Chapter 2

DAY 6

Even though I woke up early, Zurai was already gone. When I exited the hut to find a tree to water, the heads of every woman in camp turned to me almost as if someone had choreographed it. Zurai’s grin was still in place, and Thila and Feshe seemed equally pleased. I’d have to tease them later, asking if they’d heard Zurai last night, knowing that they had to be deaf to have missed her wails of pleasure.

I ate an early breakfast, waited on eagerly by all three women. Blushing, the girls admitted that they had, indeed, heard Zurai last night. That made Zurai blush even worse. They also explained how the remaining single women were jealous now, especially after hearing that I had worried more about reassuring Zurai’s children than about my own pleasure.

I went with the ten men who intended to hunt today. Even though the mating ceremony was later, they knew they weren’t needed for the preparations, so they decided to hunt.

“Smart men! They’re getting out from underfoot before they get in trouble or get roped into doing something they consider women’s work,” I thought.

They only planned to bring home one or two animals so they would be easy to skin and prepare. A young aurochs ended up being their unlucky quarry. I stayed out of the way while they demonstrated their prowess and experience as they separated it from the herd and killed it.

Having listened to the men explain how wary they had to be of predators after making a kill, I climbed a tree about a hundred feet from the men to give me a good view of the surrounding area. Sure enough, stalking through the tall grass were four female cave lions, each noticeably larger than the Bengal tigers I’d seen in zoos. The male and cubs were two hundred feet behind the females, laying quietly in the shade of another tree.

One by one, the four females silently fell, rearmost to foremost, the fourth only becoming alarmed right before she fell. The large male and the three cubs quickly succumbed to the same fate. The hunters were unaware of the lions until they finished skinning, field dressing, and quartering the aurochs. They were flabbergasted when I asked if they would skin the lions for me while I continued watching for predators. Every man had a full load, carrying the skins, paws, and heads back to the village, as well as the meat from the aurochs. Thankfully, we were only a short distance from the village, and I continued to watch for other predators.

With our return to the village, pandemonium broke out once the villagers saw the lion skins and saw the entire hunting party safe without so much as a scratch. Preparations for the mating ceremony were temporarily put on hold as most of the women descended on the skins to scrape them. Others cracked open the skulls and pulled out the brains, dropping them into large skin bags where they were mashed and then the men were directed to pee on them. Zurai, Thila, and Feshe supervised and helped with collecting the teeth and claws, deftly cracking the jawbones to remove the teeth, cutting the claws out with their bone knives, and helping to crack the skulls open, saving the brains in a hide bag to use in tanning the hides.

I suddenly realized the first thing my new mates would nag me about. I hadn’t kept the claws and teeth from the cave bear I had killed.

An hour later, the lions had been dealt with. With most of the women in the village helping, the skins had been scraped and were being stretched, and preparations for the mating ceremony began anew. Several men had been sent out for branches to use for stretching the hides. A couple of women had remained tending the skin bags of stew that were cooking. The cut-up aurochs the hunters had brought back was put on spits over the fire to cook.

I realized that I had to find some flint, chert, or obsidian to help these people by making flint knives and scrapers, and then spearheads to improve on the fire-hardened sharpened sticks they used for spears. At least they had learned to harden the sharp tips in a fire.

I knew the theory behind making an atlatl, a selfbow, and a composite bow. I had even carved a couple of boomerangs when I was a kid. Those ideas went onto my mental TTD list, along with finding something besides thin strips of hides to use for making string, twine, rope, and bowstrings, although I felt sinew would make good bowstrings for the time being.

Even with the distraction of the lions, wedding preparations were completed in plenty of time. Kojo called everyone together, and Dapo, the shaman, performed the brief mating ceremony. I promised to protect and hunt for my mates and children. They, in turn, promised to gather food, cook, prepare my kills, keep our hut clean, and bear me many children.

