“I should have known that there would have been a boss mob protecting an iron ore treasure trove like that,” I laughed once Emerald had finished rinsing my shoulders.
Emerald just shook her head, wiped the last of the water off my chest, grabbed the back of my neck, pushed her body against mine, and then kissed me deeply. I wrapped my hands around her narrow waist as our lips and tongues explored each other, and I let out a soft humm of approval when we finally parted.
“Damn, I need to play the hero more often,” I whispered as the adrenaline of the last fight finally dumped out of my system. “I keep getting kisses.”
Emerald’s smile grew wider, and then she bit her lower lip with her perfect white teeth. She pulled her hands away from my neck, gestured to the cave, and then pointed south toward the ocean as she made a rocking motion with her other hand.
“Yeah, I don’t know if this is a great place for our fort. I think I’ll always be worried about giant bugs trying to kill us in our sleep, even if we do have Youleena seal everything off. But hey, at least we know there is a bunch of ore here. If we find a place nearby, it will still be close enough.”
Emerald nodded, and we both climbed back up on top of Nicole. Then I waved up at Bruce, and we continued along the ledge away from where we had heard the carnotauruses roaring.
We found another spot of malachite on the next bend of the mountain face, and then the ledge began to angle downward at a gentle angle. The path was still really overgrown with grass, vines, and groves of trees that clung to the side of the slope, but it eventually became clear that we were descending toward the base of the valley, and I let out a sigh of relief when the ledge fed out into what looked like a well trampled switchback path.
“I want to memorize this path,” I said as I turned back around to study the exit area to the ledge. It looked really overgrown, and there didn’t seem to be any evidence we had just exited the jungle, but then Grumpy let out an annoyed rumble, wagged his tail to the side, and knocked over a four-foot tall palm tree.
“That helps, buddy,” I laughed after the tree had toppled to the ground beside the opening to the ledge. “We’ll be able to find it easy now.”
Grumpy let out a disgruntled rumble, and then we continued down the side of the mountain on the switchbacks.
At this point, the mountain was more of a hill, and I only counted six switchbacks before the ground leveled into a massive plain of three foot tall grass. There were a few trees here and there, but for about half a mile in every direction, all I could see was grass. Where the grass ended on each of our sides were small slopes for a new valley, and more jungle trees decorated those slopes.
But to our south, the azure ocean spread in all directions. The water still looked far away, so I knew we had a bit more traveling to do before we reached the beach, but the sight was still welcome.
“I don’t really like being out in the open, especially when there are no other herd animals around, ” I said as I looked up to Bruce, “but I’ll have him do a scouting circle to see if there is any danger.”
The horse-sized pteranodon let out an affirmative honk when he got my command, and then he began to drift forward on the air currents toward the far side of the field.
The rest of my group stayed back at the bottom of the switchbacks as we watched Bruce circle, and I began to get a tingle in the back of my neck while we waited.
“I feel like we are being watched,” I whispered to Emerald as I commanded Scoob and the Gang to lower themselves into the tall grass. One advantage to having them with me was that they could go invisible in most terrain, and I imagined that anyone who watched us from a distance might not have been able to see their heads over the wave of the grass field.
Emerald glanced around the valley, and then she gestured to a distant tree that was about a quarter of a mile away from us on the outside perimeter of the valley. I followed her finger toward the tree and saw a human form crouched high in the branches. It almost looked female, with long hair, a narrow waist, and wider hips, but before I could really make out any details, the figure disappeared into the leaves and faded from view.
“I can see a lot better with the eyes our overlords gave us, so I think that was a woman. What do you think?”
Emerald nodded, and we both continued to watch the tree until Bruce returned. The pteranodon gave out a happy honk to let us know that he didn’t see any dinosaurs, but I pointed over at the tree and raised my voice a bit so he could hear me over the light breeze.
“Did you see anyone in the tree over there?”
Bruce angled around on his wings in a short loop so that he could see where I was pointing, and then he gave out a negative double honk.
“Do a fly-by while we head toward the ocean, please,” I ordered. “Emerald and I thought we saw a woman over there. Don’t get too close to the ground, in case she is dangerous.”
Bruce honked and then flapped his wings a few times to head in that direction. As soon as he was half-way there, I urged Nicole forward, and we began to trot slowly across the open plain.
“I’d really feel a lot better if there were other herd animals around,” I said as I glanced to our sides across the open grass. “Just seems weird there aren’t any.”
Emerald nodded, glanced behind us, and then turned to look back at the tree where we had seen the woman.
We got about three hundred yards into the plain, and I realized that the ground was sloping up slightly. It seemed like we were ascending up a hill, and since I could see the ocean, I guessed that we’d soon come to a drop into another valley.
I was proven correct a few minutes later when we reached the peak of the small grassy slope. The plain extended below us like a jumbo-wide airplane landing strip of green grass with jungle on the sides, and the plain kissed the sand of the ocean some three or so miles at the bottom of the gentle slope.
And on the slope, dozens of different herds of dinosaurs grazed.
There were trikes, stegos, parasaurs, small sauropods. The latter weren’t nearly as big as brontos, but they were easily as large as the biggest male trikes I could see in the neighboring herds.
