8. The Creation of Fire

STEPPING BACK IN TIME Part 8

By the time Owongo and Mirumda were out of breath, he from running and she from clinging on to a home-made and rapidly disintegrating sled, they had reached a point that was probably half way to their own village by the stream and felt they could safely rest a while. After all, there was no indication that anyone was pursuing them.

He slumped against a tree whilst she, far more ladylike despite her youth, sat on a clump of grass and looked at him. Was that admiration in her eyes? Gratitude? Or was it something even deeper? He didn’t know, but his heart told him how he felt.

“Owongo,” she said after a while, “you saved me.”

“It nothing,” he replied, knowing that it had indeed been something.

“No,” she said, “you undead me. Bad men going to kill…” and here tears entered her lovely eyes and she shook her head. “Me scared,” she added weakly.

“Owongo like Mirumda,” was his explanation, and to him it was quite enough. He did like her. Had he known the word obsession he might have said he was obsessed by her, but linguistically he was limited and the simple word like had to do. And she understood.

And how do I know this? Well, he left a note scratched into the hard surface of his cave wall, and one line, a straight scratch to anyone without my skill when it comes to interpreting the odd almost none-wiggle, but to my experiences eye looked like the way a simple cave boy would draw a heart not knowing what a heart looks like.

Owongo decided it was time to dress himself again. His one and only garment was a loincloth, a simple affair that did little more than preserve his modesty, but without it he felt that something was wrong. He was a boy and she was a girl. That was what was wrong, not that he really understood the significance. Back in the home cave he was a boy and Mingey and Pretty were girls. At least Mingey was a woman and Pretty was a baby, toddling by now but still a girl baby. And they happily cohabited without there being a garment on flesh between them during the balmy months of the year, which was most of them.

“Mirumda tell mother and father that Owongo save her,” added the girl, watching him carefully as he knotted his cloth at the waist and tested it for firmness.

“No matter,” replied Owongo, and his knot gave way and the scrap of material, coarsely woven as were all materials that weren’t leather back then, came away in his hands.

“Mirumda help?” she suggested, and without waiting for a reply she deftly tied his loincloth in place, and it was secure and firm when she tugged it to test it.

It was about that time that a warm summer’s day revealed its underbelly. Unseen by the two of them a cloud pregnant with rain had made its way over the distant mountains and was, as they giggled together (there’s something about the loincloth that’s bound to make folk giggle) preparing to disgorge its contents onto the two of them.

The first drop was huge, and Owongo, knowing that such drops of rain are rarely unaccompanied by a host of others, looked around for somewhere to shelter, but there didn’t seem much at all unless he counted the hollow in a fat and sprawling trunk of a truly ancient tree.

“Come, Mirumda!” he hissed, and half-dragged her to what he thought might just double as shelter for the two of them and somehow managed to squeeze both of them into the tiniest possible space after giving a sleeping fox its marching orders with a fierce shout that meant “Owongo here, not you!”

There was precious little space in the hollow of that tree and they were obliged to crush together, which Owongo found to be a bonus. If he’d been obsessed by Mirumda before, he was doubly obsessed now.

“Owongo, this nice,” she giggled as she clutched onto his yet to be manly chest.

The cloud wasn’t done with the forest as it slung some of the biggest raindrops imaginable from its denim blue-grey depths. Had that hollow in that tree not been there the two youngsters would have got to be truly wet. As it was raindrops battering the ground just outside the hollow contrived to splash them and before long they were both feeling soaking anyway.

Summer storms came back then as the might these days, and the cloud had soon moved away to saturate pastures new, leaving the skies clear for the sun to shine down once again.

There had been no thunder or lightning, but Owongo knew what was missing.

“We need fire,” he said as if he was a wise old gaffer with every thought one of perspicacious common sense. “Fire dry Owongo’s cloth, Mirumda’s skin.”

“Owongo take off cloth, Mirumda wring it dry?” she suggested.

But Owongo hadn’t done with genius just yet. Just two days ago he had helped his mother washing the few garments they had, battering the fabric with stones until the water had washed away any stains on it. And while he had been working away he had noticed something truly remarkable. The stone that he was hammering away with had contacted another stone as he forced it down, and a few sparks had been the result.

It wasn’t that nobody else knew about the sparks. They must have. Stones crashing together do sometimes send sparks flying into the air. But Owongo took the sparks one step further in his imagination. He imagined what might happen if they landed on dried tinder. He wondered if the sparks would spread and cause the tinder to burn. The whole question, only inside his head, excited him. It was as if he could even smell the smoke.

He looked around their confined prison. There was a great deal of dried stuff on the floor and piled against what he called the wall of the tree trunk. It must have been from the tree as its inner heart slowly dried out and rotted. The fox he had ejected must have shuffled its bottom in order to get comfortable during many a long dark night, and pushed it there.

Then he saw the stones.

There were several, just outside the hollow and wet as wet could be. But they were stones.

He picked them up and looked at them. Then he grinned at Mirumda and he pulled his damp loincloth off and wiped one of them on it, vigorously, until it was dry.

“Owongo warm Mirumda,” he said, “Owongo make fire and dry Mirumda!”

Mirumda, who had never heard of such a ridiculous idea, grinned at him and knew that he must surely love her to make such a suggestion.

© Peter Rogerson 18.02.22

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