“It is the orange birds and the larger green type, like the one that was in this tree,” Trel said.
“Pterodactyl,” I said.
“Whatever,” she replied. “There are hundreds of them. Some are going after the corpses, but others are trying to get into the cave.
As soon as she spoke, I heard a screech tear through the sky above us. It sounded like it was only a foot over our heads, and the three of us ducked.
“They are coming this way,” Sheela said.
“Fuck,” I groaned. “Alright. Everyone inside. We are done for the night. Let’s get something to eat, work on whatever baskets we need, and then see what tomorrow brings us.”
“But we have something to do tonight,” Trel sighed.
“I know, but it will have to wait.” I pushed away from the wall and dropped down to the floor of our camp just as another screech sounded above us. Trel and Sheela quickly followed, and we made haste back to our hut.
By the time we all got inside, the screams sounded like they were right above us.
“What is that?” Kacerie asked with obvious fear painted on her face.
“Two types of flying dinosaurs are fighting above us,” I explained. “We need to stay in here for the rest of the night.”
“They are ruining my planned pregnancy,” Trel growled as she sat down. “I don’t really want to have sex with them screaming above us, but I do suppose these are desperate times.”
“Trel,” I said. “We are going to have to try again tomorrow.”
“What?” she gasped. “Why?”
“Because,” I said as I gestured to the other women in the small hut.
“They can’t watch,” Trel crossed her arms. “I’m not into that.”
“Yeah, uhh no. Well, they can’t go outside. I think we are safe in here, but I don’t want anyone to get attacked.”
“Ugh!” Trel moaned. “Fine, give me a fern so that I might turn it into a--”
“I just used the last of them.” Kacerie frowned as she held up her half-made basket.
“Meeerrawww,” Trel groaned, and her spider legs tapped angrily against the ground. “This is unbelievably frustrating. Victor, I only have a few days of ovulation. Tomorrow you will perform your duties as my mate.”
“Yeah,” I said as I sat down next to her.
“You don’t seem excited enough, nor are you upset enough that we are unable to have sex right now.”
“Wait, you want me both excited and upset at the same time?” I tried not to laugh, but it came out anyway.
“Yes,” she replied seriously.
“I’ll work on that, but now, I’m going to sleep.” I couldn’t do anything about the massive aerial dinosaur battle going on outside, and the sound was extremely annoying, but not sleeping would cause me problems tomorrow.
And we had a lot of shit to do tomorrow.
“You do not want dinner?” Galmine asked me with concern.
“Naw,” I said. “I’m really tired, and we have a lot of work tomorrow.”
“What of Hope?” Sheela asked.
“I doubt that either of the flying dinos will attack her, but there isn’t anything we can do either way. There are hundreds out there, and they’ll tear us into pieces if we get their attention. I’m going to use my ability to make sure she stays calm.” I hadn’t gotten any sense of movement or heard any noise from Hope, but I tried to imagine her just laying down calmly and sleeping through all the racket in the air.
“I will also skip the meal then,” Trel proclaimed. “Victor, you must wrap your arms around me when you sleep. Understood?”
“Uhh, yeah.” Her words surprised me, but I lay out on the floor of our hut and held my arms open for her.
The spider woman let out a soft sigh and then slid down next to me. She pushed her face into my chest, and I felt her long pointy fingers kind of knead into my stomach.
“Arms. Around. Me.” Her voice was a whisper, but I followed her wishes, and she sighed again when she laid the side of her head on my bicep.
“I like your scent,” Trel whispered softly in my ear. “I was foolish to treat you as I once did. Tomorrow I will make it up to you.” She was only wearing her tight silk bra and boy-shorts, and I kind of wished that I’d taken off at least my shirt before lying down. But then again, everyone else was still in the hut, and I noticed Sheela staring at me.
The cat-woman’s golden eyes flashed for half a moment, but then she turned away before I could understand the expression on her face. It almost looked like Sheela was angry, and I realized that we were going to have to talk about our friendship soon. I wasn’t sure if she had feelings for me, but I had them for her, so I figured I needed to man up and say something.
