Rocks and Shoals Pt. 04 of 04

Time passed. Summer became autumn, then changed to winter. The cold was biting and harsh and cut through their yak furs.

One day Shan hiked along the valley floor on her way back to their cave after a successful hunt, the rocky ground was mottled with swirls of fallen snow that accumulated in the recesses. She had a yak carcass slung over her shoulders along with her bow and quiver of arrows, her pace slowed with the encumbrance, her breath fogged in front of her. Worse, the soles of her boots had split and the patching she had done had started to come loose and now her feet were wet where the snow got inside and melted.

Winter sucked.

She passed a familiar fold of rock. She was close now. She set the yak on the ground and climbed the rocky butte to the crashed alien scout ship. She brushed icicles from the partially open hatch and squeezed her way in. The way was familiar to her now. She had made the trip fifty times (maybe more than that) throughout the summer and autumn and into the winter.

In the cockpit she brushed snow flurries from the console and checked the status of the transmission. Still scrolling numbers. Still working. Still there was that spark of hope, meager as it was, despite the long wait.

Maybe she had expected a rescue before now. Maybe it was the uncertainty that was killing her.

For a time she watched the numbers scroll, incredulous that it still worked. Then she left and retrieved the yak and returned to the cave.

*

The first chamber of the cave was their storage room. Sheet metal with slabs of yak meat kept on ice. Here she dropped the new carcass. It would stay good awhile in this temperature. No need to tend to it now. She checked the drying rack and the pelt that was being stretched.

She pushed through a door of sheet metal and yak pelts and entered the middle chamber of their cave home.

The ceiling and floor were draped in yak pelts, the accumulation of seasons. There was a firepit in the center, smoldering now with the glowing embers left from lunch, soon to be rekindled for dinner. There were utensils made from bones, plates made from scrap metal, all on a shelf. Against the back wall there was sheet aluminum on stilts, piled with more pelts. A bed for two.

Jadhar wasn't there. She had gotten back first. So she stoked the fire and boiled some water and drank to warm herself.

Then she lit a candle and went into the third room, the smallest, down a short narrow tunnel in which she had to duck her head to pass through.

Inside that deeper room, she stood and held the candle above her to get an unobstructed view. On a small stone slab at the back of the room was a votive figure. It was made of metal from their fighters and wood gathered from the plain. It was a dirz god, a minor god, Sin Assyris, but he was important to them. He was the god of weary travelers.

Shan set the candle on the alter and said a short prayer, as she always did after checking the alien scout ship. The words were in the dirz language, some of the few she had memorized. It was more meaningful that way.

Some time later Jadhar returned. He had with him a massive sheet of aluminum. It looked to have been taken from her Gargoyle fighter, but with the abrasions from wind and sand, she wasn't positive. He had flattened it and cut it to an appropriate size and crimped the edges so it could be handled safely.

His plan was to build a door at the entrance to the cave. He set the aluminum door against the wall. He'd hinge it another time.

He was a builder. He liked using his hands. He liked doing things in incremental stages that accumulated to something meaningful. Like arrows, like a door, like a votive figure of a god.

On the other hand, she liked doing things that required attention. She was restless and needed to move and needed to stay focused on things that were immediately necessary. She was a great shot.

It was a good partnership. He liked making arrows. She liked shooting them.

She gave him a bowl of piping hot water and let him drink it and warm himself. Then she reheated the stew from lunch. She took a small bowl of it back into the shrine room and left it for Sin Assyris and then she returned to the bed room.

Together they sat by the fire and ate a dinner of yak meat and vegetables.

A long time later, after the sun set and the fire died down, Shan spoke, breaking the silence. "Do you love me?"

The suddenness of the question caught him off guard. He nodded, said, "Of course."

"When did you notice it?"

He thought a moment, but this was something he had thought about before, his answer was succinct. "When I woke after the crash. I had just recovered from a fever. I think it was our third day here."

She blinked. "That's just lust. That's not love."

"Yes, it is."

"How?" What she meant was, what does love mean if it happens so quickly?

"I was in your metal shelter you had built." He said that as if it explained everything. When she frowned, he struggled to explain what was in his heart, "You built that home, and you shared it with me. You let me inside your personal space. Being close to someone is to love them."

