“How?” I asked.
“It would be difficult without nails,” Trel said, “but I realized I can use rope to suspend platforms. I can ascend the trunk easily, and we can have a rope ladder descend so the rest of you can follow.”
“So we are going to need a shitload of rope,” I said.
“Yes,” Trel said. “But the cordage we are making with plant fibers will not be strong enough. This is the mistake I made.”
“How are we going to make stronger rope?” I asked.
“Dinosaur sinew,” Trel said with a sly smile. “I will still need a lot of it, but it will last much longer than what we are using now, and it will support more weight. I made a mistake by not thinking of it sooner.”
“We have a pile of raptors out there,” I said as I pointed to the door of our fort.
“Yes, but night approaches. If they are still there in the morning, we can use them, or we can all drag them back into the fort and then begin the long process of cutting them open and tearing out their tendons and ligaments.”
“We also need to get fibers to make baskets,” I said as I went back to my plan about what to do tonight without clay.
“That will be much easier to gather,” Trel said. “You should leave now and get them. The sinew approach will take a long time for us to process. We will need to tear them out of the corpses, then let them dry, then cut them into thinner strips, then wind them together, then combine them into thicker cords, then rope. It will take two, maybe three times as long to come up with cordage using it, but the result will be much stronger.”
“It would be much better for bows,” Sheela said.
“Yes. It is a better material. I am apologizing because I didn’t think of it before, and I’m angry for the time we wasted.”
“That’s okay, Trel,” I said. “We aren’t used to doing this. We are all learning as we live. We know now. If the raptor bodies are still there tomorrow, we’ll get what sinew we can, if not, there will be other fuckers that attack us. We’ll use every piece of them to survive.”
“Good,” she said. “Now, before I get to the saddle, let me show you this platform. This will be the side support structure. I will join them together with slots and cordage. The shape of the trapezoid creates a slope on this one end. I will just need to make a rectangle at the back, steps on the front, and a floor to it. Then we will be able to step up and stand at an elevated position.”
“It is a good design,” Sheela said.
“Of course it is!” Trel beamed. “Now go get more material for cordage, and I will begin building a new saddle. Bring as much as you can before the sun sets.”
“Got it,” I said.
“I’ll put the water in the hut and then join you,” Sheela said as she carried the two jugs away.
I gave Trel a smile, and then turned to walk back to Hope, but the obsidian-haired woman grabbed my arm.
“We have a problem that you will need to deal with,” she whispered.
“Oh?” I asked.
“Kacerie is not willing to leave the hut tonight. I will not make love to you outside like some sort of animal. You need to deal with her so that she gives us our privacy.”
“Deal with her?” I asked with a bit of surprise since Trel had emphasized those words.
“Yes, kill her or something. She is annoying and getting in the way of my pregnancy.”
“I’m sure she can be reasoned with,” I said. “No one needs to kill anyone.”
“I said ‘or something.’” Trel huffed. “If it were up to me, I’d just kill her.”
“Trel,” I started to say, but she continued.
“I knew that would anger you! That is why I haven’t done it. You think she is useful, for whatever reason. Anyways, you are our leader and my selected mate. Just tell her where her place is in our tribe so that I can give you a night of pleasure. My womb is ripe and craves your seed.” Trel’s dark eyes pierced mine, and I felt a shiver of excitement descend my spine.
“I’ll fix it,” I said as I saw Sheela exit the hut. Neither of the two women seemed to like Kacerie, but I wasn’t going to judge her until I spent more time with the woman.
Sheela and I jumped back on Hope and trotted out of the doorway. The trip to the closest group of ferns was really quick, but we were going to be able to carry more on the back of Hope than if Sheela and I had just run there.
“Now it appears something is bothering you,” Sheela said as I cut the dozenth fern away from the ground and stacked it in her arms.
“Neither you nor Trel seem to like Kacerie,” I said. “I need to spend some time with her.”
“Agreed,” Sheela said. “Galmine, Trel, and I have developed a strong bond with you. I believe Kacerie will as well.”
“Yeah,” I said as I put another bundle of ferns into Sheela’s arms. “That seems like enough. Let’s--”
A loud roar cut through the forest. It was almost deafening, and I saw the fallen leaves and needles on the ground actually vibrate.
“Get the fuck home!” I hissed as I turned to Hope. The parasaur’s head was held up high, and I saw her twist her neck toward where the noise had come from.
Sheela and I ran to the side of our steed, and I helped my friend mount so that she didn’t drop all the ferns. Then I leapt up in front of her, and Hope sprinted back to the gate. Another roar sounded as soon as we made it through, and I quickly tied our locking ropes around the door handles so that it couldn’t be moved.
Kacerie and Trel were running toward me on bare feet, and I saw Galmine poke her head out of the hut’s door.
“What was that? How close is it? Do we need to hide?” Kacerie asked.
“Something big, I don’t know, and we have nowhere to hide,” I answered as I grabbed some of the ferns from Sheela.