Once my mates served me the first plate of food, the party started in earnest. After dinner, I saw skin bags brought out of the Shaman’s hut and some sort of fermented beverage being served. It tasted fruity, and I later learned that it was made from berries that grew prolifically along the river. Since I’d already seen that the berries along the river were just beginning to flower, this had been made from dried berries that had been rehydrated and then fermented. The girls explained that the shaman kept a few bags of the brew handy during the spring when most mating ceremonies occurred.

Not being much of a drinker, I took the obligatory sip and passed the bag back to my mates. They were quite happy when I explained that I didn’t drink much. Evidently, most of the men loved to get shit-faced. Fortunately, Dapo controlled the fermented beverage, and Kojo controlled Dapo, so it was only available for mating ceremonies and other special occasions.

Shortly after the drinking began, I was nearly dragged to my hut, not that it took any real effort to drag me there.

Rather than upset one of the girls by choosing the other to go first, I asked which girl was older and started with Feshe. I gave her the same treatment that I’d given Zurai last night and she, too, had a big climax. She muffled it by biting on one of the fur blankets. While she was still out of it, I pressed into her, sundering her maidenhead. She groaned, but that was all. I continued to hold still until she had regained her senses. After that, she was as eager as I was to complete our first coupling.

I felt like a bit of a letch having sex with a sixteen-year-old, even though my body was only eighteen. It was worse with Thila since she was barely sixteen, which they considered well beyond the proper age for a woman to mate. Hell, Zurai was only twenty-one, more than ten years younger than my youngest daughter had been.

After Thila and Feshe, I was surprised that I still had enough starch in Little Dave to take care of Zurai again. Once a day had been my limit for the last several years.

DAY 7

Waking this morning I heard the mental music announcing that another competitor had died, the first one in three days. I guess the remaining competitors had better skills or were better prepared than the ones who’d left the contest early. That meant eight competitors had died and there would be no mandatory eliminations this week or next.

I also felt guilty, because I hadn’t thought about my Earth family last night.

After breakfast, we said our goodbyes to everyone in the village. The women had packed everything onto three of the four travois I’d made over the last two days. The fourth, along with the remaining salt, was given to Kojo as my gift to him. I could have carried everything on one travois but had been told in no uncertain terms yesterday that the women would carry their things. My job was to protect us, something I could do much better if I was alert and my hands weren’t full of things I was carrying. I had to admit that it made perfect sense, even if it flew in the face of my chauvinistic Earth practices.

Our trip to my cave was relatively uneventful. I did see two large sections of a cliff face where the limestone was visible. I also warned my mates that I hadn’t taken the teeth and claws from the bear I’d killed. They were intrigued with the door I’d installed at the cave, watching carefully as I unlocked it. Before opening the door, I warned them about the lights the spirits had installed for me so we could see inside of the cave without needing a fire.

After momentarily shrinking back when I flicked the lights on, they were in awe of them. I was in awe of the pile of goods that had appeared in the middle of the cave. The pile turned out to hold the same things for each mate and child as I’d received to begin with, except for the rifle and pistol. Instead, the ladies each received a scraper for the skins. Turning to show my mates the switch by the cave opening for the lights, I saw a new peg on the wall with a dozen thong necklaces, each with a key for the door. I showed the women how to use a key and gave each of them one of the necklaces.

When I showed them around the cave, I found even more gifts. I guess I had done something extremely right. The cave had miraculously been enlarged and rearranged. A separate chamber now contained my bed, which was a slightly raised platform big enough for the four of us to sleep together comfortably. The bedroom chamber was now easily half the size of the original cave. A second bedroom opened off our bedroom, evidently meant to be a nursery. It looked like it would hold damn near a dozen kids without getting overly crowded. Thinking about having that many kids made me a bit nervous.

