Epilogue #2
Nator’ax pulls me close with his free arm and kisses me deeply, one large hand cradling the back of my head. The kiss is full of promise, relief, and fierce tenderness. When we finally part, he rests his forehead against mine, our bound hands pressed between our chests.
“You are my forever,” he murmurs, just for me, voice rough with emotion. “The light I will always return to.”
“And you are my strength and my peace,” I whisper back, smiling through happy tears. “I am yours completely.”
“And I am yours,” he rumbles. “Let’s not forget that.”
The tribe surges forward with laughter and blessings and comments, the girls first.
Nator’ax can’t deal with it for long before he lifts me effortlessly into his arms. I laugh as he spins me once under the bright midday sun, the red rock with its painted totem wall towering above us like a silent witness.
For the first time since arriving on this wild planet, everything feels exactly right.
He carries me up the stairs to the penthouse. The saucer is there, and the hatch is open.
“I wonder what Callie will say when she sees us,” I ponder as Nator’ax lifts me into the saucer and then puts me down on my feet. “I hope she’ll be happy to have some visitors. Or maybe she’ll be annoyed about being interrupted from alone time with her own man.”
Theodora told us what Dex reported to her, after he found Callie in the company of a caveman who Dex said is a fisherman.
“If we find the place,” my husband says as he stems his palm against the ceiling, never a big fan of flying in this thing.
“I wouldn’t be that upset if we don’t find her,” I admit as I loosen my sandals. “Maybe I need some alone time with my man. Hey, Myron.”
The little Plood is in there, just standing by the control console as if he’s just been waiting for us to return.
I give him a little smile. “Can you please fly us- no, sorry, that’s not how you want to be spoken to. Myron, fly us to the coast. Find a fishing village on stilts. Then find a small spot some ways along the coastline. I’ll help. Go.”
He works the controls so fast and smoothly that his little three-fingered hands are just a blur. The saucer rises into the air, then sails out over the jungle, completely without drama.
“I wonder how he does that,” Nator’ax growls. “When we tried to fly this ship, it just did what it wanted.”
I just shrug. “We just pushed buttons. But he does a lot more. Oh, I think I know why the saucer melted into the ice.”
Nator’ax raises his eyebrows. “Oh? I thought he was just afraid of the Gar men.”
“Well, maybe that was why. But I think Myron was awake when we had landed on the glacier. He was still in the locker, but his eyes were moving. In there, he couldn’t do much.
But I remember saying that I wanted the saucer to heat up.
Remember how cold it was? And I think he somehow heard me or understood me.
When you returned with the Gar men, maybe he left the locker in a panic and just tried to do something the only way he knew how: to obey an order.
So he made the saucer really hot, and it melted the ice.
All this is just me guessing. We’ll never know. ”
“It’s a good guess,” Nator’ax says, pressing his palm against the ceiling and squinting suspiciously out the viewscreens. “Much is still unknown about the Plood.”
The saucer flies over the jungle, not very high.
It’s not going too fast, either. I’m fine with that.
We don’t need to find Callie today. If it takes us a couple of days to find that spot on the beach, that’s more alone time for Nator’ax and me.
We’ll just have to find a clearing, a nice meadow, maybe next to a lake or a stream, some fruit trees…
The saucer will keep us safe, what with its surprisingly effective weapons that can vaporize a totem pole in a second, as if struck by lightning.
And if some dinosaur comes along, we can just-
“What’s that?” Nator’ax asks, pointing out the viewscreen to the treetops.
“Go lower,” I order when I see what I think he means. “Slow down.”
The saucer reduces its speed and levels out about a hundred feet above the treetops.
I frown. “Huh. That’s not great.”
It’s an area of bare cliffs and rocks where the earth is so thin that no trees can grow. And there are things moving there, little blue-white creatures that waddle along. We couldn’t have seen them if the trees hadn’t thinned out.
“Plood,” Nator’ax says. “Many, many Plood.”
He’s right. That’s what they are. Dozens of them, waddling along out of the jungle, making their way through the rocky area and then disappearing under the dense canopy of treetops.
“Like bloodwings,” I mutter. “All going the same way.”
“Not quite as many as that, perhaps,” my husband gently says as he puts a hand on my shoulder. “But not a pleasant sight. I wonder where they’re going.”
I glance at Myron. He doesn’t seem to care one way or the other, and I detect no change in that strange telepathic aura he sends out. He just wants to know what to do now.
“It may be worth finding out,” I finally decide. “But not yet. We’re on our honeymoon. When that’s done, we’ll maybe see what’s happening. Myron, go higher and faster.”
The saucer rises and speeds up.
The jungle swallows the strange procession of Plood as we leave it behind.
The treetops close like nothing unusual ever passed through them.
For a moment, I keep watching, a faint unease tugging at me.
It feels like the beginning of something.
Or maybe the middle of something we don’t understand yet.
Then I let it go.
I lean back into Nator’ax, turning my face up to his. “Later. We’ll deal with that later.”
He gives me a heart-stopping little smile. “Later.”
The tension slips away as quickly as it came.
Ahead of us, the jungle stretches endless and green, broken here and there by rivers that catch the sunlight like silver ribbons.
Somewhere out there is a beach, a clearing, a place where no one is hunting us, no one is judging us, and nothing is trying to kill us.
For once, we get to choose where we go.
I reach for his hand, threading my fingers through his. “Find us something beautiful,” I tell Myron. “Somewhere warm.”
The saucer hums in response, smooth and alive beneath our feet as it drifts toward the horizon.
Behind us, the Borok tribe, the Gar tribe, the storm, the ice, and everything we survived fade into memory. Ahead of us is sun, water, and time.
And a real future, one I once thought I would never have.
“Beautiful and warm,” Nator’ax says as he bends to nuzzle my hair. “It reminds me of someone.”
I lean into his huge bulk behind me, raise his hand to my mouth and kiss the thick, calloused fingers. “Me too. Although I’d say ‘handsome and hot’. It’s our future, my love. Beautiful and warm. Because ugly and cold just isn’t our thing.”