by Brian King
“Fuck!” I shouted. A second later, I reached down and picked up a rock. I whipped it at another straggler and managed to hit one of the fleeing birds right in the back. The orange bird screamed in pain, and flapped its large black wings in 8x speed, but it still managed to get away.
The birds spiraled upward toward the top of the sequoia and belted out defiant caws that sounded like blue jays. They apparently didn’t see our presence as a deal breaker because they weren’t flying off to a more distant part of Dinosaurland.
“Great throw, Victor,” Sheela said. “I should have done the same by finding a rock.”
“Yeah, you taught me that, but I need to work in some training time with my spear.” I was happy my throws tended to get very close to the target, but I had to get a lot better or my spear’s damage per minute was going to remain at zero.
“We have breakfast,” she said as she pulled her spear out of the dead bird. “I’m going to get this up into the cave.”
“Hey, while you’re up there, please grab two water jugs. I want to take Hope out for her first task of the day.” I waited until Sheela acknowledged she’d heard me, then I went to Hope’s pen and removed the piece of wood blocking her in.
“Good morning to you. Those birds didn’t bother you, did they?” I smiled at my new friend, but she wore no expression I could read. I’d said good morning to thousands of animals back at my parents’ clinic, but this magnificent creature was all mine. “I’m glad to see you didn’t run away.” I kept my voice friendly and upbeat for her.
Hope blew through her nose and created a deep echo in her crest. It reminded me of someone humming, and I imagined that she was glad to see me. Though her tail didn’t wag like a happy puppy, it did sway a little.
I patted her on the neck while she regarded me with her large bumble bee eyes. Then Hope readjusted her head to watch Sheela jog up to us with the water jugs over her shoulders.
“Great. Now, all we have to do is figure out how to stabilize all this on her back while we ride to the waterhole,” I said.
A few giant dragonflies whizzed by while we climbed into the same seating positions we used the day before. Once we were on top, we straddled Hope’s shoulders and held ourselves in place by wrapping our legs around her neck.
“You ready back there?” I asked after Sheela had taken a few moments to reposition her spear and the jugs.
“Yes, Victor,” she answered.
The solution to carry the water was much easier than I’d anticipated. She was able to set the spear across her thighs as she sat behind me, and each of the jugs hung on either end of the wooden pole so they swung to each side of Hope.
The morning air was fresh, and I held the neck rope loosely in my hands as I tried to steady my heart with deep breaths. It was so fucking cool to be sitting on a dinosaur. Especially with a beautiful babe sitting behind me.
“Let’s roll out,” I said, and Hope sprang from her pen.
We went right up to a steady run, and I heard Sheela gasp. I laughed out loud as the wind threatened to steal my hat, and Sheela added to my joy when she tightened her arms around my waist. For a few luxurious moments, I celebrated the fact I was in command of such a powerful beast while I had a sexy woman gripping my body.
I figured out I only needed to tap my boot lightly on either side of Hope’s neck to guide her. It was more like she knew where I wanted to go before I even touched her, and we flew around redwoods and across fern patches with what I sensed was mutual glee. I was almost disappointed we had to stop at the stream a couple of minutes later.
“This is awesome!” I shouted as I slowed Hope to a stop.
Sheela jumped off the dino and went right to the water’s edge, so she could submerge the two jugs. I remained on Hope’s shoulders to keep watch like a badass warrior on his tough-as-nuts steed, but when the massive parasaur dipped her head to take her own drink, I dipped with her.
“Oh, shit!” I cried out.
It felt like I was a car sliding toward an accident on black ice. I clenched my jaw as I fell forward along Hope’s neck, then I tumbled over her head and belly flopped into the shallow stream. It all happened so fast I needed a few moments to process it.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” is all I could get out as I struggled to my feet.
Sheela splashed over to me but stopped as soon as she saw I was okay.
Hope also made a series of snorts that had to be mimicking a laugh. I spun so I could see her as I sat in the water, but was already laughing a bit myself.
“Did Trel tell you to do that?” I asked the dino between laughs. I didn’t think the spider-woman had any power to talk to animals, but I wouldn’t put it past her to try. Was this what she meant when she said she was going to have fun with me?
“Was it Galmine?” I said with more laughter. “Or Sheela?” I turned suddenly serious while hooking my thumb in the direction of my feline companion.
“It was not me,” Sheela said with a playful defensiveness.
A distant roar ended the moment of humor. It wasn’t a screech I recognized, but that didn’t make me feel any better.
“We should get back. Luckily, we’ll only need a minute, or two.” I was up out of the water in a flash and helped get Sheela and the heavy water jugs situated.
She again set the spear on her thighs while she sat behind me, and I guided Hope away from the water as Sheela clung to my wet body.
A few minutes later, we were back at camp and smiling. Sheela and I dismounted like we’d practiced it many times already, and I let out another laugh.
“Wow. Hope is already paying off,” I said with excitement. “She could save us hours a week of walking back and forth to the creek, Sheela.”
“I will tell the others when I go up there,” she replied. “This is excellent for us all.”
I stuck with Hope while Sheela carried the water up to the cave. I was swamped with plans and tasks and running clocks, but I still had time to admire her sexy bare back, shoulders, and ass when she walked away from me.