It looked like paradise, and I was again reminded that even though my new life was incredibly dangerous, I didn’t want to go back to my old life. No, making forts, riding dinosaurs, surviving in the wilderness, and having the love of the incredible women in my tribe were blessings that made the other dangers all seem worth it.
I’d found my place in the universe and I knew my purpose here. I never had that feeling of belonging back in Los Angeles.
Maybe that was why the alien overlords took me?
“Seeing all these dinosaurs grazing makes me feel better,” I laughed as we descended the other side of the grassy crest. “Looks like they just didn’t want to climb this hill and eat up above.”
Emerald nodded at me, and then she gestured to a group on the field to the south east. There were squat dinos about two-thirds the size of a stego, but unlike the stegos these guys’ massive plates of armor were laid flat on their backs between rose-style thorns, and the dinos had big hunks of bone on the end of their tails.
“Oh snap,” I gasped. “Ankylosaurus!”
Emerald just shrugged at my name, but I directed Nicole and the rest of the gang to head over in that direction. I didn’t want any of the grazing dinosaurs to stampede away because of the troodons and Grumpy, so we kept a wide space between us and the other herds while we descended the gentle slope.
After some discrete maneuvering through the tall grass, we came within forty yards of the armored dinosaurs. Up close, the dinos heads looked even wider, flatter, and more armored than I could have imagined, and the spikes on their backs all curved gently toward their tails as if they had been combed that way. For a few moments, I wondered why the points of their spikes were all facing toward their asses, but then I realized that they probably fought larger carnivores by backing their asses toward them so that they could beat the shit out of the
bullys with their tails, and the points would add another “fuck you” along with the armor.
Emerald tapped my shoulder to get my attention, gestured to Nicole, and then pointed at one of the distant ankylos.
“I don’t think that’s quite a good idea right now,” I said as I studied their armadillo-like waddling movements. “They seem to walk pretty slow, so it might be a pain to get them back to our camp in the redwoods. Also, if we are just going to come back here, I can just tame a few then. This looks like a popular grazing spot, so I’m sure I can pick up a lot of friends if we come back here every day.” As I spoke, my eyes drifted across the field and rested on the sauropods. It would be really cool to tame something bronto size, but I guessed that I would still need to improve my Tame skill a bit.
We continued down the grazing strip toward the azure ocean, and I continued to look around at the various herds coming and going from the feeding area. There were probably a few hundred big herbivores enjoying the setting sun and tasty grass, and at least twice that number in “smaller than a horse” sized variety. It was really a sight to behold, but I started to get worried that the scene was ripe for a stampede as soon as a hunting pack of carnivore dinos showed up, so I urged us to get away from the area with as much speed as Grumpy could put into his legs.
The plains finally turned into light sand and palm trees, and we found ourselves on the beach. I could faintly hear the waves now, but the sand seemed to go on for more than a quarter of a mile south at a slight downward slope, and I didn’t really want to trot all the way out there just to see the water since we hadn’t quite figured out where we were going to camp for the night.
“So, we’ve got this strip of grass that goes all the way up to the base of the mountain,” I said as I gestured back over my shoulder toward the plain where the dinosaurs grazed. “Then we have a good-sized chunk of beach ahead of us. To our west is jungle, and to our east is more jungle. Which way do you think we should go?”
Emerald glanced from side to side, and then she pointed toward the ocean, gestured to her eyes, and then swept her arm across the jungle, grass, and plains to our north.
“Ahh,” I chuckled. “I didn’t actually want to trek out to the water, but you are right, if we get a bit of the ways out on the sand, we’ll be able to see more of the coast.”
Emerald nodded, but then she motioned toward the setting sun, and then cradled her cheek against her hand.
“I don’t really want to camp on the beach though,” I argued. “We won’t have any cover if something attacks, and someone can see our fire easily.”
Emerald smiled at me, and then she pointed to the sand, back to one of our jugs, and then made a bowl motion with her hands.
“You think of everything, don’t you,” I laughed, and she just gave me another wide smile.
I commanded Nicole to trot out onto the sand, and the rest of my dinos followed me. It was kind of cool having the new pachys, since they could gallop on ahead like race cars, and then twist back around in wide scouting circles. The thick-skulled dinos really had an abundance of energy, and Grumpy let out an annoyed hiss that sounded very grandfatherly whenever Bevis and Butt-Head ran too close to him.
The sand was a light shade of lemon, and the grain was finer than any other beach I had ever visited. We soon made it to the edge of the ocean waves, and the cool salty breeze tickled my nose and forehead.
“Hey Bruce, how we looking?” I hollered up to the sky.
The pteranodon let out a happy honk, so I guessed he didn’t see any threats close to us.
“Mind catching us dinner?” I asked, and he let out another honk before he headed toward the water.
Emerald tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned away from Bruce to find her pointing to our west. The sun was almost halfway hidden by the slope of the ocean now, and it was a bit hard to see because I was looking right at it, but there seemed to be a sharp rise to the shore in that direction.
“That’s kind of what you were looking for, isn’t it?” I asked. “A raised cliff against the ocean?”
