“Uhh, yeah, I think so. Emerald?” I said, and we all turned to the green-scaled woman. She smiled at me and gave a single nod.
“I can help with making bricks,” Galmine confirmed. “I’m good with rocks, dirt, and plants.”
“So we’ll work on the mud bricks, but we also need to talk about the toilets and compost pile,” I said as I looked at Trel and Galmine.
“After the water filter,” Trel said as she shrugged her shoulders.
“Okay, but do you have a plan?” I asked. “We need a safe way to get rid of the waste, especially if we are going to get more people in our tribe.”
“We talked about making one of your ‘in houses,’” Trel said as she shaped a square with her long fingers.
“Out houses,” I corrected.
“Whatever,” she huffed. “I’ll need clay to make a seat and toilet, but I need clay to make the water filter and the plates for the tribe with the idiot women.”
“They aren’t idiots, Trel,” I sighed.
“They haven’t joined us, and they disrespected you,” the spider-woman said after she cleared her throat. “Clearly, they are idiots for not seeing your worth after you saved their lives.”
“Could we make it all out of wood?” Kacerie asked.
“Why would we make it out of wood if we could make it out of clay?” Trel asked as she twisted her lips to the side.
“Because we have a whole forest of massive trees just a few hundred yards from us,” Kacerie said as she gestured toward the redwoods. “Clay is going to be harder to get, and probably harder to make into a seat for one of these outhouses.”
“I suppose you are right,” Trel said.
“Wow,” Kacerie laughed. “I never thought I’d hear you say that.”
“Pfffttt,” Trel raspberried at the pink-haired woman. “You are smart. I am not often wrong, but I will admit when I am. I still think clay will be the better material, since our excrement will not stick to the sides of anything as easily, but wood will work better in the short term.”
“It doesn’t have to stick to the side of anything,” I said. “We just make a raised hole where we can sit, then it will fall down into a basin that Galmine sets up for compost.”
“I will need square cut lumber then,” Trel said.
“I can help with that,” Liahpa said. “I’ve gotten pretty good at cutting down trees.”
“Find older wood which is not green,” Trel said. “That way it will not twist.”
“We could always make the walls out of the adobe,” I said with a shrug. “I think that will be easier than cutting lumber for it.”
“I will help you make a plan for the structure,” Trel said. “Just decide what you want to make it out of.”
“Okay,” I said as I smiled at her. “I think that’s everything for the sanitation and--”
“Clothes,” Kacerie interrupted me.
“Ahh yeah,” I said. “We have to figure out new clothes.” I looked down at my outfit as I spoke. My boots were in good shape, and my socks, underwear, pants, and shirt had just gotten washed in the last rain, but both the pants and shirt were starting to get a bit threadbare. They were polyester blends, and I knew that if they were cotton they would have already turned to dust, but they still weren’t looking like they had more than another month left in them.
Kacerie’s jeans were also torn up, and I could see her creamy skin through a few dozen holes. I only considered her blouse “white” because it had been that color when I first saved her from the raptors. It was now a shade of light grayish-pink from a few weeks of dirt from working and blood from prepping meat.
Sheela’s bikini top and bottom were already frayed to something that a stripper probably would have blushed wearing, and it looked like the fabric that covered her nipples did little more than add a gray shade of color to her milk-chocolate colored areola.
Liahpa’s tight swimsuit-superhero outfit had a few tears along her ribs, but there really wasn’t much material there to begin with, so I knew that the whole garment would probably fall apart if a shoulder strap got cut.
Emerald’s outfit looked surprisingly clean. Her tight black slacks looked like something a business woman would wear to a meeting, and her low-cut frilled white blouse was the same color as her white eyes. The clothes looked a bit dusty, but I was a bit surprised that there wasn’t any blood, tears, or mud marks anywhere. She hadn’t really been out hunting or outside of the fort much, and she’d only been on Dinosaurland for a week, so I guessed that it made sense that her clothes were still in good shape.