“What do you mean, you don’t know? Aren’t you our leader? You are supposed to--”
“Let’s go in the hut, eat dinner, and work on these ferns,” I said to the women. Kacerie’s face turned red when I didn’t answer her, but Sheela and Trel moved to follow my instructions, and the pink-haired woman was forced to follow.
The inside of the hut was a bit cramped with five of us, but I opted to sit with my back at the doorway, and we soon had the ferns distributed among us.
“We don’t have clay, so we are going to work on cordage and baskets,” I began as soon as we all sat down. “Trel and I are going to figure out better ways to make baskets, while Sheela and Galmine teach Kacerie how to make cordage. We’ll use the center parts of the fern for the baskets and the outer parts for the cordage so we don’t waste any of the parts. Stack the basket parts over by Trel and me. Any questions?”
“What are we going to do if the monster that roared comes?” Kacerie asked.
“We’ll probably die,” I said with a shrug.
“What kind of answer is that?” she hissed. “You won’t save us?”
“Do you want me to save you?” I asked her with a half-smile.
“Uhh, yeah.”
“Cool, don’t worry then. I’ll save you.”
Kacerie’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe you.”
“Oh, you should,” Galmine said. “Victor is incredibly brave. He’s fought many dinosaurs and never been beaten. He will protect us. You don’t need to worry.”
Kacerie rolled her eyes, but I noticed Sheela’s mouth open wide. She turned to look at me, and her eyes seemed to glow with the firelight.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her, but the cat-woman shut her mouth and then shook her head.
“Get to work,” I said. “We can’t do anything about that big motherfucker finding us, but we can focus on the baskets and cordage. Make it happen.”
My friends all nodded, and we split into the two task groups.
During the last week of fort-building with Trel, we’d developed a much closer relationship. She used to belittle me at every chance, insult me when I made a mistake, or harass me when I tried to work with her. Our friendship
had reached a turning point when she told me that she loved me and didn’t want to lose me. It had triggered an alert in my Eye-Q and added her to my list of “Women” assets. I still didn’t know exactly how the system knew for sure that she should be on the list, but as we sat and puzzled through the best way to weave baskets, I knew the spider-woman had come to value me as a friend and leader.
Soon, I hoped she would value me as a lover.
After a few different attempts, we came up with two basket designs we knew would work for our purposes. The first we created by taking the smaller offshoot leaves from the ferns, stacking them together in bunches of ten that were about a finger in length, and the bending them in half around another bunch. We then tied them together with one of the longer arms of the leaf Sheela, Kacerie, and Galmine were using to make cordage. The design took on a bit of a circular-spiral shape after we did this a few dozen times, and the tightness of the leaves meant that mud, clay, or any other semi-liquid type fill would have trouble escaping. We made the bottom circular-spiral about a foot in diameter and then used the same “stacked and bent leaf” method to create rolled sides that we tied to the base. The end result was a cylinder basket with three-foot tall sides and a circumference that was easy to wrap our arms around. There were small holes in a few spots where we didn’t quite get the leaves tight enough, but it was going to be the perfect basket to carry clay or mud in. The best part of the design was that it was made entirely with the smaller parts of the fern, and it incorporated using the leaves we really didn’t have much use for with our cordage making process. It left the larger center stalks available to peel and use for cordage, but Trel and I came up with our second design that used those thicker parts to make baskets that would be great for trapping fish or carrying ferns.
For our second design, we took eight thick center stalks from the fern leaves and laid them out on the ground in a star shape. We bound the center where these eight stalks intersected with cordage, and then we weaved one of the stalks using an alternating pattern of up and over or down and under each of the star arms.
The concept was pretty simple, and we were able to push the weaved parts closer to the intersection and create a similar base to what we had with our leaf designed basket. It wasn’t nearly as liquid-tight, but it was strong, and I was confident the bottom wouldn’t fall out if we put weight on it. When we were happy with the size of the base, we just bent up the arms of the star and then wove more of the stalks through the arms. This basket wasn’t near as air-tight as the first one, but it would be able to hold leaves, firewood, and trap fish just fine. It also didn’t use the same parts of the fern as the earlier design. We might even be able to craft stronger baskets with this design if we used really thin tree stalks.
We didn’t hear anymore roars from distant dinosaurs while we puzzled through the baskets, and my friends quickly began chatting about plans for the fort, starting a farm, and building fish traps. Kacerie didn’t really participate in the conversation, but I noticed she was exceptionally skilled at winding the cordage. She wasn’t as quick as Trel, but I could tell that her background in hair styling had given her a lot of finger dexterity.
After we finished the first two baskets, Trel and I showed the other women the designs. Galmine continued with her cordage making, but Sheela and Kacerie switched tasks and went to work building more baskets.
“I am going to go work on the saddle replacement,” Trel said as she grabbed a coil of rope from the floor of the tent.
“It is dark out there,” I said.
“I can see in the dark,” she said. “I’ll return for dinner. I believe you have another job to attend to?”
“Yeah,” I replied, and I saw Sheela shoot me a questioning look.