Emerald nodded, and I glanced east down the shore.
“Flat in that direction, but it’s getting too dark to see that far. We’ll know more in the morning, but I’m thinking that we head west toward those cliffs first. What do you say?”
Emerald nodded, and then she gestured to the spot in the sand where we had stopped.
“Yep, I’ll have Nicole start digging,” I said, and then the trike began to pull at the sand where she stood. She wasn’t as quick at work as my diggers Sonny, Cher, and Bob were, but we soon had a four-foot deep bowl dug out of the sand.
“That should be good,” I said as I ordered Nicole to back out of the pit. Then I grabbed some firewood we had stored on the trunk of the saddle, threw it down into the pit, helped Emerald dismount, and then handed her a few jugs of water.
Emerald raised a finger and then pointed back up toward the field.
“I’ll just ask all the dinosaurs to keep an ear open for whoever was in that tree,” I explained. “She’d have to cross a bunch of open sand to get to us, so unless her ability has something to do with being absolutely silent, one of the dinos will hear her coming.”
Emerald nodded and ten minutes later we had a small fire going, and the troodons, pachys, Emerald and I were laying against the banks of the sandy bowl. The edges were high enough to keep anyone from seeing the flames, and the cool sand felt pretty nice on my bare back. Grumpy and Nicole laid down on the top crest of our bowl, and Bruce dropped a trio of big fish on the sand for us to cook.
“I hope everyone back home is safe,” I commented once I had prepped the fish and started roasting them over the fire.
Emerald nodded her agreement as she stared into the fire.
“Can you tell me anything more about the other tribe that keeps attacking us?” I asked. “Anything you can remember about their leader? Did they say what her power was?”
Emerald shook her head, tapped one of her ears, tapped under her right eye, and then shook her head to indicate that she didn’t hear or see anything about her.
“Their camp was more advanced than ours right? As far as how it was built?”
She nodded and then pointed to the sand before she made a block shape out of her hand.
“So they had cement and stone buildings?”
Emerald nodded, but then she pinched her fingers together and gestured to both of us.
“And you said it was mostly men?” I asked Emerald as I tried to recall the exact questions I had asked when her clone had died.
Emerald pointed to her eye and then held up seven fingers. Then pointed to herself and then raised her hands, shook her arms, and frowned.
“They had seven walking around that you saw?”
Emerald nodded, but then she made a square shape and tapped on her chest.
“They had women trapped in cages?” I asked, and she nodded.
“How did they kill your clone?” I asked.
Emerald shook her head and then pointed at herself before she drew a line across her neck.
“You committed suicide?” I asked.
Emerald shrugged as if it was no big deal. Then she smiled, pushed her hands together, and pulled them apart
“Your ability is so strange to me,” I chuckled. “Why do you have to touch me to make a duplicate?”
Emerald seemed to consider that for a moment, and then she reached into the campfire, pulled out a small pieces of wood that had its tip on fire, and gave it to me. Then the green-haired woman picked up a small stick in each hand, wiggled her arms as if they weighed a lot, and moved the two sticks up to touch the flame that I held. It took a few seconds, but then her wood caught on fire. She smiled at me, shook each of her arms, and then nodded to my arm.
“I think I get it,” I said. “It’s hard to do it, but having someone else as an anchor makes it easier?”
She nodded.
“How many times have you died?” I asked as I th
rew my stick back into the fire.
Emerald shrugged and then raised four fingers before she wiggled her hand as if the say it was an estimate.
“Four-hundred?” I asked, and she nodded.
“Wow,” I chuckled. “No wonder you are so cavalier about it.”
Emerald shrugged and then stared into the fire.
“So, as long as you have one body, you can keep duplicating yourself.”
She nodded and then held up one finger.
“Just one copy at a time,” I stated, and she nodded.
“I remember you saying that it takes a day before you can make another, so you’ll be able to do one tomorrow morning?”
She nodded again, and then finally turned away from the fire and smiled at me.
“Good,” I said as I leaned back into the sand. We didn’t say anything for another few minutes, but then the fish seemed to be done cooking, so we ate slowly while we stared up at the stars. The night sky was practically filled with points of glittering light, and a few formations seemed to swirl like syrup across the sky. The twin moons weren’t out, but the stars seemed to offer plenty of light, and the distant waves offered a soothing sound.
“I used to read books about people going to different worlds. They called the genre ‘science-fiction.’ Did they have books on your world?”
Emerald nodded her head, but then she pushed her fist into the palm of her hand and frowned.
“Just books about war, huh? Well, I’m glad I have your expertise in the tribe. It’s going to really help in the future. I don’t really want to fight other survivors, but most of our interactions with them have ended with combat.”
Emerald stuck her fingers up from her head and then made a kissing motion with her lips.
“Yeah,” I laughed. “Quwaru’s tribe is a good fit. I’m glad we worked things out with them. Hey, since you know a lot about warfare, what do you think of their abilities. Have you thought of any clever uses for anyone?”
Emerald tapped her temple and then flipped her green hair so that the long strands laid over her face.
Tamer- King of Dinosaurs Book 6 Page 17