Trel’s spider-web looking lingerie looked fine. Well, it was distracting to look at since it showed more skin than Sheela’s bikini, but I didn’t see any sort of damage to any of the gray colored material.
“Wait,” I said as I looked Trel over closely. “How did you get that outfit?”
“This?” Trel said as she ran her fingers down her full breasts, taut stomach, and perfectly proportioned hips.
“Yeah,” I said. “You were wearing tight shorts and a wrap over your breasts a few days ago, then you came out with this on and--”
“Do you like it, though?” Trel asked as she ran her tongue over her lips. “I made it for you, and I’ll admit that I was a bit disappointed when you didn’t drool over me before we left to get the sand.”
“Uhh, well, yeah, I like it a lot,” I stuttered. “I just, uhhh, had things to worry about.”
“How did you make it?” Kacerie asked. “Did you cut up your other outfit?”
“No,” Trel scoffed as she looked to me. “That sounds like something a peasant would do. I made this one anew for Victor’s enjoyment, but don’t worry, I am not mad you did not notice it. You do have many things to worry about.”
“How did you make it?” Kacerie asked.
“What do you mean?” Trel asked as she tilted her head.
“What did you make it out of?” the pink-haired woman said after she took a deep breath and gave me a frustrated look that Trel didn’t seem to notice.
“With my silk, of course,” Trel said, but then she blinked her eyes and looked at the other women with a bit of confusion. “Ohhh. Perhaps you all do not make silk?”
“No,” Sheela said. “I told you that before we even met Victor.”
“But that was you and Galmine,” Trel said with a shrug. “Kacerie, Liahpa, and Emerald all came here with nice clothes. How was I supposed to know that they didn’t make the garments themselves? All the women on my world craft their own clothes.”
“So you can make clothes anytime you want?” Kacerie asked eagerly. “I would fricken kill for a new pair of underwea--”
“No,” Trel said as she held up her hands. “I cannot make clothes anytime I want. Producing silk takes nutrients from my body, and I need it all for my brood.”
“But you said you just made that outfit for Vic--” Liahpa started to say but Trel interrupted her.
“There is not much material to this, and I thought I could spare it. For Victor’s enjoyment, of course.”
“How do you produce it?” I asked as I looked over her perfect body again. We’d made love many times, and I hadn’t really seen any part on her naked body that looked like it produced silk webbing, but then I remembered that the corpse of the raptor stashed behind the hut had been wrapped in webbing.
“It is on the base of my spine,” Trel said as she turned her ass toward us and pointed with her long finger.
Kacerie, Liahpa, and I took a few steps closer and bent down to inspect the top curve of Trel’s perfectly shaped butt. At first, I didn’t see anything, but then Trel moved her black finger out of the way and I saw what I had once thought was just a mole on her tailbone. I hadn’t given it much thought when we were making love, but I moved my face closer and saw that it was really a small indent with four tiny spinnerets.
“It’s kind of cute,” Kacerie said.
“Of course it is!” Trel said as she turned around to face us. “Every
part of me is beautiful.”
“So, you can’t make clothes because of our, uhhh, brood?” I asked her.
“Yes,” Trel answered with a proud smile. “Our babies will need all the nutrients in my body to gestate. Then I will lay them in the corpse of the raptor behind our hut, they will hatch, and then consume the decayed flesh.”
“When is all this going to happen?” Kacerie asked.
“Tomorrow,” Trel said.
“Tomorrow?” everyone asked in unison.
“Yes, why are you all so surprised?”
“You, ahh, don’t look like you are pregnant,” I said as carefully as I could.
“Oh, silly Victor,” Trel chuckled. “I’ll know if I am pregnant tomorrow. Well, I should have known sooner, but tomorrow is the first day of my gestation cycle. Then I will need another two weeks where you all need to bring me delicious food to eat while I lounge around and build my brood. Then I will lay them, and a month later we will have an army of minions that will do our bidding. Well, unless I birth a duchess.”
