"I think we have everything we need," she said as they settled down beside their newly built fire. Loraine had become rather handy at starting fires with nothing but what nature provided and prided herself on this. "Come and sit down by the fire."
Raxar only grunted as he put the meat over the fire to cook and came to sit by her.
"You're really worrying me." She put her hand on his forehead, but he pulled his head back as though she might somehow hurt him. "Now you really are worrying me. Can you feel anything different?"
Shrugging and slowly shaking his head, he replied, "I have never been unlucky enough to come into physical contact with the cursed yerpen."
"Curse? You sound like one of your tribesmen now. I didn't think you believed in all that nonsense."
"I am not like them," was all Raxar said on the subject.
And Loraine didn't want to push him any further—she was too worried that he might say something she couldn't handle hearing. Instead of talking more, they ate their meat and berries, taking turns drinking from the emptied husk of a plant that was commonly used as a drinking container. The taste that it instilled into the water was familiar to Loraine now, although she'd found it almost too bitter and strange to stomach at first. It was funny how the silliest little details could help distract from such a potentially dire situation.
When he had only finished half of his meal, which was a small amount for him already, Raxar stopped and stood. His face had turned a gray shade, his eyes dull.
"Shit, you don't look well. I promise to make you feel good, no matter what happens," she said. Loraine felt numb as she looked at Raxar. Yeah, she wanted to cry her eyes out, but it didn't seem possible. The coldness of the night around them, outside of their bubble of fire-lit warmth, was creeping in. The savage planet threatened to take away the only thing that she had.
"I must lie down," he said, snapping her out of her miserable contemplation.
Loraine helped him to a soft spot by the fire, lying down beside him, and stroked his head as he fell asleep.
When the fire was lower and in need of refueling, Loraine woke up to a pitch black world. She reached over to test if Raxar was still breathing, fearing the worst. At that moment, she knew what it would be like to lose him. There was the longest moment in history, as she waited for him to exhale and warm her hand with his breath. Finally, he did, and she was overjoyed to still have him with her. But the thumping of her heart made her feel shaky. Just the idea of going through anymore waiting, to see if her new partner would even survive the night, made her want to die right then.
The guy who could comfort her was sick and probably dying. Loraine resolved to make it as easy as possible for him, even if the night ended with losing him. He started to male strange, guttural noises, then rolled over and leaned up on his elbows, facing away from her. The poor guy was coughing, then he vomited what little food he had eating onto the ground. Next, came the sound of thick bile as he began to hack and sputter, his stomach empty.
She shot up off the ground, the cold air making her shiver as she moved away from the fire. Running to grab some water, she came back and said, "Here, you need to drink something, or you'll only feel worse."
He didn't argue or say anything for that matter. Instead, he just patiently swigged at the plan husk of cold liquid until it was drained, convulsing the whole while. "Thank you," he said, then continued to throw up.
It kept on coming for some time, too, until he had broken out in a shivering sweat. Loraine had to refill the water several times from the nearby source, a tiny stream.
"I am now cursed," he mumbled in a half-sleep, half-stupor. He lied down on his back, shaking and rolling his eyes around in his head. "You should not have put your money on a losing horse."
"You don't even know what a horse is," she said. "You got that saying from me."
"Perhaps you should go home, but on a sky boat. If this curse does not kill me tonight, it is only a matter of waiting. Is that what you want from your life?"
Placing her hand over his head, Loraine was shocked at how hot he felt. It might not have been so bad for a Druazz, but there was no way for her to know. "You're burning up," she said, "and I don't even know how to help your species. Just try to get some more sleep. I will see you in the morning, Raxar. You're not going anywhere." With that, she kissed him on the forehead and settled down beside him, rubbing his back slowly to lull him to sleep.
After a few minutes, he was gently snoring again. And Loraine was left wondering if he'd been thinking this all along, but only said it because of his weakened state of body and mind. The whole noble brute with a heart of gold thing might have just been an act all along. The idea that her alien caveman might be so much like all the tough guys who'd ever broken her heart back on Earth was a very tough pill to swallow. However, it made sense that a caveman would just be a dumbass like the rest of them. She did not get much sleep that night.
18
-RAXAR-
Darkness, dreams of curses and endless torment, the very spirits rising from all around to besiege his mind; pouring down from the skies and being pulled from the stars by the sheer magnitude of their disdain for this one Druazz man. That was how Raxar spent his sleeping hours, which were mixed with frequent and irregular bouts of dry heaving and vomiting.
Loraine was a faithful carer, doing well with her actions to demonstrate that she could not possibly be cursed. Still, it became hard to know if he was just caught in the midst of fever dreams, or if the spirits were actually talking to him, trying to tell him that he had made the wrong choice my leaving his home with this star woman, abandoning his own people.
When he opened his eyes one last time, it was barely daylight. The morning was crisp and refreshing, but not as chilling as the night had been. "You kept the fire going," he said to Loraine. "Did you catch that?"
