Caveman Alien’s Enemy

by Skye, Calista

  We walk in silence again while I think. The seed of an idea is slowly taking hold in my mind.

  “How long can you live without a hoard? I mean, you say you don’t have one here and you can’t feel your old one.”

  “I don’t know. I doubt anyone has ever gone as long without a hoard as those of us who are here now. Coming to this place was very risky. It seems we lost out. And yet, while I did feel that I was getting weaker the first days here, now I feel as strong as when I first touched down. Almost.”

  I point to his wrists. “And those wounds, there? They don’t make you weaker?”

  “They do hurt me,” he reluctantly admits. “As well as the head wound.”

  “And only a hoard would strengthen you again? Heal you?”

  “I imagine so.”

  “If you had a hoard and you could change into your dragon form – would you kill me?”

  “The dragon form is wild,” Kyandros says slowly. “There is no telling what it might do. I am different when in my dragon form. Stronger in every way. But I would like to think that I would not.”

  “What about a hoard that was only large enough to heal you, but not big enough to allow you to change?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

  I point to a round hill. “Let’s climb up there and see where we are.”

  15

  - Kyandros -

  It is ridiculous how I allow this small, primitive female to lead. But I seem to be in an indulgent mood, even chatting openly about things that probably should remain known only to other dragons.

  Mia makes me less guarded, and I think it is because she seems so harmless to me. Whereas in fact, nobody has ever done me as much harm as she has.

  She shot me and bound me. Then she put some kind of poison on the wounds, poison that stings me even days later, seeming to burn itself deeper into me and sap my strength.

  From that perspective, she is closer to an equal than to a lesser being. Perhaps, that is what makes me feel this commonality with her, insane though it was that I didn’t rip her apart the moment I was freed of the wires.

  As we walk up the hill, I fantasize about stopping here, tearing the garments off her, and ravaging her in the show. But the joy won’t materialize. I only remember her thin arms around me, squeezing me after I killed the flying prey. I think it was gratitude she showed me there. I had heard of it, but never experienced it.

  Gratitude. From a lesser being that I probably should have killed some time ago.

  We stop at the top of the little hill.

  “No, I don’t see anything I recognize,” Mia says after looking in every direction. “There are too many higher hills all around. I never knew this jungle was so hilly!”

  “You are looking for the village?”

  “Or Bune. It looks like a mountain, but it’s really a holy place with strange lights.”

  I don’t actually know where her village is. Dragons aren’t great at finding their way while in human form. We prefer to be in dragon form and see everything from above. Actually being down among the landscape and the features is both uncomfortable and degrading.

  Why am I wasting my time here? I should be frantically searching for a hoard, running wide and far all around this planet. It can’t be snowed down everywhere.

  “At least I can’t see any more dactyls,” Mia says.

  Why do I have this calm in me? Why is the urge so much weaker than it has ever been before? Why am I standing here, on a simple hill, trying to spot anything unusual in the terrain because this lesser being wants it?

  “It is pretty, though,” Mia says. “All the white with the splashes of green and red.”

  I envision my hoard on Grig. The heap of gold and silver and gems, many of them indeed green and red. Finely crafted objects, all hand-made by the finest goldsmiths, silversmiths, and jewelers of their worlds. Some dragons like other objects, too, mass-produced things that have value to them because most planets can never manufacture such things and because the accumulated effort in each object is breathtaking. I have some, but they are not really for me. I prefer the individual effort, not the civilizational. Taking a thing like that means taking it from one very specific person, not faceless masses that don’t even notice the loss.

  In my mind’s eye, I see the glittering heaps of my hoard. It is almost big enough to rest on forever. Just another hundred years of collecting and taking, and it will nourish me for centuries as I rest on it and feel the cool metal under me.

  But even this vivid thought leaves me cold. The dragon is far away. Is this what it feels like to be entirely human? To have no need for a hoard, no frantic urgency, no need to take?

  Maybe I am sick. Maybe the poison this witch smeared on my wounds is slowly killing me. It does feel that way.

  “Look! That must be a gigantic waterfall! It’s all frozen!”

  Mia stands close to me and points. Her voice is clear and bright. I hear her every breath and every heartbeat. So quick, as if she’s constantly afraid. Perhaps, she’s afraid of me. Perhaps, she worries that I will see through her attempts to make me weaker. I do see through it. But there’s doubt. Is that really what happened? It didn’t feel like it at the time. It felt like she was doing her best to actually heal me. I sensed no duplicity.

  Mia lowers her arm. “Look how green it is. So pretty. It must have frozen solid in a very short time. It’s huge!”

  I keep returning to her. In that damnable cave with the damnable fire, that place where I wriggled like a worm, tied on hands and feet like prey caught alive. I should abhor that place like no other. I should abhor Mia. I should murder her slowly and painfully as revenge.

  But she didn’t murder me. She didn’t even try. She’s even apologetic about defending herself when I first approached her, about to grab her and enjoy her body and her screams. She puzzles me.

  She also attracts me. When I think of murdering her, the fantasy repulses me. I want her alive and breathing. For some reason, that seems more attractive to me than the alternative.

