by Loki Renard
“Then we’d be on a beach, perfect!”
“Maybe,” he said, his eyes crinkling in amusement at her enthusiasm. “Let’s pack down camp as much as we can, damp the fire to make sure we don’t burn the forest down and see what we can find.”
“An adventure!” Aster clapped her hands.
“You’re in a very good mood today,” he observed, reaching out to pull her close. “You’re really doing very well,” he praised, pressing kisses to her face.
“I am?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “You know, a lot of men would be breaking down by now. You’re just settling in.”
She smiled up at him and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “You think maybe that’s because I don’t have to worry, because I know I have you?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Still, don’t think you’re not brave, because you are. You’ve met every challenge this place has thrown at us, and more. You’re stronger than you think.”
She smiled, glad that he thought of her as brave. He was the bravest person she’d ever met, so his opinion on that counted for a lot.
“Now,” Owen said. “I’m hoping we find a new place to make camp today, so let’s get busy, pack the camp down and make sure we have a couple of baskets with the basics we’ll need to get started again.”
Aster agreed, and for the next hour or so they were busy with the task of preparing to strike out for a new camp, a new chance at being rescued. They then set off in good spirits, heading first up to the stream and then tracing it down though the forest in the hopes that it would lead them somewhere good.
“The tui is going to be happy to see us go,” Aster said as they walked. “He’s been telling us to go away since we got here.”
“Well, we’ll see if he gets his wish,” Owen said. He was trying to downplay his feelings, but she could sense an urgency in him. He was just as eager as she was to get back to civilization, possibly more so. In the last week he had become provider, protector, lover and more. It was a lot of pressure, but he bore it all nobly without any complaint.
As they walked, Aster spotted a mushroom. Her stomach was growling and it looked delicious, so she plucked it and stuffed it into her mouth. Flavors of the earth rushed in wholesomely, tastier than she had anticipated. Discovering that it was quite good, she grabbed a handful and munched on them as she followed Owen down the trail.
They tramped through the bush for an hour or so, following the rivulets of fresh water across its stony path. The rocks were bright green with moss, and sunlight falling through dappled leaves made patterns in the flowing water. It was beautiful.
Owen stopped and pointed. “Look.”
Aster followed the line of his finger and saw, through a break in the trees, a breathtaking vista of blue water in the distance and great mountains covered in vegetation rising high above the fiords. The jagged tips of the mountains were bereft of trees, clad in the remnants of snow.
The world from her vantage point was bright blue and vibrant green and utterly leviathan, a thing much greater and grander than any mere human. She was surrounded by the bush, swallowed by it, and yet still she lived. This was a land capable of nurturing some of the most rare and precious creatures on earth, but it was capable of taking life just as quickly.
She felt it as a force, humming beneath and all around her with a slow vibrational tone, which was almost like a voice speaking so slowly she could not make out the words, but understood the feeling. The land was alive. All of it, the sky and the mountains and the water besides. She suddenly understood the source of the legends she had read of in her guidebooks, the notion of gods and goddesses being formed of land, sea and sky. The earth she was standing on was almost certainly sentient, in a way the footpaths and roads and cities she was used to were not. Was it people who drove the spirit out of the land? Or was it just that they paved it over to make themselves feel separated and safe from the forces, which were assailing her so powerfully in that moment that she felt weak.
A trilling nearby made her jump. She looked up and over her shoulder and saw a tui in the tree, warbling happily to itself as it watched them with gleaming eyes.
“Is that... that can’t be the same bird, surely.”
“It could be,” Owen said. “They do have a wide range of territory and that little guy seems like he’d have a big one.”
“You think he’s making sure we leave?”
“We’re probably the most interesting things he’s laid eyes on in his entire life,” Owen said. “He’s probably just curious as to what we’re doing.”
“I think he’s been eating our food scraps,” Aster said. “Maybe he’s wondering where his food source is going.”
Their speculation caused the tui to peer at them more intently and start squawking as if to urge them on, batting its wings as punctuation.
“I really think he’s trying to tell us something,” Aster said.
Owen had turned and was looking out at the other horizon, worried. “I think he’s telling us to go back, and fast.”
Aster followed his gaze and felt a tremor in her belly. Dark clouds were approaching. As they watched, the wind began to whip up and the temperature started to drop noticeably. Strange how the weather could shift so quickly. If she looked one way, it was all beauty and light. The other way, it looked as though the world was closing in.
“We’re going to get caught out with no shelter and nothing dry to make a fire with,” Owen said. “Okay, back to camp. Back. To. Camp.”
The sudden U turn made Aster’s head spin, but Owen was the one who knew what they were dealing with and she trusted his judgment.
“I’m sorry,” he said, urging her along. “To a certain extent, we’re dependent on the weather gods.”
His words echoed the thoughts she’d been having earlier. “It really does feel like that,” she said dreamily. “Like there are just entities everywhere. Those clouds... they’re not just clouds.”
