Cave Alien (Ancient Earth Aliens 1)

“Like what?”

“Like washing your hands,” he says.

“Washing hands? Why?”

He looks at me, his eyes burning with the desire to speak, and yet his mouth remains closed. “There is so much you do not understand about the world you live in. You think that disease comes from ill-spirits.”

“It does.”

“It does not. It comes from little organisms which are too small to see which live on surfaces and are passed from person to person by contact or body fluids, or sometimes even through the air.”

I look at him, narrowing my eyes. “You are talking nonsense because you do not think I can understand the truth.”

“I… I am not,” he sighs. “In a few thousand years, everyone will wash their hands.

“Because of the spirits in their hands?”

“Not in their hands, on their hands. There are molecules of…”

“Molecules!” I laugh. “What are molecules!?”

He falls silent, shaking his head. “I shouldn’t have worried. You’re not ready to hear the truths of the world. You’re a product of your time and always will be.”

I let out a soft hiss.

“I’ll tell you this, and you can believe as much of it as you like,” he says. “I came from the stars, and I am waiting to return to my home.”

“You are going to go back to the stars…” I take the meaning of his words in. “And I cannot come?”

“You can do whatever I say you can do,” he growls. “But…this world, it is yet so young. There are many thousands of generations yet to be. If I take you, and you were meant to be here, then I may be taking a mother of millions, an ancestor of entire cities.”

“I have no mate.”

“Yet,” he says. “I do not know what the future holds for you.”

“It held death on a plank.”

“Because I defiled you,” he says. “I have interfered too much. I am sorry for that. I have brought you pain, and for that, I apologize too.”

“They were going to throw me into the volcano,” I remind him. “No matter what you did, I was destined to die. You saved me. So you can take me with you. Nothing here will miss me. Take me where the rocks glow and talk. I want to see what is ahead of us in time.”

Vulcan

I have to stop talking. The worst part of this predicament is not knowing if I will be able to take her. If I tell Krave I have mated with a human, he will be furious. But I imagine Tyank has already told him. So the trouble may already have begun.

“Why are you so quiet? Won’t you take me?”

“I want to take you,” I repeat.

“If you don’t take me, I’ll die.”

I look over at her, ferocity spiking inside. “Don’t you dare,” I growl.

“I’ll go to Hyrrm.”

“You can’t threaten to throw yourself into a volcano every time you don’t get your way,” I lecture her.

“I don’t have anyone else.”

“You could,” I say, hating every word coming from my mouth. If Krave were to materialize in this moment and tell me that it was time to return to the future, I would do everything I could to take her with me. I have an attachment to this little human which defies sense and space, but I must be rational. It may not even be possible to remove her from this planet.

She moves away from me and looks at me with narrowed eyes. She is angry. It is sweet that she cares, that she sees me as a protector to be desired and not a monster to be avoided.

“So you intend to let some man take me,” she says, bitterly.

“No.” I let out a low growl at the very idea.

“If you leave, then anyone can and will take me. I can’t defend myself. I am a woman with no name and no tribe. There is no warrior who will offer me protection. So you have saved me for no reason whatsoever besides making yourself feel like a hero - but you are no hero, Vulcan.”

I watch her face twist up in anger, and I know that it comes from her feeling of defenselessness. She is right. She is small and weak and female and none of those traits bode well for her long term survival on this planet where strong men rule over those weaker than they are. In many years hence, there will be systems of justice, law, and order. For now, male might rules supreme.

“I did not save you for no reason,” I tell her. “I saved you because you have life left to live, beauty to share. There is a song inside you.”

“I don’t think so,” she says. “Not anymore. I think that song has gone away forever. I think it fled me when I was tied to the starving board. It had no use for me after that. I was not worthy of it.”