A PRIMEVAL WINTER

Ever wonder what it might have been like in the dim past before man understood how babies were made, but made them anyway, and winter was approaching?

It was a primeval paradise.

Overhead, the canopy of the forest met in an almost impenetrable tangle of foliage keeping the world dark and mysterious, and amongst it a myriad creatures lived their lives, and loved, and died.

It was the way of things, the way things were and always had been.

And Bongoo stood there, almost thinking.

You might have called Bongoo a monkey or a primitive primate or even a hominid, but he called himself a man. He walked upright when he wasn't swinging through the forest, leaping from tree to tree with the ease and magnificence of a deity. He loved the swinging, but the walking was more efficient and kept his head high enough to see danger when it was near.

His species could sense the future. With its feet planted firmly in the past it could taste and feel times that had yet to come. His was the perfect life. His carbon footprint barely existed and his heart swelled with pride when he looked upon his mate and their offspring. He knew, of course, nothing about carbon footprints but he did know about love. A great deal about it.

Bongoo loved his female. He loved the taste of her at night when they lay together, head to head, and the little ones were barely stirring in their sleep. He loved the sight of her when she scrubbed and worked away, performing the woman tasks whilst he was a man and performed more manly work in the great forest, like hunting and facing danger daily. And he loved their little ones. Maybe he understood how they'd arrived, little sprogs separating from their mother whenever she grew heavy and proud. Maybe he was aware of his part in the scheme of birth and life. He was, of course, aware of the physical deed, but whether it was just a pleasurable game to him or something more vital was hard to say, and whether he ever associated it with the flurry of new life that surrounded him was even harder to say.

Bongoo was sentient, but only just.

He was aware of his ideas, but more aware of the forest and its life-force.

And as he stood there he knew the leaves would fall soon enough. They had last year and the year before and it was a puzzle that he was ill-equipped to try to solve. But it happened and so he accepted it. Bongoo knew of the seasons, then, and he knew he must prepare for their varying fruitfulness. And soon, his experience taught him, it would be the cold season. He already had stocks of meat dried by the sun and put aside for what the future would call the winter. He would need plenty. There were more mouths to feed this year than there had last. His woman had produced two more this last hot season. But now the whole world was cooling, and he must take care of them.

The cold season was to do with the shrinking days, the cooling air, the falling leaves from the canopy high above, the longer nights, the more frightening threat from the wolf family that roamed the world round about. It would come and they would shiver, and then it would be gone for another long time.

He looked at his female, at her hairy breasts, the florid almost crimson beauty of her precious, beautiful arse. She was doing the this and that of the females, cleaning stuff, feeding sprogs, laughing at nothing or something, and when he watched her a surge of love flooded through him.

His sentience was generous. Was loving. Was permanent.

His sentience was primeval.

The cold season was coming.

She needed protection from it. She needed his love more than ever. And so did the little ones.

He scratched an armpit and loped towards her.

He had no language worth mentioning, but he still knew he must grunt something.

Merry cold season, he pushed between reluctant lips, and laughed at his cleverness.

His woman, bless her, laughed back.

This was, of course, a very long time ago. So long ago that two thousand years would be accounted an unbelievably tiny fraction of it.

And the love, the hope, the wishes, all were sincere. They were uncorrupted by the word Christmas and the gobbledegook baggage it takes with it..

Then Bongoo gave her a gift for the cold season. He held her close to him, warming her, and that was his gift. More precious than anything in her Universe, she thanked him for it.

And her smile told him there would be another birth, for she was no virgin.

Author's Note

I know there's no plot as such, just a simple scene and its characters.