“Yep,” he said, not really listening. He was too busy striding back through the forest to engage in a philosophical discussion and Aster was soon out of breath. They were going uphill now instead of down and at Owen’s urging they covered the ground, which had taken them almost an hour to cover in the first place, in less than forty minutes.
She was panting and sweaty gross when they made it back to the camp they had vacated. Aster was surprised that she was actually somewhat pleased to see it. Already, their little campsite was starting to feel like home.
The fire had been damped, but Owen stoked it into fresh life and surrounded it with bigger rocks and pieces of wood to shelter it from some of the elements, creating a kind of hood over the leaping flames while Aster sat peacefully at the mouth of their shelter, watching him work.
“We can heat rocks in there,” he said, joining her. “We can wrap them in flax and use them to warm this space. It might get cold in here.”
She looked over at him and noticed that he seemed agitated. She put a comforting hand on his broad shoulder and looked into his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s just... weather is a pain,” he said. “And we don’t have any predictive systems here, so we’re just going to have to keep the fire burning and ride it out as best we can.”
“I mean what’s wrong with you,” she clarified. “You seem sad.”
Owen gave a little shrug. “I just wanted to get us to a better spot today, that’s all, if the weather held, we might be able to set up another camp somewhere a bit more visible, which will help with them finding us.”
“You’re not telling me something.”
“Searches don’t go on forever,” Owen finally admitted. “It’s been more than a week. Which means they’re looking in the wrong place. And if they don’t find us, then.... that’s somewhat problematic.”
“You’re saying... they might not ever find us?”
“They’ll find us,” Owen said. “It’s just... I wanted to make us be found.”
Aster understood. “You don�
��t like not being in control,” she said. “And right now, we have to wait. Wait for the weather. Wait for the searchers. Just wait.”
“You know me so well.” He smiled. “I suppose I’ll just have to find something I can control.” He winked at her.
Outside the shelter, a light drizzle began to fall. It soon gave way to heavier rain and finally a great deluge, big droplets that discharged themselves against the ground in great splattering arcs of wetness. In minutes, all was soaked. The shelter seemed to hold up fairly well against the onslaught however, and the fire, although it flickered, also remained burning.
Aster started taking off her clothes.
“What are you doing?” Owen watched her, somewhat bemused as she freed her body from the shackles of her stinky clothing.
“I’m going out!”
She ran out into the rain, felt it trickle and trace all over her skin. It felt absolutely wonderful, not cold at all. There was some residual heat in the water and each bursting droplet made her feel a little bit better, a little bit cleaner, a little bit freer.
Owen crouched at the entrance of the shelter and watched her for a couple of minutes as she lifted her arms to the skies and turned this way and that, allowing the water to touch every part of her and wash away the grime and the sweat. Her naked body was stretched beneath the water, a broad smile on her face as she experienced rain as she had never experienced it before. It was not some minor irritation. It was life giving, nourishing, a source of simple pleasure. The drumming drops danced across her skin, soothing and rejuvenating her at the same time.
He laughed and picked up her clothing, took off his and draped all of it on the outside of the shelter. Two complete outfits took up residence on the roof, getting just as wet as their usual wearers. Naked and strong, his cock bobbing with the beginnings of erection between his thick thighs, Owen joined her.
The rain wet his curling locks and made them droop down into his eyes. She pushed the water and hair away to meet his loving gaze, running her hands all over his body. He was beautiful and powerful, like the mountains and the sky and everything besides. She was in awe of him as he returned her touch, caressing her with strokes which made little tingling ripples of sensation go chasing through her body.
He kissed her deeply, his hands running up and down her back as his erect cock pressed against her thigh. Then he picked her up and she wrapped her legs around his waist like a vine, locking herself to him as his cock slid up inside her and found its home in her tight, moist cleft.
They made love in the rain, abandoning themselves to animal pleasure as sheets of water cascaded over their bare bodies, writhing in a synergy of ecstasy. Aster experienced him as more than a man, as a primal male force of nature. He surged inside her and she enveloped him, the walls of her body contracting and holding him tight as he thrust over and over, his hands locked on her buttocks as he held her and made love to her. Their tongues entwined, serpentine, another point of bonding.
The moment of transcendence came upon her in a rushing surge of power which flowed from her into him and him into her, a circling of carnal energies which lit them both up from within and caused the eager quivering of their flesh to turn into tremors of orgasm.
Aster fell partially insensate in the aftermath, floating in a realm of pleasure, which she did not want to return from. Only when the rain stopped did she deign to open her eyes and find that they were now sitting next to the fire, drying themselves in the exuded warmth. There was the silence between them, the silence of lovers who have connected so completely that they do not need talk. Aster felt content, complete and somewhat dreamy as she sat in Owen’s lap and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“We can use some of the pork fat as soap, I think,” Owen said, as if the idea had suddenly occurred to him. “If we boil it up and add some bone ashes, maybe some herbs...”
“That sounds disgusting,” Aster said, wrinkling her nose.
“It’s how they did it before you could buy it in the supermarkets. People have been making soap for a long time. All you need is fat and an alkali, you can make lye with wood ashes.”