She understood. The dirz were a territorial species. Jadhar had already commented on the violation of his man cave back home and the pain that caused. It was a natural thing for him. Unknown to her, when she had brought him in and shared her shelter, she had bridged the gap between them as readily as anything else she could have done.

Then Jadhar turned the question back on her. "Why do you love me?"

"Who says I do?"

He smiled a small smile and was patient for her answer.

"I don't know." She half shrugged. But of course that wasn't true. She knew the reason. She just hated talking about her feelings even more than Jadhar. "Dayna, Brandon, Kwesi, Li Cong. All my relationships, they all got bad when I tried pushing them away, when I needed my space and they resented it. But with you its different. When I go off alone, you don't take it personally, you don't take it as a threat or anything. You just let me go." She smiled. "And I always come back."

"Because you have to."

She wasn't expecting him to say that. Jadhar rarely said anything so biting. She moved over and sat beside him. She leaned against him. "At first, yeah, I guess that's true. But not now. Now I come back because I want to." She took his hand and put it on her leg.

They looked at each other. Her eyes bright and clear. His dark and gold and brooding. She had found them so alien at first, now they were the most natural things to look at.

He used his other hand to move a lock of red hair from her face. He leaned over and kissed her. It was soft and gentle. The kind of kiss meant to make her feel like the most precious thing in his life.

She returned the kiss with the same warmth, the same depth of passion that she had never shared with anyone else. Then she stood and drew him to the bed and they undressed and climbed under the blankets.

She took his hand and guided it to her breasts. He cupped it. He brought his mouth to it and sucked it. She caressed his crown of skull ridges.

Her head rolled back, eyes closed, mouth open, breathing hard. She tightened her grip on his hard shoulders, his skin so rough and leathery pressed against her.

She felt his hot hard member against the inside of her thigh. He tapped the tip against the lip of her opening, as if their sexes were kissing. Then, only when she was really wet did he pushed into her. At first it was just the tip, a series of quick taps.

She shuddered with the anticipation of him fully inside her.

After an appropriate build up for her pleasure, he pushed all the way in. At the same time, he bit her nipple. The sudden pain made her cry out. That only encouraged him.

A pounding rhythm at first. In hard, then a slow agonizing withdraw.

Shan shuddered. Her muscles clenched his member inside her. He grunted in her ear. His breath hot on her neck.

He said something in his language then that she could not understand. It didn't matter. Just the sound of his voice was enough - it was more than enough - to make her feel loved and send her over the edge.

She cried out. Her body tensed, back arched, breasts and midriff crushed against the hardness of his chiseled body.

Body caked in sweat, breathing hard, she clung to him.

After some time, he rolled her over. She went willingly. Then he pushed into her again, this time from behind.

He worked it in faster and harder this time. She was so wet and sore already. The continued savagery destroyed her.

When he climaxed inside her she felt his body tense, she felt him grip her and hold her tight. She languished in his embrace.

Then he rolled off and lay gasping beside her.

She curled against his chest.

There were no words, just heavy breathing and sweat slick bodies pressed together, holding one another, two souls lost on an alien world, finding comfort in one another's presence.

*

Later they lay side by side. She was pooled in the crook of his shoulder, her hand tracing patterns on the dark leather of his chest.

Their sex life was incredible. At first it had been almost daily, when they felt that thrill of a new relationship. Then after a while they got kind of burnt out and it cratered, maybe only every ten days or even longer. But then it stabilized at once or twice in five days.

Also, there was Shan's intermittent need for solitude. It struck her sometimes (usually around the time of her period but not always) and she needed space. During that time there was no sex. And Jadhar never pressured her, never made her feel guilty about putting up walls around herself.

Being here on this world with him, was somehow magical. Theirs was a relationship that was mutually fulfilling and it was something that could only have happened here, during this strange turn their lives had taken.

But there was also a darkness hanging over them.

"What will happen if we're rescued?" She asked, torturing herself by doing so, but unable not to.

"We'll go home."

"I mean, what happens to us?"

He answered with his typically blunt logic. "If we're rescued by humans, I'll live with you. If we're rescued by dirz, you'll live with me."

"Will I be accepted on your world?"

