very smart Sprisk! Obviously master weaver, best on all Xren. But watch. I now step on treadles . And what happen?” There are hard, wooden clacks as one warp goes down and the other up.

“They changed position.”

“Exactly!” It’s one of the harder parts to get to work on the loom. It took me two days to figure out how to make the treadles and heddles to work right. “And now, if push shuttle through the other way…”

“The thread stays on the other side,” Sprisk observes. “And makes a line through the vorp . No, two lines.”

“And now, I push reed into the two threads. To make tighter.”

The loom creaks and clacks and shakes, but it works. And it works much better than my old tree loom.

I can weave again!

I get off the bench and embrace Sprisk’s massive body, pushing my face into his warm skin. “Thank you. I love you.”

“And I love you too.” He holds me while I weep some tears of happiness, which brings with them some others because of the lonely years I spent in the tree. It wasn’t the most joyful of times. But this, being here with Sprisk, may just be the happiest I’ve been in my whole adult life. Which isn’t saying much, but it’s all I have.

“It’s a very nice loom,” Sprisk rumbles, making my whole body shake. “I think possibly the best in the jungle. Now maybe we can eat?”

After our lunch-slash-dinner-slash-we-eat-just-because-we-can meal, we go over to the mushrooms again.

Sprisk has built an ingenious tunnel from logs. It’s basically a portal that passes between two mushrooms and prevents them from growing into each other so much that we can’t pass between them and get out into the jungle. The portal is blocked with thick logs, so that both I and Sprisk have to either crawl under them or thread our limbs between them to get through. Most other creatures won’t be able to do that.

“This is now the only entrance,” Sprisk says with satisfaction. “At least for most Bigs. Unless they’re the largest ones. Then they can step right over the mushrooms or walk straight through them.”

“A rekh not be able to pass, except through here,” I muse. “And even here, they will have trouble. If smell doesn’t chase them away first.”

Sprisk thoughtfully punches a mushroom. Their caps are getting rounder and rounder, like balloons being inflated. “That smell is getting bad this close. But I haven’t smelled it by the campfire or the tree.”

“It stay here,” I agree. “Maybe go straight up—” I look up, just in time to see a dactyl do a low pass over the other side of the clearing. “Irox!”

Sprisk grabs my hand, his horn already out and his skin going camouflaged. “Get down into the creek.”

He grabs my hand and we run to the stream, always keeping an eye on the dactyl. It’s a big one, the size of a two-engine airplane. It turns over the jungle and soars higher, head pointed towards us.

Before we can reach the edge of the creek channel, the dactyl screeches and dives straight for us.

“Get down!” Sprisk urges me.

I’m already doing it, throwing myself flat on the ground before he’s done speaking.

Sprisk stands between me and the diving dactyl, but I wonder what his plan could be. He may have a horn, and he may be practically invisible apart from his loincloth, but the dactyl can fly, and it has a long, ugly beak that’s all teeth. Not to mention the talons, which look most of all like a collection of rusty butcher’s knives.

The dactyl tucks its bat-like wings close to its body to go faster, talons held out in front.

But before it strikes Sprisk, it sees something. It’s head snaps around, its wings come back out, and it flaps them wildly to stop the dive and turn around.

The storm from its flapping wings washes over me as the monster changes direction and beats its wings desperately to gain altitude, long tail flowing after it.

We watch it as it makes its escape, until it’s hidden by the treetops around us.

“You scared it away,” I marvel, getting back on my feet and brushing dry grass off my knees.

“No, that wasn’t me,” Sprisk says and points. “It was that .”

I follow his finger. “The blue mushroom in the center?”

“The irox saw it and panicked. I’ve never seen anything like it. What could scare an irox? I’ve seen them attack kronks! ”

I take his hand, suddenly understanding how the dactyl felt. In the time I’ve been here, that thing has grown from a cute, classic mushroom like out of Super Mario to a towering monster of an alien lifeform. And I hadn’t really noticed until now. “It’s a big mushroom. And it looks very strange.”

The blue Christmas tree look is still there, but now the big mushroom is starting to look downright threatening. It’s as tall as any birch tree on Earth, but much thicker and still with that immensely fine, lace-like structure. It’s finer than the finest filigree, and the closer I look, the smaller the details get. I swear I can hear the air howl thinly past it and through it, even though the leafy treetops around us don’t move at all.

“Perhaps we should cut it down,” Sprisk says. “Before it takes over our clearing.”

“Would be a clearing without that big mushroom?” I ask. “If the mushrooms gone, Bigs come maybe.”

He squeezes my hand. “We do owe this clearing to the mushrooms. Maybe we should let them grow and help us chase away the irox. There’s still a lot of room here.”