“You made me look like a fucking rock star yesterday,” I whispered to Hope as I petted her flank, “but you’re literally making me into a wet blanket today. What gives? I’d bet my last soggy dollar you know what you were doing.” I then laughed at how silly it sounded.
I took off my wet uniform shirt and my white undershirt, so I could toss them on a tree branch to dry. I worried about my farmer’s tan and lack of heroic physique, but when I looked down, I wasn’t completely embarrassed. I was far from having washboard abs and ripped pecs, but I wasn’t a weakling, either. Some muscles were starting to appear on my shoulders, and I could actually see the vein on each of my biceps. I decided the rating of 4 for my strength was definitely earned.
I didn’t flinch when Sheela came out with a shitload of rope slung over her shoulders, but I did expect her to make some kind of comment about being shirtless.
“This is a harness devised by the team inside the cave.” She said as she handed me the rope. “So we can drag logs behind Hope.”
“Team?” I replied.
Sheela looked at my chest for a moment, then came back to my eyes.
“You would have to inquire inside as to who helped make it,” the blonde woman replied. “Someone asked me not to say.”
“Oh, Trel,” I said with a chuckle.
“You did not hear it from me.” Sheela smiled as I took the rope.
“Then let’s get started by testing Hope on one of the logs tossed from our old fort by the stampede,” I replied. The well-crafted rope was thicker and stronger because three separate ropes were elegantly braided together. It was obviously Trel’s handiwork, and I knew I’d probably never hear the end of how easy it was for her to create.
Getting the harness hooked up on Hope took about a half an hour. The main loop went around her neck above her shoulders right where we sat. Another loop went around her broad mid-section and linked to the front loop with a horizontal rope on each side.
Two pull lines hooked onto that second loop, went under her tail, and joined together at the log about forty feet behind her. Once she was connected to the load, Hope seemed anxious to start dragging.
“Here goes nothing,” I said as I tapped her neck with my foot. The parasaur’s bulky body made it hard to look over my shoulder and see the log behind us, so I had to depend on Sheela to guide me. I ordered Hope to drag it over to the empty space where we’d built the original fort and soon enough I heard Sheela yell for us to stop.
The concept worked. We’d used a dinosaur to tow a heavy log across the camp.
“That’s it, girl,” I chuckled. “I doubt you even knew you were pulling something.”
I hopped off Hope, ran over to Sheela, and gave her a big hug. The blonde woman’s chest mashed against my shirtless body for a moment, and I had just enough time to feel her rock-hard nipples rub against me. She squeezed my upper arms for a second, glanced again at my chest, and then flashed a warm smile before letting me go.
“We did it!” I said after the awkwardness had passed.
“I am so happy this is going to work, Victor,” the feline woman said in a businesslike voice. “Your skill is incredible and will undoubtedly improve our lives. Thank you for celebrating with this embrace, but I should not have rubbed your body. We must remember I am married.”
Fuck. Why did she have to remind me all the time? I never forgot for a second that my personal trainer sex goddess of a feline warrior was off limits for me. When I caught glimpses of her side boob or the sweat glistening on her abs, I instantly remembered she was married. When she displayed her rockin’ physique as she chopped trees or tossed spears, I remembered she was married. Even watching her walk was a reminder. Pretty much everything she did tempted me to notice, yet here she was once again telling me the most obvious thing in the world.
Hot. Married. Sexy. Married. It was a vicious cycle.
“No. It’s cool,” I said as I tried to hide my disappointment. “I’m just happy you and I have another victory. It feels good. Now we have to try to take this to the next level.”
I had her grab as many axes as she could carry from inside the cave and then meet me next to a medium-sized tree about twice as wide as the ones from the old fort. If we were going to up our game and build a wall that could withstand a stampede, we needed to cut and haul bigger logs. The first step to our new process was cutting down a sample tree, and when everything was set, I showed her what we were going to do.
“We’ll each cut away at this tree at the same time,” I said while pointing, “so we can knock it down as fast as possible. I don’t know how many axes it's going to take, but that’s why I had you bring so many.” I counted six, which was just about all we’d made over the past week.
“I understand, Victor,” she said with a grim smile. “We must be prepared to jump out of the way when it falls.”
“That’s the plan,” I replied.
We began chopping while standing on opposite sides of the tree, and we each tried to hit the same notch. I’d gotten pretty good at cutting trees over the past ten days and knew how to get them to fall where I wanted. But even with two axes, it took about thirty minutes to get the tree to crack at the base and then tip over.
“Timber!” I shouted as we stepped out of the path of the falling redwood.
The fifty-footer crashed to the forest floor with a rumble, and I gripped my axe to await trouble. We’d been dropping trees for almost two weeks without attracting attention, but this one seemed extra loud. Sheela saw what I was doing and immediately crouched in her fighting stance with her axe, but after a short period of silence, I finally told her why I was skittish.
“Since the stampede, we’ve had a run of good luck. I feel like something bad is coming.”
“You must make your own luck. Do not let this world dictate it to you.” Positive reinforcement was like second nature to her.