The most exciting thing, though, was the discovery of a new room in the cave. Warm water now flowed through this room, entering as a two-foot-wide waterfall cascading seven feet into a shallow pool. The pool deepened gradually until it was four feet deep with steps along the front side and a submerged seat that looked like a single, wide step along the back. From the deep end of the pool, the water overflowed into a smaller pool about a foot in diameter and a foot deep before disappearing into the wall through a series of narrow, vertical cuts about three inches wide. We had a warm shower, bath, and toilet all in one room! What more could a recycled caveman ask for?

When we checked out the new pile of goods, I was even more encouraged. At the top was a pair of soft leather gloves, two knives, a scraper for skins, chainmail for each of my mates, and a small tunic of chainmail for each kid. There were also two, three-gallon cast-iron pots with a handle to hang them with, as well as two five-gallon and two ten-gallon stainless-steel pots. Four large cast-iron skillets, four iron tripods with a chain and hook to hang the pots or skillets over a fire, an iron grate to cook on over a bed of coals, a cast-iron griddle, a ten-ounce salt dredge, two aluminum buckets, and two wooden buckets.

I was in hog heaven. I also knew what the wooden buckets were for. Soap-making had been high on my TTD list since getting here. Even before letting my new mates collect the teeth and claws from the bear, I showed them how to collect the white part of the hardwood ashes into one of the wooden buckets, and asked them to collect all fat and grease in one of the ten-gallon pots.

With that accomplished, the women hurried out to the remains of the bear. Although the bones had been scattered a bit, they were excited to find the teeth and claws still there and quickly gathered them. Nonto proudly held the skin bag they were being collected in. When they finished, the women wanted to gather plants, so I dutifully followed them to watch for predators.

I was amazed at the ingenuity displayed by their gathering harnesses. It consisted of a skin pouch half the size of a bushel basket which tied around their waist. A crescent-shaped woven wicker hoop held the top open. One long thong went around their neck to hold the pouch reasonably level while leaving the woman’s hands free, and a second went around their waist and tied on each side of the hoop. The girls explained proudly that Feshe had created these to make gathering easier for the village’s women. Even Nonto and Nisia helped gather.

While they gathered, I came across a source for the fibers I would need to make string and twine. I acknowledged the women’s warnings about the stinging nettles. Once they finished their gathering, I used gloves and pulled hundreds of the nettles out by the roots, many six to eight feet tall. For now, I left them lying in a wide pile to dry.

Once we got back to the cave, they started dinner. While Thila and Zurai cooked and organized the things they had gathered today, I used some rawhide thongs they had, showed Feshe how to put on her gloves, and how to stretch and then tightly braid eight of the thongs into a rope. She caught on amazingly quickly, even winding each individual thong around a stick to create a spool of sorts so that she could make a tighter braid.

After dinner, I showed Thila and Feshe the drill and the smallest bit that had come with it. One of them would hold the tooth or claw steady while the other drilled a hole. Before bedtime, they had finished drilling enough to make me an impressive necklace of teeth and claws from the cave lions and the cave bear. They intended to add more, however.

We all stripped and bathed before going to bed. The warm water left us relaxed, especially the kids who were asleep almost immediately. Being relaxed seemed to make my mates frisky. Unfortunately, Thila and Feshe were still a bit sore from last night. Zurai more than made up for it, though. When I thought I was done for the night, Thila sucked my cum-covered cock while Feshe licked Zurai clean. The sight of Feshe going down on Zurai, and the stimulation of Thila sucking me quickly had me ready for another round. Zurai was still eager.

DAY 8

I woke up to the exquisite feeling of a soft pair of lips caressing my cock and found Thila trying to get my attention. By then, I knew that I had won both the highest contestant score and the viewer favorite vote for the week and had two gifts waiting for me somewhere. Meanwhile, Thila needed tending to and I felt that I tended to her quite well, even though Nonto and Nisia peeked around the corner into our room. The women didn’t seem too concerned about the little ones watching so I ignored the kids and focused my attention on making sure Thila was happy before I filled her with cum.

