by Edward Lang
“Jack?” a voice said above me.
I looked up to see her scaling the wall beneath the cave by climbing the rope and walking up the rock cliff at the same time.
Think those cheesy old Batman TV shows from the 1960s, when Batman and Robin would ‘walk’ vertically up a building.
Lelia did it largely by using the rope to support herself, then pushing up with her feet against the cracks and toeholds. Her spear was strapped to her back with some sort of fur binding.
I just stared up at her in awe.
The rope was so small in diameter – just the grip strength needed to actually do that – !
I guess once her ankle had healed, she could do a hell of a lot more than I thought.
“Jack?” she called down to me as he went up the rope, hand over hand, step by step.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be up in a minute,” I called up to her.
I watched as she got to the opening of the cave and pulled herself through.
Jesus, she wasn’t just Wolverine, she was Spider-man, too.
“Jack?”
“Hold on,” I called out.
I took the rope she had just climbed and tied it to the hardwood sapling – the one I had cut down to make an archery bow – and yelled, “Pull it up!”
Her head appeared over the edge of the cave entrance. “What?”
I grabbed the rope and pantomimed hauling it up. “Pull the rope up!”
She immediately understood and hauled the sapling up the side of the mountain.
“Okay, now untie the rope and throw it down!”
“…untie…?”
I pantomimed untying a knot. “Untie rope!”
“Ohhh,” she said, and her head disappeared back inside the cave. Ten seconds later she reappeared holding the end of the rope in one blue hand. “Untie rope.”
“Good – throw it down!”
“Throw it down?”
I swung my arm like I was tossing something at my feet. “Throw – ”
Then I pointed at what she held. “Rope – ”
Then I swiped my hand through the air towards the ground. “Down!”
“Throw rope down!” she called out, and tossed the slack through the air towards me.
I grabbed it and tied it to the backpack full of firewood. She hauled it up easily.
“Throw rope down?” she called out after she had it up in the cave.
“Yes!”
She tossed the rope down again, and I tied it to the hardwood branches she’d found – the ones I would carve into arrow shafts – and she hauled them up as well.
“Throw rope down?” she called once she’d gotten the sticks inside the cave.
“No, I’m climbing up.”
“What?”
“Just wait.”
“Whoa?” she called out, apparently asking if she should stop where she was.
“Yes, whoa!”
I finished putting on my crampons, got out my ice axes, and climbed up the side of the mountain to the cave.
Once I was inside, I pulled off my jacket and gloves, and she took off her bindings.
I got another gander at her long, shapely legs, and had to turn away before I started getting hard again.
She set about rebuilding the fire as I sat down with my knife and began whittling away at the sapling.
“Jack?” Lelia asked from beside the fire, frowning in confusion at what I was doing.
“I’m making a bow.”
“Bow?”
“Yes.”
I pantomimed holding a bow, drawing back an arrow, and letting it fly.
She just sat there by the fire looking at me like I was insane.
I realized that it was quite possible that she might never have seen a bow and arrow before. After all, the most sophisticated thing she owned was her spear. She didn’t own anything metal, and had been fascinated by my steel water bottle. If her people were basically at the same level as the human stone age, it’s quite possible that they hadn’t yet figured out archery yet.
“You’ll see,” I told her.
“You’ll see?”
“No, I meant – wait.”
“Wait?”
“Later.”
“Later?”
“Oh my God,” I said in exasperation.
“Oh my God,” she repeated, mimicking my exasperation perfectly.
It was pretty fuckin’ funny.
I laughed, and she laughed to. I pointed at her and the fire.
“You cook the meat so we can eat, okay?”
She nodded, then went to get one of the frozen slabs of venison.
I worked on the sapling, carving away the bark and tapering the ends. I routinely tested the wood for springiness, and it kept bending without any sign of cracking.
Not bad.
Lelia spitted the meat and set it to roasting. Then she did something unusual: she took the flat rock we’d used for grilling, placed it in the embers, and scattered a handful of berries across the surface. Across them she laid some of the pine needles.
I gave her a questioning look.
“You’ll see. Wait. Oh my god,” she said.
I burst out laughing, and she laughed, too.
About ten minutes later, she plucked the berries and pine needles off the rock and placed them on another indented rock, like a bowl. Then she carried the makeshift platter over and held it out to me.
I frowned at her. “Do we eat these?”
“Yes, eat.” She plucked one of the berries off the rock, popped it in her mouth, and began to chew.
I followed her lead and picked up a berry. It was hot to the touch, so I blew on it to cool it down. Then I popped it in my mouth and bit down.
Son of a bitch – the starches inside the berry had been cooked to the exact consistency of a baked potato. The orange skin was crispy but with no real taste – but the roasted pine needles added a smoky, spicy flavor to it.
“Wow, that’s good,” I said as I reached for another.
“Wow?” she asked, perplexed.
“It means REALLY good.”
