Page 15 of Caveman Alien's Terror

“Get down!” the woman squeals when the thing comes closer.

I do believe it actually intends to attack.

6

- Astrid-

The dactyl sets up a final attack, stretching its huge talons out in front of it and screeching so loud my ears ring.

“Look out!” I try again, but Praxigor doesn’t understand the danger we’re in.

The dactyl’s screech is suddenly cut off. The monster starts to frantically beat its huge bat wings in mid air, trying to slow down and to turn around, making a noise like a giant leather umbrella being quickly opened and closed. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve seen.

And it’s too late. The dactyl is too heavy and goes too fast to stop before it passes Praxigor. He ducks out of the way of the talons, then calmly reaches out and grabs one leg. In that same motion he rotates once, swinging the whole flying dinosaur around in a perfect arc like an Olympic hammer thrower. When he lets go, the dactyl is flung uncontrollably through the air, a screeching, inelegantly tumbling chaos of wings and legs and teeth.

Praxigor wipes his hands on a handful of leaves that he rips from a bush. “Such a greasy thing.”

The dactyl hits the trunk of a tree several hundred feet away and slowly sags to the ground, head first.

I can barely believe my eyes. He just defeated a big dactyl without a weapon and without breaking a sweat! While the huge cavemen with swords the size of helicopter blades don’t even like to talk about those things too loud, and do their utmost to avoid them.

“That was… incredible,” I say weakly, my heart beating hard and fast. “You just threw him away!”

Praxigor tosses the leaves away and looks at his hands with disgust. “Well, I wasn’t going to becomehisfriend, too. So far, I must conclude that having friends is a weakness.”

“Having friends is usually a strength,” I counter, then remember that I should stay on his good side, and he doesn’t seem the type to enjoy being argued with. “At least that’s what we say. My kind, I mean.”

“That must explain why your kind is such a powerful intergalactic force,” he says with endless dryness and sniffs his hands. “Oh, this stench! Next time I’ll just reach out one claw and let the attacker rip itself open from head to tail. This has quite ruined the mood.” He reaches out, and the breath catches in my throat, thinking he’ll go back to those tender, yet demanding caresses that turned my mind inside out.

But he just wipes his hands on my dress. “That’s better. When you find gold, let me know.” He moves into the jungle like a blue streak.

“No, don’t—” I begin, but it’s too late. He’s gone.

For a moment I stand there, unable to move because my mind is all jumbled. I’m not sure whether to be relieved or mad or disappointed, so I pick all three. It’s not easy.

The sounds of the jungle slowly return, without me having realized that they were gone.

It’s like being in a movie theater, totally absorbed in a good movie and then there’s a blackout and the movie stops, the bright emergency lights come on, and you remember that this is the real world and you’re not on theTitanicwith Rose and Jack after all. ExceptI’min a jungle where everything wants to kill me. And now I feel more naked and vulnerable than I have since the first nightmarish days on Xren.

The tropical jungle air manages to feel cold.

“Damn it,” I wheeze as I hug myself. “What thehellwas that? Did he hypnotize me?”

Luna the jungle cat comes slinking over to me as if nothing special just happened, the spikes in her tail peacefully retracted.

“Did you see that?” I ask. “He just tossed a freakingdactylinto the woods like a… a banana peel!”

She doesn’t indicate if she saw it, but she didn’t really need to. He flung her too, but I’ll be tactful and not mention it.

“And he ripped my dress.” I finger the edges of the torn dinosaur skin. It’s thick, and we need sharp knives to cut it when we make these dresses. I doubt even a caveman would just rip it with his bare hands. At the time I didn’t mind it at all — I just wanted to be bare for him.

“He was so confident,” I tell Luna, who’s looking away and is not really that interested. “You know? He wasn’t scared at all. As if the jungle wasn’t dangerous to him, just a nuisance. And I just… I wanted that. I wanted that close to me. I wanted to be around him. As close as I could get. Because he was another world, apart from this one. A better one. Is that weird?”

It obviously is, but Luna just gives me a glance with two of her eyes and licks her paw.

“See, Iwantedhim to touch me,” I try to explain. “It was like he was outside of everything, and I wanted that for me, too.”

And he turned me on just by existing, but I don’t say that out loud.

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