face by his strong neck. “I like exploring,” I manage.
“As do I,” Brank’ox pants. “Exploring together is better than I thought.”
- - -
We stay like that for a little bit until I climb off him, knees still shaking. My dress is bunched up around my waist, and I take some time smoothing it down and putting the shoulder straps back on.
Brank’ox puts one big arm around me and pulls me close. “You are remarkable.”
“Then we are both remarkable.”
He nuzzles my hair. “The shaman told us some of these things, and he showed us on a wooden doll what a woman would be like. We were all extremely interested, even if we all knew we would never experience it for real. Now I have. And I would have a few things to say to that shaman about what it’s really like.”
“Don’t blame him too much,” I suggest, feeling light and strangely content for the first time on this planet. “He had never seen a woman before.”
“He never did. Shaman Guv’tox passed away years before the alien women came. But I think he would be happy to know that I have met you and know that many of the things he said were true. While only some were false.” He stiffens. “Holy Ancestors, if an irox had come for us in the middle of that, we would both be dead.” He gets to his feet and pulls his kilt up, scanning the sky and the edge of the jungle.
I can see no movement anywhere, and right now I don’t even care that much. But I guess we can’t stay here forever. I promised to be home this evening. “Shall we go on?”
Brank’ox sighs. “I suppose we should. Although in many ways I would have liked to stay forever.”
He’s so sincere, I can’t help but put my hand on his forearm. “You know that we can do things like this in other places, too?”
He grins, and I swear the bulge in his kilt is back already. “Ah. That sounds like something that should be explored closer.”
I put the backpack on. “It does.”
He re-buries the rest of the fool’s gold, puts on the backpack, and checks on me.
Then we walk into the jungle, Brank’ox in front and me behind, close but not too close. I’m getting better at this – I’ll be so far behind him that he has room to move if something happens, and close enough that he can easily keep track of me. We’re moving pretty fast.
A smile plays around my mouth. This was unplanned. And it must have some complications. But there’s something about this planet and this jungle that makes us all feel that if something is to happen, then it better happen now. Because in a jungle like this, tomorrow may never come.
For over a year now, I’ve been living in the aftershock of being Troga’s prisoner, and it made me fearful and worried. I was so curled up in myself that it took me this long to think of a way to use my knowledge of chemistry to make life better for us. The dark jungle all around us made me feel like there could be a horde of Trogas coming out of it at any moment.
But this short trip has changed things for me. The jungle still scares me, as it should. But now I’ve had a little bit of a triumph, celebrating life in the most profound way possible. Hey, jungle, did you see what I just did, right in the middle of you?
We did well, Brank’ox and I. We’re bringing back pyrite, guano, and maybe rubber. The rubber, I can probably use right away, and the guano can be turned into saltpeter. The pyrite is mostly sulfur, and it looks pretty pure the way it crumbles so easily.
Something is tugging at my mind, something about saltpeter and sulfur. Why does that seem like such an interesting pairing?
No, it won’t come to me.
Oh well. At least Brank’ox hadn’t collected a heap of actual gold. We’d be crawling with dragons. I only have one thing they might want, and that’s the rough diamond Eleanor gave me.
It might be fun to make a ring from pyrite and set the diamond in it—
For a split second, I freeze as I suddenly remember.
Brank’ox stops in his tracks and whirls around when he hears me almost stumbling. He frowns and scans the trees and the sky.
“I’m fine,” I assure him, half whispering and smiling to make sure he gets it.