“Ahhh… wow!” she said with a big smile.
We’d work on the subtleties of ‘wow’ later. Right now, I had appetizers to eat.
I gobbled down the warm berries, and even followed her lead and ate the cooked pine needles. They were crispy and delicious – and salty! Maybe this was a good enough source for sodium.
Lelia fixed another batch of the berries, which we both wolfed down once they was through.
I kept carving the bow, whittling it down enough to make it pliable, but being careful to keep the wood thick enough to retain its strength.
I was less than halfway through when the meat was finally ready.
We ate it with the crisped pine needles – perfection. It was like ‘add your own rub as you go’ barbecue.
“This is delicious,” I told her.
Lelia cocked her head to one side. “Delicious?”
I took a bite of meat with the pine needles, smacked my lips, and went, “Mmmm-MM! Delicious!”
She laughed, then nodded as she took a bite of her own. “Delicious!”
After we had eaten our fill, I went back to working on the bow.
Lelia didn’t have anything else to do, so she just sat there in the cave, watching me. We continued our English lessons, with me adding in another layer of complexity, like ‘I grab the rock’ and ‘I am holding the knife.’
She had a bit more trouble with the nuances of things like that, but she was making progress at lightspeed compared with what I could have done with her language.
It was dark outside the cave when I finally was satisfied with the bow. Then I started whittling down one of the pieces of hardwood into an arrow.
When I finally finished, I held up a relatively straight shaft of wood for her inspection.
“Oh my god,” she said in the same tone of voice as a bratty teenager – although her face was hopeful and curious. She obviously wasn’t qu
ite clear on the correct intonation yet.
I just laughed. “Okay, just wait a second.”
“Wait a second?”
I put my hand up to stop her, since I didn’t really want to get into explaining seconds and minutes and other ways to measure time just yet.
She sat there expectantly as I got some climbing rope from my backpack. I tied one end to the notch I’d cut in the top end of the bow, then I measured out the length I would need and cut it off. Then I grunted as I stretched the rope and tied the bottom of the rope to the bottom of the bow.
Now, climbing rope was just elastic enough to make a great bowstring – but it was about a quarter inch in diameter, a bit too big to be effective with a real arrow. But I could experiment with fraying the rope and using more slender strands of it later. What I had now would serve well enough for a demonstration.
I got my arrow and used the knife to make a notch in the end of it.
“Bow,” I said, holding up the wooden handle.
“String,” I said, plucking the climbing rope and letting it twang.
“Arrow,” I said, holding up the wooden stick.
Then I nocked the arrow, pulled back, and let it go.
It actually flew fairly straight and with a good deal of force, and clacked! solidly against the far wall of the cave.
You would have thought Lelia had just seen me shoot fireworks out of my ass.
“WOW!” she yelled, her eyes wide. “WOW, WOW, WOW!”
I laughed out loud at her reaction. Guess she hadn’t seen a bow and arrow before.
“It’ll be better with some feathers on the end and an arrowhead,” I said.
She frowned at me. “Arrowhead?”
“Yeah, uh… like your spear,” I said as I walked over and retrieved her weapon.
I pointed at the sharp obsidian spear head.
“Like this, but small,” I said, and pinched my thumb and forefinger together like I was squishing an invisible marshmallow.
A light went off in her eyes. She scrambled across the cave and retrieved the stick, then brought it back.
“Arrow,” she said, holding it up.
“Yes,” I said, nodding.
She pointed at the spear head, then at the blunt end of my arrow.
“Arrowhead.”
“Yes. Very good.”
“Whoa,” she said, holding up a hand to tell me to wait, and then scrambled towards the front of the cave.
I watched as she searched among the rocks and boulders near the entrance, back along the far wall. After a few seconds, she came back with two different types of rock.
One was flat and seemed to have striations in it, like a rocky form of mica. The other was a fist-sized stone that tapered to a point.
She placed the flat rock lengthways on the ground so it was standing up, and then she lined up the point of the granite rock – raised it up – and swung down hard.
CRACK!
The flat rock split right down the middle of the layers, exactly like peeling apart mica – except the layers were glittering black inside.
I watched in awe as she repeated the process with one of the pieces that had split in half.
CRACK!
This time, not only did the rock split again, but shards came off.
Flat, black shards an inch long, roughly triangular, and thin as a razor blade.
I picked one up and looked at it wonder. The fucker looked pretty damn sharp to me.
I tested it by trying to bend it. It wouldn’t budge.
I ran my finger lightly along the edge. Not sharp enough to cut my skin – but with enough force, it could definitely slice through.
I took the wooden arrow from Lelia, cut a notch in the end, and slid the stone fragment inside. It was thin enough that it wedged firmly inside the cut.
I looked over at Lelia, who was grinning at me excitedly.
I nocked the arrow – pulled it back – aimed at a piece of firewood in the corner – and let go.
THOCK!
The arrow hit the wood dead-on.