“What happens if you birth a duchess?” Liahpa asked.
“It isn’t important,” Trel said with a somewhat sadistic looking smile on her face. “What is important is that I’ll know tomorrow, so we should also plan for some sort of celebration. I’ll leave it to you five to figure out.” Trel gestured to Kacerie, Sheela, Galmine, Liahpa, and Emerald.
“Why do we need to figure--” Liahpa began to ask.
“You are my sisters. That is what you do when I begin my gestation. You throw me a party.”
“I love parties,” Galmine sighed. “When my people have a party, it always ends with everyone wrapped around each other in a passionate orgy of--”
“Annnnndddd, that brings us back to talk about clothes,” Kacerie said as she turned back to me.
“Can we make anything out of the cordage?” I asked her and Galmine.
“It would be rough material,” Kacerie said with a shrug. “I can keep washing our stuff, but first I need to make more soap. The clothes won’t last forever though.”
“Trel, if we found some sort of soft thread-like material, could you knit it into garments for us?”
“Ugh, I suppose,” Trel said.
“You don’t seem that excited about it,” Liahpa huffed.
“If I asked you to smash rocks all day with your big muscles, you wouldn’t be excited either.”
“Fair point,” the floating silver-woman said with a nod. “I guess I can see where you are coming from.”
“It is just boring,” Trel sighed, “but I suppose I won’t be doing anything else for the next few weeks, so if you can bring me something I can turn into thread and knit, I will make new clothes for each of you.”
“Thanks, Trel,” I said. “It is really going to help us out.” I didn’t like the idea of her sitting around for two weeks and not working, especially since I needed her engineering brain to make sure that we weren’t messing up any fort building problems, but having her make us clothes would be a good use of her time.
It all depended on if she was pregnant, and I still didn’t quite believe that she was.
“I’ll keep an eye out for something we can use for clothes,” I said to the group. “Are you all ready for your assignments?”
The six women nodded, and I looked to Liahpa. “You are going to be dragging all the Balaur corpses inside by the fire pits.”
“What about--” she started to object, but I continued.
“Next to the fires, Kacerie and Galmine are going to show you how to make knives from the obsidian.”
“I don’t quite know how to do it with obsid--” Kacerie started to say, but I continued.
“Galmine knows rocks, she can show you how to do it, or we’ll figure it out. Don’t worry about failing. We can always go back and get some more.”
The three women nodded after I finished speaking.
“As soon as you are done bringing the corpses in and making the blades, you are all going to butcher the meat and prep it for cooking and storage. Galmine won’t help you with this part; Emerald will after she helps me dig another fire pit. Then Kacerie will figure out a bone needle.”
“Why do you need another fire pit?” Liahpa asked.
“I’m going to be burning Will-Lack’s corpse,” I said. “It was what his friends wanted. Once that is done Galmine and I are going to go explore outside the walls. We’ll check the bamboo spot and then look for other herbs that we can use to cover Nicole’s wound. She’s going to be staying here right next to you all while you are working. As I said, I don’t think her wound is that serious, but I still want you to keep an eye on her.”
“What should I do, Victor?” Sheela asked.
“Weapons,” I said, and her golden eyes lit up. “Hopefully you’ll have a bunch of arrows and spear shafts made by the time they have some obsidian ready.”
“I will do it,” the cat-woman said confidently.
“What of me, Victor?” Trel asked.
“What do you think?” I smirked at her.
“Water filter,” she purred as she bit her lower lip.
“Yep, get those baking as soon as you can.”
“I’ll only be able to get one of the funnels done tonight,” Trel said as she looked up in the sky. “We are running out of daylight.”
“Yeah,” I said. “We all don’t have much time. Emerald, you are with me. Everyone else, you know what to do. Let’s get a move on so that we can all get back here once the sun sets and eat some grub together.”
The women all smiled, nodded, and then went to work.
