Page 8 of Caveman Alien’s Horn (Caveman Aliens #26)

8

- Sprisk -

We walk over to the nearest edge of the clearing. The strange plants are glowing in pale blue, as usual in the dark.

“Is this the light you mean?” I ask.

Cora stops a pace away as if afraid. “They is many!”

I point around the full edge of the clearing. “Very many. All around us.”

Cora's gaze follows my finger. “What you call?”

I scratch my chin. “I don't call them anything. I've never seen them in any other place.”

“On Earth, call them 'mush-rums'.”

“Mushrus,” I ponder. “Do they come from Earth?”

“ Mushrooms,” she gently corrects. “They on Earth. Not know if come from.”

“Well, here they are. Are they useful?”

She comes closer and squats by one of the mushrooms. “Some can eat. Some kill if eat.” She prods the top of one with a finger. “You try eat?”

I look down on the irregular cluster of mushrooms, glowing weakly in blue. Some are as big as my head, while most are the size of my fist. They are different from everything else in the jungle. “They don't look like they want to be eaten.”

“They don't,” Cora agrees. “Not try. They maybe kill.”

I touch the rounded top of a mushroom with my toe. “Then we won’t try.”

Cora looks around. “Place is known. I think is where came. Many years… um…”

“Ago?” I suggest. “This is where you were dumped by the Plood many years ago?”

“Is maybe where dumped,” she says as she straightens up. “Was not…” She makes some signs with her hands.

“It was different?” I ask. “The mushrooms weren’t here?”

“Weren’t here,” she echoes. “Also trees were many. It maybe not where I were dumped by the Plood.”

I tap another mushroom with my foot. “But if it was, then maybe they came from the Plood ship.”

“Maybe.” Cora shudders and looks anxiously around, as if a squad of Plood could emerge from the jungle at any time. “Maybe not here. Back to fire now?”

We return to the campfire, and I put another few pieces of dry wood on it for the light it gives. There's no shortage of firewood in this strange clearing.

The little gray ghost wanders aimlessly around the open area. He seems harmless, but I saw him chase away the irox and I should probably be on my guard. His friends have not followed us, it seems.

Cora sits a little closer to me now. It seems so unreal. I've been here many times before, but I never thought I'd be here with a woman . But now I'm glad I prepared this place for the clan, with dried food stored and the nets in good shape. It's nowhere near as good as the tribe villages, but I'd prefer this place over my clan's camp.

I can’t stop stealing short glances at her. She’s so different from everyone I know, so small and soft and fragile-looking. Even more so than Brak’s and Noker’s alien wives. They have a robustness to them which this one is lacking. She’s not weak, though. Not at all. There’s fire in her eyes and courage in her spine. But I would worry about her living alone in that tree of hers. Even if she had put a strange trap in it.

I rub my arm where she stabbed me. It still stings, the fact that she did it more than the pain.

Cora looks over. “Sorry I knife. Is bad?”

“I’ve had worse than this,” I tell her truthfully. “I should probably have picked a different way to take you with me.”

“I want see.” She holds her hands out.

I let her examine the wound, which is just seeping a clear liquid and should heal soon.

“Wait.” She rummages through her pack and gets out one of the small pots she showed me earlier. Opening it, she gets a bit of green goop on her finger and smears it on the wound. “Will make good.”

I like her light touch and the fresh scent of the goop. “So you didn’t really mean to stab me?”

“I mean. But now, I not mean.”

“I see. You no longer mean it.”

She finishes up and closes the pot. “No longer. Maybe soon, I mean it again. If not take home me.”

I don’t reply. This is her home now, and she will like it more than the silly tree she was living in before. She just arrived. When she sees how well she can live here, she will love it as much as I do.

I get up and step into the tree, lighting the small oil-burning lamps that hang here and there.

Getting back out, I arrange the dying campfire so that the embers will glow until morning. That always makes it easier to light it again. “Go inside now if you want.”

Cora hides an adorable yawn and walks ahead of me into the tree. Inside, she looks up at the small lamps that flicker in the pleasant, constant draft from the bottom to the top of the hollow tree. “Is nice. Many light.”

“The wind will soon blow them out, one after the other,” I tell her. Leaving the door open the way I usually do, I arrange a fine net right inside it, so that nobody and nothing can surprise us. Then I climb up ahead of Cora and sit down on a net on the level below my usual spot, which I now want her to take.

She climbs past me and lies down a few foot-lengths above me. Even in the semi-darkness I enjoy the view of her curvy shape as it sways slowly back and forth in the net.

A gust of wind shoots up from below and blows out three lamps.

I’ve tried to keep from thinking too much about what she hides under that garment, but now she’s right above me and I can’t stop my cock from growing to full hardness. She’s right there . I could simply climb up and then see if she’d want to be Worshipped…

More lamps are being blown out, leaving only the one highest up still burning.

I touch the spikes on my face. No, that would probably not be a good idea. I have to accept that I look the way I do and no woman would want to be too close to me. Cora keeps trying to escape from me, horrified by my appearance.

Anyway, I got what I wanted — she’s here, in my safe place, away from the gray ghosts and the Bigs. Now I’ll have to keep her here.

And then?

“Then we’ll see,” I whisper to myself. I hadn’t really thought this far ahead.

The last lamp is blown out, and the total darkness seems to make my hearing better. Cora is breathing calmly above me.

I have to keep her safe. That’s my responsibility now. There’s no clan or tribe to help me with that.