CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE – A NEW PASSION

Left alone and with poor weather outside the cave, Aurora and Umbaga find they are both only human.

The very next day Aurora said she ought to be getting back to Melvin.

“He’s a man and men never good on own,” she said, smiling, needing to lighten the deadening mood that had descended on Umbaga. It was only after they woke up that she realised just how much this primitive man was going to miss his woman.

He acknowledged her attempt at humour with a fleeting smile. “Women always best,” he murmured. Then: “Umbaga go hunting. Need meat.”

He went to the cave entrance, pulling a loose skin tunic over him. Summer was over and autumn had arrived with a cold vengeance. And it was raining. Not heavily, not so that they had heard it from deep inside the cave, but fine droplets, the sort that seem to soak a person who chances to be out in it, and very disproportionate to its seeming gentle fall.

“Aurora not go in rain,” he muttered, “and no good hunting either.” he added

She looked out, and nodded. “Umbaga right,” she said, “Melvin will have to wait for me.”

“Melvin understand,” nodded Umbaga.

And it was shortly after then that it happened. Out of the blue and unexpectedly and wonderfully

Afterwards, when they tried to work it out, of them neither could tell who started it, but start it they did, and they could have shared it.

Bearing in mind that Umbaga was still suffering the grief of his loss it might seem an odd thing for him to be rolling on the back of their cave on the bed where they’d spent the night, and actually rolling passionately with Aurora, that he should be tearing her one-piece dress from her, and she helping him whilst simultaneously stripping him of the fur that he’d only just put on. But that’s what happened. Something had driven them together, the something that might normally be expected to visit the unwary under the cover of darkness at night, but it happened in the full light of a cool autumn day, and neither of them tried to stop it.

“Umbaga big and strong,” hissed Aurora, and it was true. Although he was not as tall as Melvin he was broader and well-muscled, and there could be no doubt as to his strength. And the expression on his equally broad face was one of sudden determination as the two of them rolled together on a palliasse of dried hay and old skins.

“Aurora beautiful,” was his response, and she was. Beauty is never an absolute thing and is relative in a way that a sloth might find other sloths beautiful and yet look upon a human blonde bombshell as undesirable. But to Umbaga Aurora was especially beautiful, but maybe he wouldn’t have rolled so meaningfully in that hay with her had she been anything like his beloved Juju. But she wasn’t. Everything about her marked her more beautiful �" the smooth perfection of her skin, the clean and scented fragrance of her hair, the soft texture of her one-piece garment. And she was different. It didn’t seem that he was being unfaithful to her memory as they lay together, she holding and tugging gently at him with an intimacy that could only mean one thing, and he responding with a shuddering sigh as he found their closeness became complete.

Then it was over, as quickly as it had begun, and Umbaga howled loud and long as the fire of his being was pumped from him and into her.

And then they lay still, the two of them, and neither knew how it had happened, but their perspiration told them that it had.

It might have been an hour later, or five minutes, Aurora didn’t know, they just lay there together and yet not quite together any more, and Umbaga said suddenly,

“Juju play that game,” and he started weeping the kind of tears that meant he was sorry. He was sorry to her memory for suddenly he realised that his memories of her, the warmth she exuded, the common sense, the stolid reliability, had been besmirched by what he’d just done with the woman from space. And he was sorry to Aurora because what they had done together was, in a way he couldn’t define in thought or words, not quite right.

“Juju like,” he muttered after another timeless moment, and a single sob told her that his tears were drying.

“Aurora like,” whispered the space woman, and in truth she had. Their little space craft had been on its mission between the stars for several years and she had only had Melvin for company. So they had made love, countless times. That was why all the little two-man crews had existed solely of one male and one female, so that the boredom of an almost endless and monotonous existence in a tiny tin can as it hurtled like a supersonic snail across many a night sky of many an unknown world wouldn’t reduce them to insanity. So they had images and videos to urge them on when their lusts became jaded, little tricks provided in the form of scents and tastes and chemical stimulants by the Masters back on Terra, and that assortment of artificial romance had worked for them time and time again.

But this had been different and immeasurably better. Umbaga had shown genuine passion as they joined together, and there had been nothing mechanical about the way he’d gone about their love-making. It had been crafted from pure lust, a lust bathed in sorrow and the memory of a loved one but lust none-the-less, and had been so refreshing and wonderful to Aurora that she didn’t even mind the handful of fleas that had made a getaway from him and settled on her. In fact, in a way they were welcome because the change was welcome.

“Umbaga good,” she whispered after a while. “Umbaga very good.”

“Aurora good, Aurora very good,” he responded, and they lay still again, bathed in their own very different thoughts, until one them, neither knew which one, stirred again and first with feather-light touches and then with manic kisses they repeated the whole exercise, but this time slower, more purposefully, more along the lines of two who have explored a new land and now want to go back over it, to savour it properly. To find all the nooks and crannies, to smell the special fragrances of a brand new world, to enjoy the depths of a totally fresh experience.

“What the … what are you up to!” rapped Melvin’s voice in the middle of a dream of ecstasy.

And he was standing there, mere feet away from them, looking down on them as a surge of almost unbelievable warmth and lust and even the embryonic pattering feet of love surged from Umbaga and into Aurora.

They had been discovered in the throes of their game, and it didn’t matter, not one jot, not for the least of moments.

“Ah, hello Melvin, we have consummated,” gasped Aurora.

“I can see that, you lousy little cow!” he spat at her.

“It was good,” Aurora told him, “Umbaga makes a good lover. You could learn a thing or two from him.”

“Well, you’ve made your incestuous bed, so you can lie on it!” grated Melvin, “And when I get back to Terra I’m going to report this! You can bet I am! I’ll bet you didn’t even take any precautions!”

Then Aurora realised what he meant. Amongst the population on Terra it was the males who saw to contraception. They all had an implant which, if needed, could be switched off quite easily. It was safer and more reliable than any equivalent for women and had become, years earlier, the standard by which the people lived and loved.

And Aurora, with no protection, had just made love to a Neanderthal man. Twice.

© Peter Rogerson 10.11.16