Hm. I was kind of hoping he would come. Maybe he’s busy with his warrior stuff. He is one of their leaders, after all. I should have invited him.
“There’s our Thomas Edison,” Phoebe says when she spots me. “Or our own Estee Lauder, rather.” She smiles and waves from across the campfire.
“Our own Coco Chanel,” Tamara suggests.
“She’s more like Bobbi Brown,” Caroline says. “A little more modern than those old brands.”
“I’m fine being plain old Dolly,” I insist, sitting down on a bench covered with a soft rug. “In fact, that’ll be my tagline. Plain old.”
“That needs work,” Jennifer says and passes me a rough plate with a fine selection of smoked meat, then a woven basket with a heap of some kind of boiled vegetable that we think looks a little like potatoes. “How about Just Wear It. Like Nike’s Just Do It?”
I put a good amount of food on my leaf, pass the plate and basket on along the table, and hold out my cup to be filled with fruit juice. “Because You’re Worth More Than That,” I suggest. “Or is that too similar to that other one?”
“It’s a little derivative,” Sophia says. “How about this. Maybe She’s Abducted With It. Maybe It’s Dolly Soap. Actually, forget that one. Seriously, Dolly, when you go back to Earth, bring a sackful of your soap. Genuine alien soap. Made from dinosaurs. You’ll make millions.”
“Of course,” I promise. “I just have to make more. A lot more. I’ll need some help. Jen, how do you feel about going into the burned wood and boiled dinosaur fat business? There’ll be hard work, corrosive compounds, and a lot of dirt and bad smells. By the end, you will have chemical burns on your hands and maybe a bar of soap the size of a credit card cut in half. Except thinner. If it works.”
“When you make it sound that wonderful, I just can’t refuse,” Jen says, munching on a salen fruit from our own grove. “Sure, I’ll help out with the soapmaking. Can I have my own line?”
I nod. “I insist that you do. When we’re back on Earth, we’ll have a fake feud to drum up even more interest. Like, which one of us has the best alien soap. We’ll badmouth each other to the press and claim that the other soap is maybe too alien and weird. We can charge millions per bar.”
“Not much of a feud,” Jennifer sniffs. “Everyone knows mine is better.”
“No, mine is.”
“No, mine is.”
“No, mine is. See? It’ll work. Everyone’s watching.”
Jennifer grins. “It totally will.”
“Settle down, girls,” Tamara laughs. “You’re making us all feel dirty with your endless soap talk.”
“Does this mean someone will make a soap opera?” Phoebe asks. “I mean, sounds like we’re halfway there. Just the opera part is missing.”
“Days of Our Tribes,” someone suggests.
“Desperate Houseboys. Nah, just wishful thinking. Don’t mind me.”
“Party of Tribe. What? Nobody knows that one? You don’t know what you missed.”
“The Kavedashians. With a K, because obviously. I volunteer as the Kourtney-like girl.”
The girls keep chatting about all kinds of nonsense, and I enjoy my dinner and just being here.
Opera, Phoebe said. There’s not much music in this tribe, except when the girls get drunk and sing Adele at the top of their lungs. Except, I know another kind of music, too. Maybe I can convince Brank’ox to come here and let everyone hear what he can do?
Come to think of it, I want it to be really impressive when he does that. Something that really blows everyone away. His harp is cool, but the noises it makes can barely be heard unless it’s a really quiet night of the kind he and I shared in Old Bune.
Of course, he only plays it when alone in the jungle, and during those times it can be a deadly mistake to make too much noise. But playing here at the campfire, the soft sound would halfway drown in the crackle from the fire.
I stretch my neck, looking over the head of the others in the direction of the army camp. There are many smaller campfires over there, and the laughter and sounds of maybe a hundred cavemen who are done with the day’s work mix with our sounds. I can’t single out his voice among the others, and I think I would recognize it.
I hope he’s okay.
“Invite him over,” Jen says softly so only I can hear.