Cave Alien (Ancient Earth Aliens 1)

We make a somber parade of aliens as we walk through the forest and back across the plains, scanning for any signs of humans as we go. It would be thoroughly disastrous if we were to be seen.

Tres

Where has he gone? The day has turned to night and still I am alone. I know he said to wait longer if he was not back by nightfall, but the coming of the dark brings out the dark thoughts in my mind and in my heart. I can still feel tenderness in the places where his body joined with mine. I was ravaged, overcome, conquered, and then set free.

I have not worried about anybody since I was born. I never cared what happened to Trelok. Even the other women of the tribe failed to interest me. I was the outcast. I never knew that position had any benefits. I was so consumed with loneliness, but now I am filled with something else: desperate worry.

I have something to lose. I have something to lose that I might never actually have truly had. Mating with Vulcan was intense. I felt the bond between us form, I felt the basic note of the universe wrap around the both of us, a clear sound which I know I could never sing. At the peak of ecstasy, I heard the beauty of eternity and I knew that everything would always be okay. But now that orgasm has abandoned me, that experience feels remote. The real world has closed in around me, become solid under my feet - and I am worried that I might actually lose him.

Waiting is the worst, but I am too afraid to venture out on my own. Even with the benefit of clothing, everything out there is dangerous - not to mention Vulcan if he discovers that I disobeyed him.

I sit next to the fire and I stare into the flames, humming to myself.

Visions rise before my eyes. I blink them away. This is one of the reasons I was beaten. The songs I sing are more than pretty tunes. There is power in them. Sometimes they bring visions. The tune I am singing now is one of searching and connection. I think I drew Vulcan to me. I may even have… and this is almost too much to think, but I think I may have manifested him somehow.

I stare and I sing, and what I see in the flames is so strange I know it cannot be real. There is a volcano mouth, burning with molten rock and spewing the gases which would choke me out of existence. But Vulcan is standing there, above two cowering animals, and he is carrying a body.

I watch through the song, enchanted and confused. The view is not entirely clear. I cannot see what or who he is holding, but there is no doubt that it is dead. And either wearing heavy furs or heavily furred itself.

While I watch, he hefts the body up, then hurls it into the volcano below. The lava swallows it instantly, leaving me to wonder what it was and why he wanted to destroy it…

“NO!” I scream into the fire.

The other two figures are rushing up behind him, and I can feel their intent through the flames. They are going to push him in, just like he threw the body in.

He looks up, his eyes meeting mine through the flames. He hears me, somehow. But it feels too late. They are already almost upon him, and their intent is as clear as it can be. They will throw him into the same lake of lava, and he will be destroyed.

“NOO!”

I scream as four hands shove at him, pushing him over the ledge.

I watch as he falls, his eyes locked on mine as his clawed hands reach for me. I am already watching the death of my lover, just hours after being mine, he is going to become nothing at all.

And then something impossible happens.

Wings sweep from behind his shoulders. They burst from his back, ripping out to form two broad sails which enable him to glide on the hot currents from the lava. He flies up from the lava and turns on the two figures who tried to destroy him. What he does to them is unspeakable and brutal, and swift.

He flies up through the flames, knocks me backwards and…

Vulcan

I crash to ash and earth, one foot and one knee encountering the ground, my bloody wings curving up over my head, sheltering and astounding me at one and the same time. I am out of breath, drained of energy. I am in the deepest agony I have ever experienced. These wings did not simply unfold from my flesh, they were ripped from it.

Behind me the lava continues to boil, containing the corpses of three aliens, each of which were too foolish to recognize the danger they were in. Those two, Wencel and Whatshisname, Zell, they could have survived this planet. I showed them mercy and they tried to slay me at the first chance they got. I should not be surprised by that, it is precisely what I would have predicted would happen, but I am still befuddled. I gave them an unfettered path to survival, and instead they chose to snatch defeat from the jaws of surrender.