Aster stared at him, thoroughly impressed by the knowledge that flowed from him more plentifully than droplets of rain had fallen from the sky. He was a veritable fountain of knowings, like a walking book. “How do you know all this?”
“Like I said—”
“Survival is your business.” Aster nodded, “I know, but knowing how to make your own soap? What’s next, domesticating animals? Planting crops? You’re like a one-man survival manual. You’re like one of those people who spends their life prepping for the apocalypse.” She pointed at him. “You are like the man who survives when nobody else survives and who re-populates the earth by grafting a woman from his rib. You are Adam! I am Eve. This is the garden—”
“Aster,” he said somewhat sharply. “What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I’m just saying that you know everything and everything knows you.”
“When you learn about survival, there’s a lot of information out there,” Owen explained, giving her a slightly funny look, as if he was trying to work out if she had two heads or four. “People survived for hundreds of thousands of years without the trappings of modern life, without electricity or running water, or even modern medical care.”
“But they died early.”
“Sure, but we don’t have to survive for the rest of our lives,” Owen said. “We just have to survive long enough for them to find us.”
“Which they’re taking their sweet time about.” Aster frowned. “Sweet time. Very odd phrase. Is time ever bitter, you think? Can we taste time? Are we made of time? Is food time? What if we’ve been eating clocks?”
“They know there’s a down helicopter somewhere,” Owen said, ignoring the more silly of her comments. “They will look until they find it. I don’t imagine your father is going to give up, Aster. We will be found. It’s just a matter of making ourselves comfortable until that happens.”
“So we’re not going to go down to the river bed anymore? Just because it rained? Have you not heard of the parable of Incy Wincy, the spider who went down the waterspout, but was stymied by inclement weather? Out came the sunshine and dried up all the rain, and Incy Wincy spider went down the spout again.”
“You really are in a very odd mood,” Owen observed. “We’ve got no real hope that the weather will hold. Once it starts turning like it did today, you don’t really know what you’ll be getting. And we don’t really know where the river is, for that matter. It could be hours and hours away. Today was useful for scouting some of the area, but the idea of moving was premature I think.” He looked vaguely embarrassed, as if having gone back on his plan was a failing of some kind.
Aster reached out and put her hand on his. “You’ve kept us alive where most people would be dead, or close to it,” she said. “It’s better to realize you have to change course than to keep going into danger just because you don’t want to look silly.”
“I know.” He smiled. “Still, that’s really what it comes down to out here. One wrong decision, one slip, it could all be fatal. We’ve got to be so careful.”
“You’ve always got to be careful in life,” Aster pointed out. “In a city you have to make sure you don’t walk into traffic, or go down the wrong alley, or you know, things. This is just a different set of rules.”
“In the city you have back up, other people who can help. Medics, that sort of thing. We only have each other.”
“We have each other at least,” Aster reassured him. “And people are coming. You know they are.”
“I know,” he agreed with a smile. “You’re very sweet, you know.”
“Everybody needs reassurance sometimes,” she said. “You can’t always be the one telling me everything is going to be okay. I can tell you too.”
Owen reached over, cupped her chin and pressed tender kisses to her mouth. “I love you,” he repeated. “And I�
�m going to get you home safe.”
“I know you will,” she said, looking into his eyes so he could see that she meant what she said. She trusted him more than she’d ever trusted anyone in her life. And even though they were still hopelessly lost, she no longer felt lost. She felt connected, to him, to the land itself, to the world at large. She was part of something she had never been part of before. Every leaf, every twig, every part of the dirt beneath them, she felt a warmth toward it all.
“You’re glowing,” he said.
“I’m happy.”
“I don’t think that’s it.” He pressed his hand to her forehead. “Aster, you’re very warm.”
“I feel fine.”
“Come and lie down,” he urged her. “I think you might be running a fever.”
“I’m fine!”
“You’re sweating,” he said. “And you’re burning up, and the fact that you don’t feel bad doesn’t mean you’re not ill. Lie down for me.”
He drew her back into the interior of the shelter, where a rudimentary bed of leaves and moss awaited her. They had been sleeping on it for some time and it was actually quite comfortable, once you got over how very organic it all was.
“I am a nut,” she giggled as she lay back, stark naked and beaming broadly. “I am a peanut and this is my shell.”
“You are a nut of some kind,” he said. “I think we have some paracetamol here somewhere. I’m fairly certain you’re running a fever.”
“I’m fairly certain that you’re fairly certain,” Aster replied nonsensically. She did feel a bit hot, now that he mentioned it. And a bit swimmy around the eyes and a bit generally odd.
“How long have you been feeling sick?”
“I haven’t been feeling sick,” Aster said. “I’ve just been feeling.”
“Hmm. Have you eaten something aside from the pork and roots and such?”
“Mmm hmm… umm...”
His brows drew together and his face assumed the aspect of a thundercloud. The weather had turned yet again, and Aster suspected that she had no canopy to protect her from his rain.