  Much more attractive. Indeed, a world without Mia in it now appears intolerable to me.

  I lean over and discreetly sniff her hair. She’s so real, her life so intense, so varied.

  So short. What would be the use of making it shorter?

  I killed the dactyl when it wanted to attack her. It made me furious. And…

  I was afraid that Mia would come to some harm.

  Afraid. Me, Kyandros the Furious, with the largest hoard among any dragon apart from King Garunzigur. Afraid. That a lesser being should come to harm.

  Yes, I must be sick. I desperately need a hoard.

  I must kill this woman, enjoy her, break her spell, and then locate her village again, tearing it apart until I find something worth taking.

  And I must do it now.

  16

  - Mia -

  Kyandros is being very quiet. He has this hot and cold thing going on, and right now he seems to be in a cold phase. As if his jet engine is turned off and I’m stuck behind it, wondering what’s wrong. Because something is definitely wrong, something important.

  It gives me an urge to start that turbine again, at almost any cost.

  I walk a little away from him and get a cluster of treetops between us. They must be saplings, and now only their tops stick up out of the snow and reach me to my hips. They’re bent double with heavy snow on them, and they remind me a little of a snow fort.

  “Hey, Kyandros,” I call.

  He turns in that slow, languid way he has, not too eager to follow my directions, piercing me with his yellow gaze.

  I throw the snowball at his face. It hits his nose and explodes in a loose, white spray.

  “Gotcha,” I yell with exaggerated glee to show him that it was only for fun.

  He freezes. Then he drops the clutch of not-sheep and the dactyl beak, lifts his clawed hand, and wipes loose snow from his face, looking at the crystals, frowning.

  Then he looks at me.<
br />
  And if I didn’t believe he was a dragon, I sure believe it now. That look is so devoid of expression, there’s only death in it.

  I gasp and recoil physically from the force of it. “I’m sorry! It was just a joke!”

  In a flash he’s in front of me, towering above me like a god of vengeance.

  “One must not joke at the expense of one’s superiors.” His voice is flat and devoid of emotion.

  “I’m sorry,” I squeak. “I was just playing.”

  Kyandros reaches out with his hand and grabs me by the throat.

  He holds out his other hand. One claw is still dark red with the blood from the not-sheep. He looks at it, then at me.

  I scratch at his hand with my nails, but it’s like trying to pry away iron.

  The dragon pierces me with his eyes, so close I can see my own desperate face as a reflection in them.

  For ten very fast heartbeats the world stands still and there’s an increasingly loud hiss in my ears.

  He brings me in closer and lowers his face to sniff me.

  “Hoard,” he says into my hair.

  Then the hand relaxes and he gently releases me.

  My own hands to go my throat. But it’s not sore.

  Kyandros bends down and grabs a handful of snow, then throws it into my face from point blank range. Still, most of the snow disperses before any of it hits me.

  “Then let’s play,” he says.

  “It’s okay,” I wheeze, scared out of my mind. “We don’t have to.”

  “We do.” He throws more snow at my face, but it’s not compacted into a ball and none of it hits me.

  “You have to pack it,” I explain wearily, having never been less in a mood for a snowball fight. “Make the snow stick together.”

  “Everything with you is about making things,” he complains.

  “Look.” I get some snow into my shaking hands and show him how it works. “See? Now it’s a ball. You can throw it. I will throw this at that tree.”

  I throw it and miss the tree by two feet. But it’s okay – I’m still shaky and my aim is off.

  Kyandros examines the deformed ball-ish thing in his hand. “This is ridiculous.”

  “Throw it,” I suggest. “At my face, I guess. You should retaliate. It’s expected.”

  He aims for the tree instead, again avoiding following my instructions.

  He hits the trunk with a flat bang and the tree shakes, releasing a drizzle of snow.

  I try again and hit it with a glancing blow.

  Kyandros slowly makes another snowball and throws it hard at the tree. It drizzles more snow to the ground as if hit by a cannonball.

  I hit it as hard as I can, but no drizzle follows. I think maybe I should be happy he’s not aiming for my face.

  “Retaliate, you say?” he says and prepares another snowball.

  “Yeah, but in kind,” I hurry to explain. “Not that much harder. The face is sensitive.”

  He throws that snowball at the tree again, then comes over to me.

  I take a step back, still wary.

  He strokes my arm with a gentle clumsiness that’s quite endearing and disperses my fear. “I think my earlier retaliation was quite sufficient.”

  I think this is the closest he has ever come to apologizing for something, and I take a breath of relief. “Maybe.”

  “I have now decided that you’re not a lesser being. Your skill at making snowballs is all the evidence I need.”

  I grin at his deadpan joke. “Yeah? That’s how you decide?”

  His eyes twinkle. “Yes. It is a very delicate process, and I was almost mistaken when the one you threw at my face didn’t sting quite as much as it should have. But then I realized that of course, you were holding back. You wouldn’t show your real skill immediately, so as to throw me off balance. It is dragon-like. Well done.”

  “I do take some pride in my snowball-making skills,” I play along. “It is a vital thing to know. I mean, in the winter. In the summer maybe slightly less vital.”