"We will find a place that will accept you." Then he asked, "Will I be accepted on Earth?"

She thought about that one. "Probably not, but the Centauri colonies are more tolerant of aliens. And they're pretty developed. We might be able to settle there and find decent work."

"You don't sound happy."

How could she respond to that? "I really want to know, what will happen to us?"

"Why do you think it will be a problem?"

"Because people always say they will stay together, but they rarely do. Not when there is such a big life change."

"What are you saying?"

"Maybe this relationship can only work on this world. If we leave, it will be over."

He tightened his grip around her waist. His rough fingers ran along the swell of her hips. "If we leave. I will go anywhere with you. And I will marry you. If you'll have me, that is."

She smiled. "Of course, I will."

The dark cloud that hung over her passed and she felt better than she had in many days. Those words touched her. He said he would go anywhere to be with her. He offered to marry her. She hadn't realized how much she had wanted to hear that.

*

Later that very night, in that dark hour when the world seems a thing of shadows and dust, where the only reality is the gossamer strands of dreams, Shan woke to a rumble. It rolled down from the slope. Her first thought was an earthquake. Her next thought was the mountain was going to erupt.

The two of them got out of bed and dressed in furs and ran to the entrance of their cave. It was full dark, no moon (none around this world) only stars.

The rumbling knocked rocks loose which tumbled down the slope. Snow and dust was kicked up.

Then Shan saw the running lights, two shocking white orbs descending and stopping on a ledge east of them.

She knew.

A ship had come at last.

Human. Dirz. Some other race, perhaps the owners of the downed survey ship. No way to know. Not yet.

She looked at Jadhar. She could see in his eyes that he had the same idea.

Suddenly she felt fear. She had the mad thought to hide, she didn't want to be found, didn't want to be rescued. But that was just panic. She had set the transmission. She wanted to be rescued. At least, she thought she did.

They stood on the shelf of rock that Shan had come to think of as their balcony, and they watched the lights settle, the dust swirl in front of them, the vibrations stop and the last of the loose rock fall.

Shan needed him to know how she felt. "Whatever happens, I love you."

He took her hand. Together they ascended the slope.

As they neared they could hear voices. Someone sounded angry. Another shouted back from some distance away. She couldn't make out the words. It could have been English or any number of alien languages.

The two of them reached the ledge and approached the ship. It was large and it was blocky. It could have been anything. There were three figures silhouetted by the glare of the landing lights.

Shan called out. "Hello."

The three figures froze. There was silence for a moment, then one of the figures called back. "Who's there?"

"It's me." A stupid thing to say. "My name's Shannon Reddings. I'm a Colonel with the Earth Defense force. My fighter crashed some time ago. I've been stranded here ever since."

"Who's that with you?"

"Another survivor." Technically true. "May I approach?"

"Of course."

Shan squeezed Jadhar's hand, signally him to trust her. He squeezed back.

She stepped closer to the ship.

There were three humans, two men and a woman, all in civilian clothes. They were private contractors scouting the worlds for resources to mine.

"Why did you come?"

"We were in the system, surveying one of the moons around a gas giant farther out, and we picked up an emergency transmission. We came. But we weren't expecting humans. How were you able to broadcast?"

"We found an alien ship. I set the frequencies to something I remembered from the Academy."

The woman smiled. "Well, it worked, you're rescued now. How long have you been here?"

Shan shook her head. "Half a local year. Whatever that is?"

"Well, it's over. You can come home now."

"There's just one little problem."

"Oh?"

"The other survivor I mentioned isn't human. He's a dirz." She tensed, hoped this wouldn't turn into a fight, or that they would try to kill him.

The three surveyors looked at one another, then back to her. The woman said, "He's not going to attack us or anything, is he?"

"No."

"We're not military. If he wants to come with us to Eridani 40 - that's where we're headed after our mission - he's welcome."

Shan felt a flush of relief. She let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding. She smiled, tears blurred her vision. She nodded. Maybe the surveyors saw it or maybe not. Either way they came to her.

She gestured for Jadhar to come. He did. And together, hand in hand, the two of them went up the ramp into the nose of the ship and began the next phase of their lives.

She knew this would work. They would be able to be together.