Trel left without saying another word, and I turned my attention to Kacerie. I didn’t really know how to approach the subject. It seemed as if I was being a bit of a dick by asking these women to leave the hut so that Trel and I could make love.
“Kacerie, you are doing a great job weaving those baskets,” I said.
“Ahh, thanks,” she said as she looked up from her work. “It’s pretty simple.”
“It’s a big help. I know this has been a hard transition for you,” I said.
“You have no idea.” The woman sighed and closed her light-blue eyes.
“Well, I kind of do,” I said. “We all do. We were all taken from our worlds without any explanation and then just put here. We know what you are going through.”
“Do you?” she said as her eyes narrowed. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I’d like to know more,” I said with a shrug. “I think maybe we got off on the wrong foot.”
“What do you mean by wrong foot? I took my shoes off when you asked me.”
“Oh, sorry,” I said. “It’s a saying from my world. It means that we didn’t really get a chance to talk or become friends quickly. I just grabbed you from the raptors and got you back here.”
“Yeah,” she said with a shrug. “I already thanked you for that.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I said. “Can you tell us a bit about yourself?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Tell us about your world, and how you grew up, and your job. Did you have a family, or husband, or kids?”
“Oh ewwww no,” she said with a sour look on her beautiful face. “Kids are annoying. No husband either. I never found anyone good enough to marry, but I was dating four different men. All rich, of course, I was heading to meet one when I ended up here.”
“Like a date?” I asked.
“Sure.” She shrugged. “It was this expensive party-- look, you all don’t care, and I don’t care to talk about it. I’m here, working on this basket instead of lounging around my apartment, or going on dates, or working. It’s terrible.”
“Yeah, I get--”
“I could be dead,” she interrupted me, “but I’m guessing you saving me is just delaying the inevitable.”
“No,” I said. “We are going to live. We have a plan, and--”
“Weaving baskets?” she asked with disgust in her voice. “Did you hear the same roar I heard? Whatever made that sound isn’t going to care about the walls you built or the baskets we are making. You don’t even think you can fight it. How are we supposed to survive on this world? Everything wants to kill us. I thought you and Sheela were dead when Hope came back. I’m thankful you aren’t, but what about tomorrow?”
“You are right to be afraid,” I said, “but we can’t control the big dinosaur out there. All we can do is what we can do with what we have. Tonight we are weaving baskets, tomorrow we’ll be getting clay and making pots, then we’ll be making sinew rope and I’ll tame a larger dinosaur. We’ll build a bigger wall. We’ll build a farm. We’ll get stronger. In a few months, we’ll hear that roar and laugh about how worried we once were. We just have to keep moving and trying to survive. We can’t do anything about it now, but we will in a month.”
“So, just pray it doesn’t come eat us?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said. “Or don’t bother. Just focus on what is in front of you.”
“Alright,” she said with a sigh. Then she looked down at her basket and continued her work.
I puzzled through how I was going to tell the three women that Trel and I needed the hut. It had been easier with Galmine, because I’d just come in last night to sleep, and the gray-skinned woman followed me inside. Now I was pretty much telling them that they needed to leave and stand outside while Trel and I had sex.
“So, I need to talk to the three of you about something,” I said after a few more minutes of pondering my words.
“Yes, Victor?” Galmine asked as she smiled at me.
“I have feelings for you, Galmine,” I said. “I had a wonderful time last night, and this morning.”
“I know.” She smiled sweetly at me.
“I also have feelings for Trel. I know we didn’t start off as friends, but we get
along well together. She thinks I’ll be able to get her pregnant, but I don’t--”
“Victor!” I heard Trel hiss from outside of our hut, and I turned around to look out the curtain.
“What’s--”
“Come out here, please,” she asked, and I felt a little concerned because I’d never heard her use the word “please.”
I quickly stepped out of the hut and heard Sheela following me. The light from the white moon was pretty bright, so I could see the entire area of our walled-in camp.
“What is wrong?” I whispered to Trel.
“Come look,” she urged as she gestured toward the door. Sheela and I walked with her, and I started to hear angry squawks in the distance.
“Can you climb up the wall?” Trel asked as she pointed.
“I will lift you,” Sheela answered before I could, and the cat-woman held out her hands in a cradle as soon as we reached the logs.
I put my left boot in her hands, felt her pulse her arms two times, and then I pushed off the ground with my right leg as she lifted. Sheela was crazy strong, and I was easily able to pull myself up to the top points of our fort wall. Trel skittered up easily, and Sheela climbed up with only a little more effort.
“What am I looking at?” I asked as I felt a bit of fear descend my spine. I could smell something off in the air. Kind of like the time when I drove past farmlands that had just been fertilized.
“Look by the corpses you put down,” Trel said, and I glanced off into the darkness.
“I can’t really see anything,” I said.
“I can,” Sheela replied with a sigh.
“Oh wait,” I hissed as I started to see shapes move across the ground and lift into the air.
Then I realized that the screaming I heard in the distance was actually closer than I thought.
“They are fighting,” Sheela said as my own eyes struggled to make sense of the dark shapes fluttering through the moonlight.
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