Chapter 6
I walked with Sheela and Emerald to the pile of branches by the gate. The stack was about three quarters of the size it was when I had first hauled it all inside, so I figured that we still had plenty of material to build weapons, huts, or any other structures we wanted. Tom, Katie, the troodons, and balaur bondocs followed us across the open grass of our fort, but Sheela spoke before I could order them to stand by the gate.
“Victor, I have a concern,” she said.
“What’s wrong,” I asked as I glanced to her and then moved my eyes over to Emerald.
“I am worried that the weather is changing,” the cat-woman said with a shrug, and I guessed that she didn’t care Emerald was listening.
“How so?” I asked.
“The influx of rain is normally caused by a change in atmospheric temperature and pressure,” she explained.
“Huh,” I said as I looked up into the sky. The late day sun was really beating down on us, and I realized that I had no idea where my hat was. “It’s getting hotter. You think summer is around the corner? It’s already been crazy hot and humid, but today feels ten degrees hotter.”
“I think that it might get colder,” Sheela said. “Sometimes summers have a final burst of heat before they change to autumn. At least on my world.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That happens on my world too. Especially in the part where I lived. We’d often be hot all through autumn and only get cool when winter started. How about you, Emerald?” I turned to the scaled woman, and she stared at me with her white eyes before nodding slowly.
“I am a bit worried about what might happen if the planet we are on cools too much,” Sheela continued. “There might be migrations of the dinosaurs, lack of food, and snow.”
“Hmmm,” I said as I grabbed three stout wood branches from the pile by the gate. I intended to use them like shovels, and I handed one to Emerald.
“I know you are already thinking about this, but we should consider building stouter huts, or maybe even a larger shelter for our dinosaurs. We should also consider some sort of cellar where we can store food.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said. “We’ve got a ton of shit to do, though, and we don’t know for sure that the weather is going to change.”
“It might not,” Sheela said with a shrug, “but being prepared would not hurt.”
“Yeah, you are right, b
ut we only have so much time in the day. Taking time to complete tasks that are important, but not urgent, might hurt the things we need to do that are urgent.”
“I understand, Victor,” Sheela said as she gave me a slight smile. “I know you have a lot to juggle, and I trust your judgement completely. I hope that I am wrong, but I have spent most of my life hunting outside during all the four seasons of my world, and it feels as if the cold winds of autumn are approaching, and then winter will follow. The jungle is all around us, so perhaps it will be mild, but this planet is strange, and it might not follow the rules of my world.”
“Thanks for telling me,” I said as I nodded at her words. “I’ll start thinking about what we need to do to prepare for a cold season.”
“Thank you, Victor,” Sheela nodded her head at me, and I saw her eyes flash to my lips. I knew that the beautiful warrior woman wanted to kiss me, but she was too shy to make a move. She wanted me to tell her what to do, and I had no problem fulfilling her desires.
“Give me a kiss,” I said, and she quickly pushed her lips into mine. Our tongues danced for a few moments, and then she let out a soft purr just as we parted.
“Thank you,” she whispered as she touched her forehead to mine.
“Anytime,” I whispered. “How about tonight?”
“Yesss,” she replied softy, and then we parted so that we could get back to work.
I turned to see Emerald staring at me with her strange white eyes, and I presented her with two of the branches I had taken from the pile.
“Can you clone yourself for this?” I asked. “It would help with the digging.”
Emerald frowned, shook her head, and then gestured up toward the sun. Her hand moved downward and then went up again as if it was a pendulum.
“Ahh, you can’t do it again until tomorrow?” I asked.
She shook her head, pointed back to where Bob, Sonny, and Cher sat beside Hope’s gate, and then made a digging motion with her hand.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “I know it would go a lot faster if they dug, but it is kind of impersonal. I didn’t really know Will-Lack, but he seemed like a nice guy, and he sacrificed his life so that his friends could live. I just want to dig the hole ourselves. Know what I mean?”
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