“I will sleep also,” Sheela said over the screams of the dinosaurs fighting above us.
“Same,” Kacerie said. “Although I don’t know how I’ll do it with them screeching. Aren’t you all worried about one of them falling on our hut?”
“We’ll deal with it if it happens,” I said. “No use worrying about it now.”
“You seem to not worry about anything,” Kacerie grunted as she lay down beside Sheela.
“No,” I whispered. “I’m worrying about everything, but focus on what I can fix.”
“I will keep watch while I lay next to Victor.” Galmine wiggled against my back, but Trel was already twitching with the first hints of a deep sleep, and I guessed that the spider-woman was beyond exhausted.
“You okay to lay there without sleeping?” I whispered.
“Yes, I am fine. Please rest, Victor. You will need all your energy tomorrow.”
Galmine didn’t have to offer again, the sensation of Trel in my arms, Galmine against my back, and the combined scent of their bodies were making my eyelids weigh two-hundred pounds.
Sleep came quickly, and I dreamed about riding on the back of a dinosaur larger than a T-Rex.
Chapter 6
I awoke to sunlight piercing through my eyelids like splintery chopsticks. The light was a dark gold in color, and I guessed that it was early dawn. I felt Galmine’s body pressed against my back, and Trel was still unconscious in my arms. I glanced down at her sleeping face with a bit of amazement. We weren’t lovers yet, but that was only because of circumstances outside of our control. Trel had been my antagonist for practically the entire month I’d been in Dinosaurland, but now she snuggled up against my chest peacefully.
I slowly lifted my head to where I remembered Sheela falling asleep on the other side of the small hut. She wasn’t there, but Kacerie was laying with her back to me.
I moved as slowly as I could and untangled my arms from under Trel. She let out a soft sigh when I slid my bicep away from her head, but I used my fingers to lower her down to the ground softly. I untangled her sharp fingers from my shirt and then wiggled out from in-between Galmine and Trel. I was a bit surprised my movements didn’t wake them up, but we were all still struggling against the exhaustion of building this fort, so I was happy that I hadn’t woken them.
Jinx was curled into a ball besides Galmine’s tummy, and he gave me a lazy gaze before he ducked his head down and closed his eyes again. That guy had absolutely zero reasons to be lazy, but I figured he would keep Galmine company while she slept.
I walked out of the hut and prepared myself to witness the devastation of the battle fought over our heads last night.
I wasn’t disappointed.
There were over a dozen corpses of orange birds inside of our walls and a good fifteen larger pterodactyl bodies. Some were impaled on the spiky tips of our walls, some were splayed open next to the corral where we kept Hope, and a smaller orange bird had actually crashed into the roof of our hut. There were bodies everywhere, and where there weren’t bodies, there was blood and orange feathers.
I didn’t see Sheela around, so I tiptoed over to Hope. The parasaur was lying curled up in her little home, but she was awake and lifted her head up as I walked toward her.
“Hey girl,�
�� I said as I ran my hands over her snout and pressed my forehead against her. “Sorry about last night. You didn’t seem worried,”
She let out a soft toot and then shook her head slowly so that my face rubbed against her’s.
“Did you see Sheela?” I asked her as I patted under her chin.
Hope surprised me by turning toward the door and letting out a soft toot. I saw that the rope locking the gate was actually off, and I grabbed a spear before moving toward it.
The open clearing on the other side of our walls looked even more chaotic than inside our fort. There were even more bodies out here, more feathers, and almost a lake of blood at one spot some fifty yards from us. It had been World War Dino out here, but it was clear who was the winner: the distant cave where we once lived still had orange birds at the mouth, but there were a lot less of them roosting than before.
I saw Sheela off to my left. She had one of the leaf baskets on the ground next to her, and she was kneeling with her back to me.
“Hey,” I said as I walked up behind her.