“There is,” I agree. “We can share our room with the mushrooms. They gave us the threads, too.” I turn to look at the loom. I itch to do some more weaving.

Sprisk turns his back to the central mushroom, too. “They did. I will go and get some gresk for our next meal. Then I want to watch you use the loom. For a long time.”

I smile up at him. “You be bored watching me for a long time.”

He reaches out and cups my cheek with his impossibly gentle touch. “I’ve been longing for you my whole life. I want to watch you for all the rest of it. Weaving or eating or sleeping or anything else you might do.”

Whatever coldness I still may have had in my heart melts completely. This is a man who’s never seen a romcom and never heard of Jane Austen. He’s never seen a Hallmark card or binged on romance novels or been forced to watch soppy movies. He’s never even seen Pretty Woman . So when he suddenly, out of thin air, says something so sweet with such sincerity, he’s not mimicking anything. He’s not saying what he has been taught by the culture he grew up in. No, this is how he really feels . This is what is in his heart.

I wipe my eyes. “Okay,” I sniffle. “You can watch.”

I weave past sunset, enjoying the clack-clack noises and the feel of the smooth mushroom thread in my fingers. The shuttle and thread give me the usual little blister on my index finger, but I don’t mind that at all.

The fabric looks dense and tight, without doubt the finest thing I’ve ever woven. It takes many passes of the shuttle to make an inch of fabric, but the shuttle glides like a dream and the heddles are solid, the treadles without much of an annoying give in them. I’m able to weave really fast, passing the shuttle back and forth once a second, quickly beating once with the reed every other pass. The fabric is shiny white and strong, and the thread is very long.

I don’t notice time passing until Sprisk comes up to me. “Do you want the evening meal?”

“Yes,” I reply, not wanting to stop, “you can start cooking if you want.”

“It’s done,” he chuckles. “And it’s getting too dark to weave, surely.”

I look around. He’s right. The only light comes from the mushrooms.

Slowly getting up from the bench with a numb butt and stiff legs, I rub my sore eyes. “Sorry. I had much fun with the loom. Wait.”

Unrolling the fabric I’ve woven, I fasten it with knots and take it off the loom. It’s a rectangle maybe three by two feet, and it’s as light as a thin plastic sheet would be. It’s almost weightless.

I hand it to Sprisk. “Feel.”

I have the pleasure of seeing his eyes go big and round. “But it’s so light!”

“And strong,” I tell him.

“And smooth!” he exclaims, running the knuckle of one finger along the fabric. “It’s almost as smooth as… hmm.” He glances down at my crotch.

“ That smooth?” I ask. “Really?”

“Not quite that smooth,” he backtracks. “No, no. Nothing could be that smooth. Or as wet.”

I laugh, taking his hand. “It’s all right, my love. That part should be smoother than this.”

We enjoy the grilled meat, which has been marinating for almost the whole day. It’s tender and more spicy than usual.

I look around the clearing. The eerie mushroom glow shows the edges of it, and the big one in the middle is a ghostly presence.

But still, maybe this can work. Maybe Sprisk and I can stay here, all by ourselves, not depending on anyone for our lives or our food or anything. This is a safe place, and once you have that, you can start to live .

And maybe, with a base like this, I can contact the girls. Make a new connection. Coming to them from a place of strength, not from a place of desperation. Not relying on the charity of strangers. Maybe I can show them my fabric, maybe give them some of it.

“ I’ve made my point,” I say softly to myself. “ I made it on my own. But I made it even better with Sprisk.”

“I am Sprisk,” my unicorn says beside me. “But I don’t understand the other words.”

I reach over and squeeze his massive hand. “Sorry. Just speaking my alien language. You know I was alone for a long time, nobody to speak to.”

“Now you’re not alone anymore,” he rumbles. “And you can speak to me anytime you want. In words I understand or not. I will listen.”

I lean into him. “I know. I will speak more to you and less to self.”

“Good. I like hearing you speak.”

I half turn to kiss his upper arm. “You do? Then maybe you like hearing this: Fuck me .”

He faces me, a mock surprised look on his face. “I do like it! Say it again?”

“ Fuck me,” I repeat, reaching down for his cock.

He stands up and lifts me in his strong arms. “I like it more and more. And I think I remember what it means. Don’t stop.”

“ Fuck me.”

He carries me towards the hollow tree. “Oh, this is wonderful.”

“ Lick me, eat me out good with that long alien tongue, then turn me over and fuck me hard with your unicorn cock,” I purr into his ear, turning myself on like crazy with the dirty talk.

“That was a lot,” he groans as we enter the tree.

“Too much for you?”

“Of course not,” he scoffs. “Nothing is too much for me.” He climbs the nets as easily as a weasel running down a greased pole.

I run my free hand through his hair, marveling at his unicorn-like horn. “Then show me.”