“To find fruits,” I tell him, pushing wet hair out of my face. “I not go far. But the krolts… they found me.”
“There must be a nest nearby. Were there many krolts before?”
“None.” I tell him. “Never.”
“Everything is changing in the jungle. Even the Bigs feel it.”
I help him slowly get to his feet.
He stands still for a moment, flexing his knees. “I think I can walk. The venom isn’t as strong as I thought. And we can’t leave him like that.”
I support the caveman towards the still-kicking krolt. While I stay back, he slashes the predator’s wide head completely off the body. The legs stop their movement, and the whole dino sags to the side.
I grab his hand. “You came to help me. Did you hear scream?”
“I didn’t hear anything. But I didn’t like that you weren’t by the ship. I was hoping you had gone to the beach, and we had simply crossed paths without seeing each other. Then I saw the krolts.”
We walk slowly towards the saucer, not saying much. We survived, but what about the next time? I can’t even go twenty feet from the clearing before disaster strikes. It’s like a prison.
And how many of these attacks can Kenz’ox take? His skin heals incredibly fast, but he must have a limit, too.
My hands are still shaking.Shit. I have to get away from here.
Kenz’ox gets Aker’ix from the saucer, and we sit down by the fire ring. Aker’iz immediately protests, so he puts her in the playpen. I notice it now has a little canopy against rain and dripping sap.
Kenz’ox mechanically tends to his wounds with the paste Cora gave me. The venom seems to have made him tired.
How many more attacks can we handle?I ask myself as I check my spearhead.How many more lucky breaks do we get?
I sit down next to him. “I’ll help.” I apply the paste to his wounds and the worst of the sucker rings, noting that there’s not a lot of the paste left.
“Can you stand?” I ask when I finish up, worried about the venom.
He gets up with no problem. “So it seems. Thank you.”
I glance at the saucer. “I go inside,” I state. “Yell if sick.”
He just looks as I enter the Plood craft.
The light is its usual blue, and there’s no hum. I check the water dispenser, which works, and the slop dispenser, which must be running out of whatever material it uses. It produces much less now than before. But at least it kept us girls alive for several years.
I sit down by the biggest console. Last night, I had a dream where I could shape the crystals with my fingers, like a silky-feeling plasticine, soft and supple.
But when I try it, of course it doesn’t work. The crystal shapes are as cold and hard as always.
“Maybe they just need some heat,” I mutter and hold onto a crystal with my whole hand, trying to warm it up.
It doesn’t work.
I take a deep breath to calm myself. “It’s fine. It’s fine. We’re almost there. Any moment now I’ll get it. The Plood aren’tthatsmart. I can do this.”
That tentacle around my ankle. Ineverwant to experience that again. And those fucking krolts are pure nightmare fuel.
“Thishasto work,” I mumble. “Thishasto work. Ihaveto leave.”
I try several ideas. But all I accomplish is to change some of the colors of the crystals, which is nothing new.
Then it hits me: I have only looked inside these consoles. I haven’t actually looked at their tops, where there are some lights flashing. The girls and I did try some things back then, in thefirst terrible, emotionally paralyzed months after we first came here. We decided it wasn’t possible for us to understand, and we never looked at it since.