“Hello, Victor. Did you sleep well?” Her lips curved into a slight smile, and I could see her sharp cat-teeth.
“Yeah,” I said as I looked down at her hands. She was butchering one of the pterodactyls with a small flint blade, but her cuts were focused on the legs and wings of the animal. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“Sinew,” she replied as she gestured to the basket. She had the large cylinder almost half-way filled with the wet, bloody bands, and I realized that every corpse within twenty feet of her had been operated on.
“Good thinking. Trel will be happy if we can get her all of these.” I gestured to the almost endless bodies in the clearing. “Why didn’t you work on the ones inside of the camp first?”
“Those are already ours,” she said with a shrug. “I fear that scavengers will descend upon this spot soon, so I wanted to claim what I could for us.”
“Yeah,” I said as I reached into my shirt pocket for my own blade. It was actually surprisingly simple to make razor sharp stone knives. Their blades didn’t last for long, but I’d gotten skilled at breaking the right kind of rocks at the right kind of angles and then sharpening them again.
“We’ll need to get clay soon, but let’s fill up the basket as much as we can until everyone else wakes up. Can you show me where to cut?”
“Of course,” Sheela answered. “But perhaps this is a better use of our time than getting clay.”
“Hmmm,” I said as I turned her recommendation over in my head. “We still need to get clay soon. This is a great windfall, but if we spend the day cutting out sinew, then Galmine won’t be doing much. If we take an hour and get clay, she will be able to work on that project and teach Kacerie. Then you and I can go back to doing this.”
“I will obey your orders,” Sheela said with her usual shrug.
“It’s not really my orders,” I said with a laugh. “More like my wishes. Do you like it when I order you around?”
“I do,” she said as she turned toward me. Her eyes stared into mine, and I felt my heart start to hammer in my chest.
“So teach me how to cut their tendons and ligaments out,” I whispered. Then she blinked, nodded, and pointed to the wing of the pterodactyl she was working on.
“Cut here,” she said as she drew her small flint blade across the inside part of the wing arm. “Then pull the skin aside. This is the wing tendon.” Sheela then moved her blade to the ends of the wing joint and used the knife to pry the wide band off the bone. Then she cut it free with a quick jerk of her arm.
“Simple enough,” I said as I reached for the other wing.
We worked for a few minutes in silence, and I watched her gather the sinew from the creature’s legs. It wasn’t really as gruesome as I thought it would be, and I knew that the long rubbery bands would be able to help us build better bows and building materials. Maybe even a better saddle.
“Sheela, you were talking about your husband yesterday, and--”
“Victor,” Sheela interrupted. “I misspoke yesterday. I am honor bound to my husband, and I made it sound to you as if I was not happy with him. That is not the case.”
“Ahh,” I said as I tried not to let my disappointment show on my face. “I get it. Don’t worry. I don’t think negatively about you at all.”
“You do not?” she asked.
“No!” I said with a laugh. “In case you haven’t noticed, I really like you. I enjoy the time we spend together, and I wish I could make you happy.”
The blond woman stared at me for a few seconds. “You are a good man, Victor Shelby. I am honored to know you.”
“I’m honored to know you, Sheela. I don’t want to offend you, but I think your husband is a--”
“Please,” she interrupted me again with a wave of her bloody hand. “I do not wish to speak poorly of him. He is how he is, and I am who I am. I am here now, and I am thankful to have a purpose. Let us change the subject.”
“Alright,” I said with a sigh.
“I have something important to ask you.”
“Yeah?”
“Before you were brought to this planet, you mentioned that you had captured a small reptile at a party.”
“It was a poisonous snake.”
“We have such creatures on my world. Can you give me details about how you captured it?”
“Uhh. The snake? What do you mean? I just scooped it up into a box that the woman at the party laid over it.” My memories jumped back to Lacey’s party, and I wondered if my high school crush had thought about me not ever coming back to her party.
“It was that simple? It did not bite you?” Sheela turned to me and the interest was evident in her cat eyes.