She was tending it, poking the orange coals with a stick. Something was cooking over the heat. Of course, the moment she saw that he'd woken up, she dropped the stick and rushed over to his side. "How do you feel? You've been asleep for hours. I assumed you must have lost the strength to even wake up to vomit." A tear dared to tarnish her gorgeous face, slowly moving down her cheek and landing on the corner of his own lip.
It tasted sweet, yet salty. Too salty. Raxar sat up and held Loraine tightly, unwilling to let her go for a long time. "I last went to sleep expecting to never wake again. By that time, I was almost glad for it, the pain was so much. And the thoughts, visions, that tormented me. I could not defend myself against them in my state."
"You said some pretty upsetting things. About me actually being cursed, for starters."
This was hard to hear. He'd fought all this time against such a stupid, primitive idea, and now that was all ruined. It was apparent on her face, she no longer thought of him as being so different than the other Hungdar. He was just another caveman to her now, after a night of seeing what she considered to be his true self.
"Please, believe me, Loraine. The poison forced me to say those things. It took hold of my mind and—" He stopped himself from making excuses. A real man took the blame for what he did and said.
Either way, she was not eager to hear his excuses. Loraine stood up and walked over to the fire. "Oh, shit!" she yelled out, crouching down to pick up the food she'd been cooking. "I might have let it burn."
It smelled good, not burned at all. "What is that you're cooking?" he asked.
"Fish."
"There are no freshwater fish in this area that we should be eating."
"Well, that's okay, because this is salt water," she said, setting it down on a rock near the fire. "And I think we might be farther from your jungle than you think."
It was hard to stand, but Raxar could tell he was not going to die as soon as he got up. His hard jumped ahead but quickly slowed to a reasonable pace. His vision wasn't blurry anymore, and the cold sweats weren't plaguing him. "I feel, better," he said, unable to find the words to express himself better.
"Just better? Do you think you're going to recover completely?"
With a shrug, Raxar went over to stand beside Loraine. The fire's warmth was pleasant in the early morning breeze. He placed his dry, calloused hand on her smooth shoulder. The skin was always blissful to touch. "I have never seen anyone recover from the fever, only to fall ill again later. As far as my experiences go, yes, I have narrowly avoided an agonizing death."
"And you're not thrilled? You big lug!" Jumping up off the ground, she wrapped her arms as far around his midsection as she could reach and squeezed. It probably would have hurt some men, how hard she held him. Raxar placed one hand on the small of her back and spread out his fingers to cover as much space as possible, slowly caressing her there. With his other hand, he gently stroked the swan-like curve toward the back of her neck.
"This must be how the spirits feel." He wasn't sure what his beliefs were about spirits in the sky, or the stars, anymore. But some habits were hard to break. With a deep lungful of fresh air, he did finally detect the salted scent of what must be the ocean nearby. "I must have been in a dire condition to miss that."
"What? The smell of the water? It's so beautiful, but not quite like the ones I remember from back on Earth. Are we going to go down there soon? After you eat something, I mean. It's not much, but I was never great at catching fish, even when I did have a rod instead of a spear."
After they ate, held each other and kissed, they walked toward the alien ocean. There were indeed boats there too! Albeit, they were just distant dots on the horizon, and there didn't seem to be any ports near. "Can you see them?" shouted Loraine as they walked to the top of a grassy rise, which gave way to a soft dune sloping downward toward an expansive beach of pure white sand.
When they got closer, Raxar said, "There are no harbor villages near us. Hold on a moment. Can you see that boat on the shore?" He pointed way up the beach, to a place that was nearly blotted out by the reflecting sun's light.
19
-LORAINE-
When they walked close enough to make out individuals on the shore, Loraine started to get worried. They'd come all this way, and it would be stupid to go and get themselves attacked, or taken as slaves by some kind of alien Vikings. But there was a chance these people had seen at least one of the escape pods coming down from the sky. And they most likely had ways to keep track of directions, maybe even kept maps and knew how to read and write.
"Do you think they're peaceful?" asked Loraine as they got closer. "We should go back and get our weapons." The feel of her spear's wood between her slim fingers can become a comfort. Going into the unknown with it just seemed, ironically primitive. She stopped and let her toes sink into the damp sand of the beach. The water slowly licked back and forth, coming almost right up to where she was standing. The rising sun was bright enough to make her squint. "Raxar!"
He'd kept walking, too focused on the boat and the alien people to notice that she was not longer walking beside him. "I do not think approaching with weapons is a good idea. If they have anything with range, perhaps the fire sticks you would call guns even, a spear and club would do us little good. They might not take kindly to our naked bodies either. Not all peoples in our world are as free as the Druazz."
The idea that the people in the boat could take offense to her nakedness did not even worry her in the same way. Loraine had forgotten that there could be a whole, scattered world of different cultures and races on this planet, many of which were far from the stone age. "If you think we should approach, then let's do it. Hey, maybe this is a good omen?"
"Now I know you're joking. Come on then."
They came within shouting distance of the boat and stopped. It was a fishing vessel, with several men, a woman, and even some children, on board. They were clearly not Druazz, but also not entirely unlike human beings. Their skin seemed to be a dark shade of green or gray, although it varied slightly among the group. The children looked similar to the woman, as well as some of the men. Each of the people was rather small, the same height Loraine had been as a young adult. They were also stocky and broad.