“Now comes the fun part. We have to cut off the bottom ten feet of this bad boy, so we can stand it on end.” The whole point of cutting a new batch of trees was to ensure they were beefy enough to withstand any attack. The sixty or so six-inch-wide logs in our original pile would be great for parts of the enclosure that dinosaurs couldn’t attack, like the living space inside the fort, but we needed these bigger trees to form the stout outer walls.
“What we really need is a big beaver,” I said. A second later I cracked up laughing at myself.
“What’s so funny?” Sheela said as she rested against the trunk of the felled tree.
“Oh, I just thought it would be super useful to tame an animal that could cut all our trees for us. Back on my world, we have animals with nice fur called beavers. They chew through wood like this and use the downed lumber to make their homes. Can you imagine what we could do if some kind of mega-beaver lived in these parts? I could tame it, ride it, and maybe even pet it.” I chuckled a bit, wondering if I was ever going to outgrow this sort of humor.
“Yes, I would love to have a beaver like that,” Sheela replied. “I would pet it frequently.”
I laughed uncontrollably for a solid minute at what she’d said, and I didn’t care if it was immature or not. She took it in good humor until I caught my breath and had to explain it to her.
“Beaver is another name for the, uh, private area between a woman’s legs,” I said. It didn’t sound nearly as funny when I said it out loud.
“Females on your planet wear animals between their legs? You are a strange species, Victor,” she replied with no sign she understood what she’d just said.
I stifled more laughter because we had to keep on task. I’d begun to suspect there were a lot of word jokes I could play on Sheela, but they wouldn’t be as funny if I had to explain them all.
“I’m sorry, Sheela. We need to ready this wood, so we can get it in the hole,” I added while doing my best to get past my laughing fit.
We began hacking the fallen tree at the halfway point, but it took us twice as long because we had to go all the way through. By the time we finished, my hands were on fire from the pain of chopping.
We’d just gotten the big tree hooked up to Hope when the forest came alive with a disturbing noise that sounded like blue jay screams. I hopped off the parasaur with my axe in hand a moment before the orange birds descended on us from the pine boughs of the redwoods.
Hope seemed mildly curious about the noise, but immediately bent her neck to get at some ferns instead of preparing to fight. Several of the birds swooped through the air twenty feet above us and squawked loudly as if to complain about our presence. In moments there were seven or eight of them flying in wide loops like they were buzzards eying roadkill.
“Shit. There are more of these bastards,” I said to Sheela.
We both stood next to Hope at the edge of our construction site, but the parasaur remained oblivious to the intruders. Her contribution to our defense was blowing her horn in pleasant notes like she wanted us to know she’d found tasty leaves.
I was going to protect her no matter what she was doing, so I stepped up to the side of her neck and put my hand on her scales to ready myself. However, just as I did that, the birds started to retreat back up into the high branches. The distinctive orange and black colors rose until they were almost out of sight.
We all stood there until I was pretty certain the potential attack was over.
“I do not think they like Hope,” Sheela remarked.
“We’ve got to keep building,” I said. “You were absolutely correct. These orange birds aren’t going to give up just because we’re here. Even Hope won’t keep them all away.”
“Once they found my first cave, they came in ever larger waves until they took it from me. Their migratory habits must be the same here.” My feline friend frowned as she continued to watch the trees above.
“And, if you had to guess, how long would you say we have before there are too many birds to fight off?” I asked.
“Our original schedule seems co
rrect, but it is impossible to say with certainty,” she said with unusual lack of detail. “As you said, we should not delay.”
“So, it might be sooner?” I asked in a quiet voice.
Sheela looked at me and nodded her head to answer my question.
“Okay,” I said after a moment of thought, “we can deal with that, but how long do you think it will be before these impatient scout birds get up in our face and want to fight?”
“Much sooner,” she replied.
I took a deep breath to keep my nerves from getting away from me, then I hopped up on Hope’s shoulders. I tapped her neck a few times to get her to stop eating those ferns, but once she got going, it was a snap to drag the big trunk over to the job site. Sheela called out when the tree was in position, so I had a moment of thought while she unhooked the rope. By the time she uncoupled the log, I’d revised our plan for the day.
“Sheela, I want you to make two sets of bows and arrows tonight. If those birds keep coming, we are going to need something to take them out before there are too many. You’ve been right about everything else, so this seems like the smartest course of action,” I said to her as she walked around the side of Hope.
“And what shall we do right now?” she asked while giving my shirtless chest another quick glance.
“Everything else,” I replied with a reassuring laugh. After her strange flirtations, I wondered if I should be extra firm with her. I was conflicted because her words to me said “marriage,” but her erect nipples and sly glances told me a different story. “Actually, I want you to help me and Hope while we try to dig a hole. We need to bury these poles about three feet into the ground so they stand upright.”
“Just tell me what to do,” she said with a coy smile.
That afternoon the two of us worked with Hope to make a ditch. I mentally suggested Hope use her foot to create a furrow in the soil. It took her a few tries to get it right, but I was shocked at how well the link between us conveyed my wishes. I repeated the tapping as she dragged her clawed foot along the same line until it was so deep she couldn’t reach the bottom.
