6. CHEATING

After the election and a disgruntked Prince Dickory

OWONGO AND A PRINCE

6. CHEATING

What follows is probably nothing like the conversation shared by Owongo, Mirumda and Prince Dickory along with his bully boys, but I suppose that conversation just might have gone something like what follows, although I have omitted any reference to the grunts that were possibly part of an early prehistoric language.

“My lovely man,” murmured Mirumda, stroking his chest with warm fingers, and he smiled at her and the way her breasts seemed to twinkle, and blew a wet kiss at the right one.. Remember, Owongo or future generations had yet to see the advantages of inventing clothes, which involved a certain charm when he was admiring the mother of his twins.

“Love?” he replied questioningly.

“You are now the leader of the people who dwell along the valley floor, near the stream. I must give you a title. Let me see…” she paused, and smiled at him. “I believe you are the finest of men anywhere in this land,” she said, meaning it. “Therefore you are prime, and that being the case and because you are establishing a noble office, you are the prime minister over all of us.”

“I’m not that important, my love,” he replied, a little sheepishly.

“But you are, Owongo. Look how the people respond to you. How they turned out at your suggestion, to vote for you.”

The was a rustling sound from the entrance to their cave. Back in such primitive times there were no doors, probably because it would have stretched their talents to create one that fitted a cave entrance in a draft-proof manner. That being the case, Prince Dickory had contrived to oblige a couple of servants to create a sort of lightweight boulder against his own entrance when he wanted a bit of privacy. Owongo, on the other hand, didn’t see much point in trundling something that must be weighty because no matter how he looked at it boulders just have to be heavy, and anyway if he and Mirumda wanted privacy (as they often did) they waited until after dark when nobody could see anything that went on in their cave. Artificial lighting was virtually unknown in those days and darkness was very, very dark. There was sound of course, but it was deemed to be bad manners to pay undue attention to the conversations of neighbours. So others could hear what went on in other caves, of course, but in times when language was only just being invented, not much of any interest was ever said anyway.

The rustling sound was repeated, and then a familiar voice spoke, “’Wongo,” it said, rather haughtily, but then it was Prince Dickory and he was usually haughty, “you are swine!”

“Is that you, Prince?” asked Owongo, knowing perfectly well it was but needing the few moments asking a meaningless question gave him to try and work out why the man was there.

“You know it is!” barked Prince Dickory, “who else could it be with the right to challenge the nonsense you call an election? Dickory has been to where we voted and seen the mess your coloured bits and pieces are in, with dog crap all over them and all mixed up so that nobody could tell who votes for what and how many voters did what. So I am calling the election void and that you are to be incarcerated in the jail pit and will spend the rest of your days with criminal slobs like yourself. Take him away, friends.”

By friends he meant the two thugs who had accompanied him when he had been arguing over the ownership of a fawn, and with great delight they approached Owongo.

“You come!” growled one of them, possible the only one with any verbal skills at all.

It was time for Mirumda to come to the aid of her man. Her face was a mask of power and feminine authority as she approached Prince Dickory. His eyes sought her face and even he shivered when he saw the ferocious expression being aimed directly at him, and it burned with the knowledge that she was defending a man who was far superior to the being who called himself a Prince.

Is there no depth you won’t sink to?” she demanded, inventing and using most of her words for the very first time on Prehistoric Earth. “I watched you cheating when you cast you several votes even though you should only have cast one, And here you are, accusing my honest man of cheating! And threatening to cast him into a pit with the scum of the earth! How dared you!”

And such was the power of her voice that he took his eyes from her face and let them slide down over the rest of her body, pausing for many a long second as they took in the pert perfection of her bosom until it crossed his mind that he had reached a degree of excitement that was impossible to hide even as daylight was fading, and he ran away, hopefully before the scary Mirumda noticed, calling for his thugs to follow him before Owongo and the dreadful Mirumda could do anything drastic to them.

And they did, firstly because they knew how he responded to disobedience and secondly because there was something about the duo of Owongo and Mirumda that frightened even them.

“Did you see his whatsit?” giggled Mirumda when they had gone, “if you were little like that we might never have had the twins!“

“Why’s that?” asked her blushing man, because although it may have occurred to Mirumda to associate the birth of their children with antics they had enjoyed many times in the preceding nine months, it hadn’t as yet crossed Owongo’s mind that the one had anything to do with the other. And it wasn’t just him who was in blissful ignorance. Very few of the men had any idea whatsoever. There were no medical certainties in those days.

“Me go and check voting cage and stroke dogs,” he said, “Me bet evil foul Prince Dickory has messed it all up.”

“He will have, and you and I will sort it out with tomorrow,” she said, though I very much doubt she had any word like tomorrow or any equivalent of tomorrow. “Meanwhile,” she added, “you and I will snuggle down in the dark and maybe, the gods willing, play games and make more babies…”

Owongo wasn’t quite sure what she meant, but that didn’t matter. He was a quick learner and he felt like snuggling down.

© Peter Rogerson 07.11.23