Cave Alien (Ancient Earth Aliens 1)

“I see you’ve ignored Krave’s orders already. Got a human girl of your own, tapping that ancient Earth ass, huh.”

“Stop it, Tyank,” Vulcan growls. “And not a word of this to Krave.”

“It better be casual,” Tyank says. “You can’t take her home with you.”

“I will do as I please,” he growls.

I do not understand what I am seeing and hearing at first, but I am not entirely stupid. Vulcan is speaking to the stone as if it is another person. That voice cannot coming from the stone itself. It must be thrown from elsewhere. Someone is speaking through the talking rock. Someone Vulcan knows. His family, maybe. They are arguing like family, the way Trelok’s wives bicker. It is probably better I do not tell him that.

He moves further away, speaks more quietly, and I lose the thread of the conversation, but it doesn’t matter. I have much to think on. Everything has been so strange since I met this beast of a creature, and I understand so little of him. With every hour, he becomes more strange.

The conversation does not take long. The sun has only just made its escape from the sky when Vulcan returns, silver rock in hand. It has stopped glowing and fallen silent. I feel a slight pang of disappointment. I enjoyed my brief conversation with the talking rock.

“You were not supposed to see that,” he says, tapping my nose with light censure. “But I should have taken it with me, not left it for a curious little human to find.”

“What magic was that?”

“It isn’t magic. It’s…” he looks at me, searching my face. “It is magic,” he sighs.

I sense that he is lying, but I do not understand the lie and I think he is at least trying to tell the truth. I don’t know why he can’t say everything to me, or at least try to. He pulled me from death. He insisted I survive, and I don’t know what comes next.

“Why do you frown?”

“You think I am stupid,” I say, drawing away. “You have your secrets and you keep them from me because I am little more than an animal to you. You know so much more than I could ever know.”

“You are not stupid, but my knowledge is not for your time, or your kind. I’ve already done more damage than I should have just by being here with you, letting you see me for what I am, and the tools which are at my disposal.”

He sits down beside me, his massive body long and sharp, the harsh ridges sliding away from me, retracting into the secret parts of his body.

“I am sorry, Tres,” he says. “This is probably the first of many apologies I will owe you, and if I don’t give them, remember this one.”

He seems sad, for reasons I don’t understand. But that is because he hasn’t explained them to me.

“Please,” I say. “Just tell me what is happening.”

“First things first,” he says, taking a woven package slung over his shoulder. “I found some clothing when I was checking the village below. You should put it on.”

“You mean you stole it.”

“Found. Stole. They’re just words,” he winks.

I am grateful for clothing. My skin has been bumpy with cold for many hours now, and though he left me with a smoldering fire for warmth, it has barely been enough. The clothing he stole is warm and fur lined, covering me from my feet to my neck with boots, leggings, and a tunic all tanned from animal fur. Trelok would lose his mind if he saw me dressed this way. He never suffered any of us to be dressed in skins or fur. They were reserved to honor him. We made do with woven clothing which leaked and chafed and which could be torn away so he could sate his lust as he pleased with any female. Any female but me. For a time, I felt as though I was being denied something important when the other women would walk about with swollen bellies and smiles of satisfaction. A pregnant wife never had to work. But then I saw what happened if she bore the wrong sex, how sometimes Trelok’s rages would not allow the boy child to live even a day and I was glad he never came to me.

Still, the memory of exclusion stays with me. I was not worthy of even a brute like Trelok. And now, I am unworthy of explanation from this great beast of a creature who sits beside me, his fangs extended but his mouth closed.

“I was told not to tell you anything,” he says when the silence had enveloped us both. “It is not because you are stupid, but because you are intelligent. Because there are things the human species does not know about and cannot know about for many thousands of years, or the entire course of the world will be changed forever.”