Page 17 of Caveman Alien's Bride

I stare out at the ocean. That sea monster is nowhere to be seen. “I don’t know. He seemed sincere. And he did kill that not-raptor with one stroke of his sword.”

I’m not sure about what to do. Because if I somehow get married to Korr'ax, he won’t just protect me. He will protect Piper, too. I will see to that. Maybe it’s worth it if it means we’re both safe.

“So you think you might say ‘yes’?” Piper asks, looking away.

Damn, she knows me so well.

I look down my front. My t-shirt is anything but white and so torn it’s barely there. My leaf skirt is a travesty. I have little scars and bruises and scratches everywhere. I’m always hungry. I’m lighter and thinner than I’ve ever been. I’m genuinely worried we’ll starve to death.

I sigh. “I’m tired, Piper. We’re never ahead of the game. New things keep happening, and they’re always bad. It feels like we’re running as fast as we can just to stay in one place.”

“And you think Korr'ax may be agoodthing that’s happened,” Piper concludes. “At least we can talk to him. More or less. So even if he’s not as good as we think, we can try to turn himintoa good thing. While dinosaurs and monsters just want to kill us, and they don’t care who knows it. That’s what you’re thinking?”

“Something like that,” I admit. “Isn’t it what women on Earth did for most of history? Getting a husband so he could protect her from a dangerous world?”

“We’re not Stone Age women,” Piper points out. “We just live on a Stone Age planet right now.”

“And maybe,” I counter, “this is our chance to live on this Stone Age planet without all thedesperation.”

She turns her head to look right at me. “If this is something that you think you’re doing forme, you can stop thinking that right now. I’m not going to be a third wheel.”

It’s like she can read my mind.

I go over and hug her. “Sorry that I didn’t tell you about the…full experienceI had. But even so, marrying Korr'ax isn’t something I actually want. It’s too weird and tooforced.”

“Don’t mind me,” Piper sniffles, hugging me back. “I’m not mad. You know I’m just envious of that experience.”

“It was pretty good,” I tell her. “But not worth marrying him for. Now, if he’d just throw in a dozen roses… actually, after that, I’d settle for a half dozen.”

We laugh and joke a little more.

“All right, that’s decided,” I conclude. “Now the sun is setting, and twilight is the best time for fishing. Let’s try our luck again.”

- - -

Several days later, the sky is cloudy and I make my morning bath in the ocean as short as I can. I strip off and wade into ankle-deep water. The ocean always scared me, but after seeing that trok I’m not staying in it any longer than absolutely necessary.

When I’m done I politely turn my back to Piper while she takes her bath, which is even shorter than mine.

We haven’t seen the caveman again, but the trok he had a drawing of has passed by the beach a couple of times. Whenever it’s close, we go as far from the beach as we can without entering the jungle. And after it’s gone, the fishing is always really good.

We’ve caught a lot, and if we had an ice box, we could store fish for months. As it is, we have to eat them within a day or two.

It’s not that fishing is something we enjoy. We have to kill and gut the things with flint knives, and we cut our own fingers nearly as much as the fish. But it’s good when we grill it, and it gives us energy.

The fish we catch are alien fish, of course. But they seem to have the same bone structure and scales and fins as Earth fish. Piper calls it ‘convergent evolution’, and I’m sure she’s right.

We’re talking about another fruit-finding expedition to the jungle when Piper looks up.

“Oh no! That can’t be good.”

We both bounce to our feet, grab our most valuable possessions, and flee to the cliff face.

It’s a dinosaur the size of a bus. It trudges slowly along the beach, ignoring us. It’s long and heavy with a big shield-like thing at the head. It reminds me of a triceratops. But I think this one would be called a septeratops, because it has seven long horns and as many big, round eyes. The ocean breeze carries its smell over to us. It’s like rotting vegetables, so it’s probably not a predator and it prefers eating plants.

“That’s the first dinosaur we’ve seen on the beach,” Piper says thoughtfully. “I hope it’s not the start of a trend.”

The septeratops ducks its massive head and digs its horns into the sand, then walks on. The effect is that it digs deep grooves in the beach as if it was plowing it up to grow wheat.

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