Page 83 of Caveman Alien's Heat
- Nator’ax-
For a heartbeat, she just looks at me, her eyes wide, as if the words need time to find their place inside her.
Then something soft and bright breaks through, and she lets out a small, breathless laugh that trembles at the edges. “You really picked your moment.” She steps closer, her hands finding my chest as if that is where they belong now. “Yes,” she adds, like it’s something she’s been holding back for a while. “Yes, I’ll marry you. There’s nothing I want more, my love.”
I let out a low breath and pull her in against me. “I promise to try to keep us both alive until then.”
“And after, ideally.” She presses her face briefly into my neck, then leans back just enough to look up at me again, that same spark still there. “But before we go back to the Borok tribe and tell everyone what we’ve done, how about we find somewhere that isn’t trying to freeze us to death?” Her fingers trace absently over one of the healing bites on my arm. “Somewhere warm. No storms, no bloodwings, no tribes. Just us. For a little while.”
I nod toward the Plood. “Command your servant, then.”
She turns. “Go to a warm place. With ocean. A beach. No Bigs. Now.” The last word comes with a tone of calm, assured command I’ve never heard from Riley before.
“That should do it,” I chuckle as the Plood hurriedly adjusts the various controls. “He’ll do his very best.”
Riley gives me an apologetic look. “He only obeys when commanded. They are a servant species, probably designed to serve dragons. But it looks like they’ll obey whoever gets to them first. I begged him to come up from the ice, but he didn’t try until I gave him a firm order.”
The scenery outside slowly changes, from ice to green forest to brown plains and then to the red-green jungle that I know so well. The saucer flies steadily now, but still I put one palm on the ceiling in case it goes wild again.
Finally, the hull settles into the sand with a soft hiss, and when the hatch opens, the air that spills in is warm. It carries a scent I don’t recognize at first, something green and alive and touched by salt. For a moment, I simply stand there, letting it reach me, feeling it on my face, in my lungs, as if I have to be certain it’s real.
Riley doesn’t hesitate. She slips past me with a small, breathless laugh and jumps down onto the sand. I follow more slowly, watching her as she turns in a slow circle, arms slightly out, eyes closed, face lifted to the sun.
“Oh yeah,” she says, grinning. “This is perfect.”
She impatiently shrugs the fur from her shoulders like it offends her now, like it belongs to another life. The dress follows amoment later, peeled away and dropped without ceremony, and then she’s just… there. Bare skin in sunlight, pale where the furs covered her, already warming, already changing. She walks a few steps, then more, her toes digging into the sand as if she needs to feel every grain of it.
For a long moment, I just look at her—how her shoulders move, how her hips sway with easy freedom.
She glances back at me, catches the way I’m watching, and grins, wide, unashamed, alive in a way I have not seen before. “What? It’s warm.”
“It just got warmer,” I reply, my voice rougher than I intended.
She laughs again and turns back to the water. The sea stretches out before us, endless and blue, moving in slow, steady breaths that have nothing to do with storms or death. She walks to the edge and lets the waves touch her feet, then steps in farther, hissing a little at the temperature before relaxing into it.
“It’s colder than it looks,” she calls over her shoulder. “But still so much better than ice.”
I finally move, shedding my own fur as I go, but keeping my sword nearby. The air against my skin feels strange, almost unreal after so long wrapped and hidden. By the time I reach her, she’s kneeling, letting the water run over her hands, watching it as if it might disappear if she looks away.
“We made it,” she says.
“We did,” I agree.
For a while, we say nothing more. There is no need. The sun climbs, the waves move, and the world does not try to kill us.I keep the usual watch against irox, but I can’t imagine any of those would dare intrude on our happiness, and so it proves.
Later, we walk along the edge of the beach. The sand gives way to clusters of low trees heavy with fruit. Riley is the one who finds them first.
“These look promising,” she says, reaching up to pull one down. She inspects it, turns it in her hands, then takes a careful bite. There’s a pause, a moment of judgment, and then her face lights up. “Oh. Oh, that’s good.”
She hands it to me. I taste it, and it’s sweet, soft—nothing like the hard, scarce food of the ice plains. Something in my chest loosens further.
“We’re not going back yet,” she says after a while, leaning against me as we stand beneath the trees. “Not right away.”
“We deserve this,” I say. “We need to heal. Alone.”
She shakes her head, smiling up at me, sun-warmed and unburdened. “We almost died. A lot.” She gestures to the beach, the water, the endless warmth. “But this… a few days here would be great. Somewhere that doesn’t try to eat us or freeze us, and where there are no crazy ice men trying to trick me.”
Her happiness makes me smile. “That seems reasonable.”