The impact knocked the wooden shaft free of the arrowhead –
But the arrowhead stayed embedded in the firewood.
I walked over and stared at the razor-thin fleck of stone sunk halfway in the wood.
Lelia joined me and clasped my arm in excitement.
“Holy shit,” I murmured.
We could definitely hunt deer with that.
“Holy shit!” Lelia cried out happily.
Life had just gotten a hell of a lot easier.
I stood up and looked into Lelia’s happy face.
She was literally hopping up and down, she was so excited.
I grinned right back at her – and then something came over me.
It was probably just the joyful exuberance of the moment… but I’m sure it had a lot to do with the gorgeous woman grinning at me ear to ear.
Anyway, I leaned over and kissed her.
She suddenly grew still –
And didn’t return the kiss.
Shit.
I backed up quickly.
Fuck, I misjudged that one –
Lelia was standing there in front of me, not moving.
But she looked at me curiously.
“Jack, what is this?” she whispered as she put her fingertip gently on my lips.
Her touch was more erotic than anything I had experienced in a long, long time.
I swallowed hard. “That was a kiss.”
“Kiss?”
“Yes.”
“Kiss,” she whispered, and leaned forward.
I leaned forward, too, and pressed my lips against hers.
This time she pressed back, and I felt the softness of her mouth grow firm.
I closed my eyes, and luxuriated in the feel of her lips on mine…
And of her soft body pressing up against me.
I could feel my cock growing harder and harder by the second.
I opened my eyes. Her eyes were closed as we kissed.
I pulled away, our lips parting in a smooch sound.
She was breathing more heavily. I could tell because her breasts were moving beneath her fur clothing, heaving up and down.
I stared at her chest, entranced, even though I couldn’t see anything beneath the furs she wore.
She opened her eyes as though in a trance… put one finger up to my lips… traced softly across them… and whispered, “Go away.”
Kind of broke the spell.
“What?” I asked, surprised.
“Jack go away,” she whispered, her voice throaty.
I frowned. “You want me to go away?”
Suddenly I felt her hand beneath my waist –
Clutching my rock-hard erection.
“Go away,” she whispered urgently.
I retraced my thoughts to when she had last used that phrase –
Back when I was peeing in the woods, and she had wanted to see –
And then I burst out laughing.
She looked surprised, then hurt.
“No, no – ‘go away’ means this,” I said, and turned and ran to the other end of the cave.
She looked confused for a second – and then she burst out laughing as she realized what she had said to me.
“No go away,” she said as she opened her arms back to me, and I took her in my arms and kissed her again.
This time she was the one who broke off the kiss.
“What is this?” she asked in a throaty voice as she clutched my crotch again.
I hesitated for a moment, wondering what word to tell her – and then settled on a simple one I wouldn’t mind hearing.
“Cock,” I murmured. “That’s my cock.”
“Cock,” she whispered as she rubbed me through my pants.
I couldn’t believe how hard I was – or how good her touch felt.
Suddenly she took her hand away, reached up behind her long, tousled hair, and untied something.
And then peeled do
wn the front of her furs.
I gasped as I saw her topless.
Her breasts were absolutely perfect – full and firm and heavy and round. Her areolas were a darker blue than her skin, and her nipples were hard and erect in the cool air.
She stared into my eyes as she took my hand in hers and placed it on her left breast. Her skin was just like the rest of her – hot as a furnace.
But now I was getting even hotter as I cupped her tit in my hand, felt its firm softness in my palm, and brushed my thumb across her dark blue nipple.
Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she closed her lids halfway.
“What is this?” she whispered as her hand pressed mine harder into her chest.
Again, there were several words – but I just chose one.
“Breast,” I whispered.
“Lelia breast,” she whispered back.
I swallowed hard as I caressed her.
Then she took my other hand and guided it up under the skirt of furs around her thighs.
At first I felt the heat radiating off her skin –
Then the luxurious softness of her thighs –
Then something even softer. Curls of hair brushing across my fingers.
And lastly, I felt soft, hot wetness.
My mouth fell open.
Lelia grunted as my fingers touched her.
“What is this?” she whispered.
What word?
Not vagina – too medical –
And nothing too crude –
So I chose the one that was soft like her, and that rolled off my tongue.
“Pussy,” I whispered.
“Pussy,” she whispered back, testing out the sound.
I began to stroke her between her legs, caressing her.
She moaned and arched her back, her breasts pressing into me.
“Ohhh Jack…” she murmured.
Then she backed away from me completely.
She stared at me with those emerald eyes, never taking her gaze off me…
As her hands pulled away the ties that kept on her furs.
The last of her clothing fell away to the cave floor, and she stood there, naked in the firelight.
She was absolutely stunning.
Her both was lithe and firm in all the right places… and soft and feminine in all the other right places.
Her belly was flat and smooth.
Her waist was small and tiny, yet her hips were wide.