“Yeah. It tried to bite me, but I moved my hand out of the way and grabbed it.”
“Ahh, so they are slow? The snakes in my world are very fast.”
“No, it was fast,” I said. “This one was a rattlesnake. The end of its tail makes a noise to warn other animals not to mess with it.”
“So the rattlesnake shook its tail, then tried to bite you? You had a warning?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Why are you so interested?”
“It was something Galmine said last night,” Sheela said as she cut out another tendon.
“About what?”
“You once told me you never had any warrior training. Is that true?”
“Well, I took a bit of martial arts when I was a kid. Most kids do, but I started helping my parents around their clinic and--”
“They cared for animals, correct?” Sheela turned to me.
“Look, just come out and say what you mean to say.” I stood up from the pterodactyl corpse I was working on and crossed my arms.
“Victor, I do not know what I wish to say yet. That is why I am asking you questions. Were you ever bit while working for your parents?”
“Uhhh,” I said as I thought back. I’d always been great with animals, and I’d been around them almost my whole life, but Sheela had just made a strange observation. “No. I’ve actually never been bitten. Or really scratched by an animal.”
“Yet you’ve worked with them often?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m just lucky. I always wore protective equipment on my hands and--”
“No,” Sheela said. “There is something else going on. Galmine said that you have ‘fought many dinosaurs and never been beaten.’ It was an interesting comment for her to make.”
“I’m just lucky,” I said. “I don’t know where you are going with this. Galmine’s statement is kinda… like obvious. If I had gotten killed by a dinosaur, I wouldn’t be here. Then she wouldn’t have said that about me. This is survivor bias logic stuff.”
“Maybe,” Sheela shrugged. “But I have fought beside you many times now. When I think back to yesterday, you killed two of the raptors that climbed our wall yourself.”
“Well, you had already shot them with arrows,” I countered.
“Perhaps, but then when we went to get water, we were ambushed. We were almost surrounded, and our backs were against the tree when they attacked both of us. I have trained for combat, but even for me, these beasts attacked with blinding speed. None of them laid a tooth or claw on you though.”
“Sooooo… I still don’t get what you are saying,” I replied. “Are you saying that I have some sort of dinosaur combat superpower?”
“Do you?” she asked with a cat-like grin.
I laughed and then bent back down to cut more of the tendons out of the dino I was working on. “Remember the crocodile in the lake? You saved my ass from him. He would have eaten me easy. None of those raptors got a claw or tooth on you either, and you ran right through them.”
“Hmmm,” Sheela said. “Maybe, but if I remember the crocodile correctly, the beast had lunged out of the water and missed you with his first chomp. Then he dashed up the slope of the lake and you evaded his jaws once more before I counter attacked.”
“I don’t really remember,” I said. “It was a blur. I was thirsty, and tired, and scared. All I know is that you saved my life and brought me to the cave. I’m very thankful for you.” I smiled at the beautiful woman, and her eyes met mine.
“I am grateful for you too, Victor,” she whispered, and I saw her eyes drift down to my lips. “I have trained in combat for many years, but you mentioned you have not. I feel as if you have much potential.”
“Uhh, listen,” I said as I felt my heart start to hammer in my chest. “Sheela, is there something going on between us?” As soon as I asked the question, I felt kind of dumb. It was fucking obvious that something was going on between us.
“What do you mean?” she asked as she raised a blonde eyebrow.
“My question was dumb. Sheela, I want something to be going on between us.” My own words made my stomach tumble and churn, but I reached out with my left hand to touch her bicep.
The beautiful cat-woman’s golden eyes grew wide, and she looked down at my fingers. I couldn’t read anything else but surprise on her face, and I braced myself for her to shoot me down. On the one hand, her rejection wouldn’t hurt that bad because Galmine was already my lover, and Trel soon would be, but I also didn’t want to mess up the friendship Sheela and I had nurtured over the last month. It just seemed painfully obvious the woman was into me even though she had turned the conversation to her marriage every time we meandered anywhere near a romantic topic.
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