  “Maybe. Though opinions differ among the scholars on the subject. Now, have you admired the view to your satisfaction?”

  I give the white landscape a last glance. “I have. No village or Bune to be seen. But some day I’d love to see that waterfall up close.”

  “Then we return to our camp, there to make interesting objects and some of us to eat animal meats and the associated fats and perhaps even entrails, I’m sure.”

  “Umm. Okay.”

  We walk back down from the hill. My steps are lighter, and I swear I don’t sink as far into the snow.

  It feels like we passed some kind of milestone there – him not killing me in anger.

  Not much of a milestone under normal circumstances. But with a dragon, I maybe shouldn’t expect much more.

  He walks ahead of me, and again I admire his muscled back and his strong legs and his firm butt under the loincloth I made. He’s all power and otherworldly alienness. And it is obvious that I am under his protection. He saved me from that dactyl, and he really didn’t have to. I am probably safer now than I’ve been since I came to Xren. Possibly safer than I’ve ever been, with a dragon to protect me.

  I am probably not safe from the dragon himself. But that kind of makes it better.

  Damn it. Now that I have not-sheep fur, I can spend all day making a hat and a better coat. Tomorrow, I can set off in search of Bune and the village. That probably means goodbye to Kyandros.

  This might be my last chance. How cool would it be to lose my virginity to a freaking dragon? Of course, I’d have to make sure he won’t rip me apart and he won’t fill me with a horribly corrosive acid or something. But I think it could work, physiologically. And mentally, too. I’ve never met anyone as far removed from an aerospace engineering student as Kyandros. Or as far removed from the tame cavemen in our tribe. The wildness in him speaks to me on a totally primal level. It’s incredibly refreshing. Revitalizing, even.

  I climb down the ladder, and Kyandros carelessly tosses the dead not-sheep in a heap by the cave opening.

  Then he sits down on the ground and ponders the dactyl’s beak. It’s two feet long, all bone and teeth and long nostrils and tough skin. “This whole thing is a weapon in itself. The creature’s main weapon. Making it harmless would be an added triumph.”

  He’s talking to himself, I think. Well, dragons will do dragon stuff.

  I rekindle the fire and munch on the last of the grilled meat, eat a good amount of snow as my beverage, and then get to work on the not-sheep. Gutting them is easy and not too horribly messy. There’s blood and all kinds of gore, but they don’t smell bad and the fur can be pulled off without much effort.

  I probably don’t need to completely gut them all, because if everything goes to plan I won’t be here much longer. But in the village we always take extreme care to not leave out anything we might need, especially because any plan you make on Xren tends to become irrelevant or laughable after just a few hours. The planet is just too unpredictable. So I settle into the process of salvaging as much of the meat as possible before I start working on the fur.

  There’s a sharp little bang as Kyandros breaks off one of the dactyl’s teeth. They’re triangular and smaller than the raptor teeth, but much sharper and lighter. “Many small knives make one deadly weapon,” he observes. “Instead of having just one.”

  “It’s how a tribe works, too,” I add, half concentrating and thinking that this guy maybe needs a civics lecture. “Many men and women together are stronger than one woman or one man on their own. I’m sure it is the same with dragons.”

  “Many dragons?” he chuckles. “Together in one space? It would be absolute chaos. As is your tribe, I’m sure.”

  “Chaos? No. We all know what to do. We do a little bit each so that the whole tribe has what it needs.”

  Another bang, another tooth comes off in his hand. “Ah. You get something for you. What does someone like you need? Say, food. You get food
for you, and then the others get food for themselves. The one who has the most food is the king. Until someone else kills him and takes his food. Yes, it is much the same as with us.”

  I slice a piece of not-sheep meat into cubes that can easily be stuck onto a skewer. “It’s not like that at all. Some of us go into the woods and come back with animals. That means meat for the whole tribe for one day. Then some of us harvest fruit from the jungle or from our own trees. They may also get herbs and other things that can be eaten. Other tribe members fill water into pots, ready to be used for cooking or for drinking. Some of us cook the food for the whole tribe, while others do necessary things that have nothing to do with food. We make pots, forge weapons and tools, make room for more fruit trees, try out a way to grow useful plants, make bricks for houses, build those houses, make baskets for storing things, make clothes and shoes, practice using weapons, build a tall fence around the village, explore the jungle, think of ways to make our lives easier. We don’t have a king. We do have two chiefs, though. A man and a woman. Not because they have the most food, but because they are the smartest and the best leaders. We chose them. They didn’t force themselves on us.”

  Kyandros breaks off another dactyl tooth. “Such a strange way to live. Not spending all your time hunting for a hoard and enjoying one’s superiority.”

  I glance over at him. “Isn’t it like that for dragons?”

  “Dragons don’t like to be together. We always worry about the others plotting to kill us and steal our hoards. Sometimes we are forced together in loose alliances. Or some particularly powerful dragon may gather an entourage around her. Such things don’t last long, usually.”

  I start gutting the second of the three not-sheep. I think I’ll have enough fur for a coat for me, new boots, and maybe even some footwear for Kyandros. Maybe some actual pants. “But many dragons arrived on Xren that night. We saw them. Hundreds.”