Everyone was helping to bring containers of fish onto the shore, while they cleaned tools and made themselves busy. Most of them ignored Loraine and Raxar as they approached, but were aware of them.
The woman shouted something to one of the men. She gathered the children and taking them to sit on the far side of the boat so they couldn't see the naked pair. However, the men did not seem phased by their nudity. Most of them were overly eager to get closer to Loraine, especially. But the eldest of the men warned them back. He then jumped down from the edge of the boat and walked a little closer, no weapon visible on his person, apart from a small, thin knife in a sheath on his belt.
He called out, "You from jungle?" in a thick accent.
"Is he speaking your language?" Loraine whispered. She could understand him, so that was the only logical answer.
Nodding his head, Raxar said to her, "Yes, but not well. He must trade with some Druazz." Then, he called back to the fisherman, "Have you seen the sky boats landing?"
The wide fisherman became very excited, making him look uncannily like a child with facial hair "Yes, yes! We see, from the sky! Uh …" He put his hands out in front of him as though grasping for words from the air. Instead, he pointed off over the sand dunes where the vegetation was thick. "Path. You find. No alive … sorry." He bowed his head and then the woman on the boat called out to him in their own language. He turned and replied, then waved and Loraine and Raxar. "Wife," he said with a laugh, as though that universally explained why he must leave them. "Fair well!"
The path led them back into the trees and bushes, but the jungle had given way to dense scrub. Raxar was nervous going through here. "This is the perfect place for yerpen to hide," he said, touching the marks he still had from the near poisoning.
For nearly an hour, they must have walked, not that Loraine had so much as seen a sundial during her time on this planet, let alone a clock. She wondered if any advanced civilizations were remaining on this planet, or if the entire world had reverted back to a kind of stone age since whoever built the spirit walker's home and "altar" had perished.
With her mind on those types of thoughts, Loraine barely noticed that they'd started walking on an incline. She was only made aware of it when they came to the hill's summit, looking out off the edge of a little cliff. There was plenty of space up there, as well as some shrubs and grass. "Oh my god!" she cried out when she saw the escape pod. It had somehow gotten onto its side and was covered in dents, scratches, and possible teeth marks.
"Be careful," Raxar said.
Loraine rushed over to it anyway. The door was open, and no one was inside. "Hello?" she called out. She looked inside for a sign of any of her crewmates, or of her friend Talia. There was nothing. "Hello?!" she called out, coming back out of the escape pod.
"Loraine …" Raxar said with a grim voice from the other side of some scraggly bushes. "Prepare yourself."
20
-RAXAR-
Raxar didn't know what to say. He'd found the two bodies near the sky ship. They had clearly been killed by wild animals, and there was no sign of interference.
The moment Loraine saw them, she dropped to her knees and began to sob without control. "These are the uniforms of The New Horizon," she said. "They were my crewmates, Raxar. This could have been me … the same thing probably happened to everyone else. Why am I still alive if they died?"
"You did not know these people?" he asked.
"What? No. There were so many people on our ship, it wasn't possible to even meet everyone. What does that matter though? This is the same as losing someone from your village, don't you see?"
He wasn't sure what he had said wrong, but she stared at him with hateful eyes. "When someone dies in my village, their kin is given time alone to mourn and reflect," he said, turning to walk away. When Loraine didn't try to stop him, he assumed that had been the right thing to do.
So, he stayed away for some time, gathering some berries to eat and trying his hand at catching one of the fleet-footed critters that scampered about between the grassy dunes.
Raxar was sweating by the time he finished, still not completely recovered from the previous night. But at least he had something for them to eat, even if there was no fresh water nearby; they would need to return to retrieve their weapons anyway. Sitting by the fire, he began to cook the food.
"You're eating?" came her voice from behind him. The smell of the fire and food must have led her to him. "Seriously?"
"Are you alright?" he asked, going to embrace.
She didn't stop him, but neither did she put her arms around him like she always did. "Why did you leave me like that? To get something to eat?"
"To allow you to mourn," he said, taking offense already. All he could hear from her tone of voice was, 'You are a stupid animal with no thoughts or feelings.'
Loraine pulled away from him. "They're probably the last I'll ever see of my own people, my home, and their remains are scattered across the alien dirt. But yeah, let's have a feast. Thanks … You just don't get it, do you?" Her face was dark, despite the clear sky and the mid-morning sun.
"I don't 'get' many things, and you don't either. We are not of the same planet, lest you forget."
Loraine grabbed some of the meat from the fire and bit into it, chewing absent-mindedly and then sitting down on the ground. When she was finished, she lied down and didn't speak for a long time.
Raxar went to sit beside her, but she asked him to leave her alone. That was exactly what he'd done in the first place! He just didn't understand why she could not make up her mind about what she wanted, and the situation was making him angry. So, he did let her lie there alone, while he fueled the fire through the remainder of the day.
Savage Planet Caveman Page 9