I found the first gift when I went to use our bathroom. There was now a new hallway leading farther back into the hill from the main part of the cave. The twenty-foot-long hallway angled down about three feet, ending in a large room. The room was actually two rooms joined with a four-foot-wide doorway. The floor, ceiling, and three walls of the back room were coated with ice and the room was cold enough to freeze anything left inside. The front room was cold, but not nearly as cold as the frozen room.

A solid wooden door separated the two rooms. I noticed several vent holes along the top of the wall between the rooms, obviously meant to allow cold air from the freezer section into the cold room, but to keep the coldest air in the freezer. Another heavy wooden door opened from the cold room into the hallway. My mates were ecstatic when I showed it to them, understanding without me having to explain that we wouldn’t have to dry all of our meat to preserve it. With a walk-in refrigerator and freezer that were twelve feet deep and forty feet long, we could store a hell of a lot of meat and other foods!

After breakfast, we returned to the nettles I’d cut yesterday. While I stood guard, the women used gloves and long branches to drag the nettles down to the river. Once we had them there, they submerged them in the slow-moving water near the bank and weighed them down with rocks, leaving them to ret for a while. While we were at the river, I dug a shallow hole about ten feet from the water. My wives rushed over when I whooped excitedly. I had found the second gift, a deposit of clay that I’d been guided to. The women couldn’t understand what was so special about a bunch of mud, but I promised to show them.

I worked a ball of clay to the right consistency, forced out any air bubbles in it, added a little ash, and then pounded it into a flat circle about two feet across. I made three more, each one larger than the previous one. After making four mounds of sand shaped like flat-bottomed, inverted bowls, I covered the mounds with large, green leaves, formed one of the clay circles over each mound, and left them to dry. The four bowls would probably hold between one and three gallons of water when finished.

Next, we headed for the limestone deposit along the cliffs. My mates quickly got the hang of using their shovel, for which I’d created crude handles, and it only took two hours of digging to find more than twenty pieces of flint big enough to use. I had them continue looking, not stopping until we had a load of flint for everyone to carry back.

When we got back, Feshe started again on the braided ropes while Thila and Zurai started dinner. Using several small rocks that I’d gathered along the river and a sturdy piece of bone from the bear’s skeleton, I started knapping the flint. Well, trying to knap flint. I’d seen the process once in a YouTube video, but had never tried it myself, so it took a bit of trial and error while destroying five pieces of flint before fashioning one blade that satisfied me. The blade ended up being four inches long and two inches wide, with a three-inch long tang. After sawing two grooves in the end of the short, dry sapling I’d chosen for a knife handle, I carefully sawed, and then cut the piece between the two grooves until I could burn it enough to break it off with my alien-supplied knife. Then I slipped the tang of the flint blade into the groove.

On my second attempt, I had to whittle down a couple of places in the groove to make the blade fit better, and finally used a piece of chewed sinew to wrap around the area holding the tang. Then, I wrapped sinew around the wide base of the spearhead and the opposite side of the wood, making a modified figure-eight to keep the spearhead from pulling out of the groove when the sinew dried. Eventually, I’d need to make glue from khitaa and aurochs hooves or by boiling down the undesirable parts of fish and game animals. I’d use that in the groove to hold the tang and would coat the sinew with glue once it was dry to protect it.

By the time dinner was ready, I had just finished knapping a wicked-looking spear blade that was eight inches long and four inches across. The women loved the blades, especially since I’d explained that our knives were gifts from the Spirits when they were properly amused, and I couldn’t make more. However, I could make flint knives for them to use and for trade. The flint spear tips would help the hunters.

After supper, Feshe continued her braiding, but Thila and Zurai joined me to learn how to knap flint. Like me, it took them time to get the hang of where and how hard to press or tap to get the chips to flake off properly. We sat with a thick piece of cured khitaa hide across our thighs as we knapped, ruining more of the flint nodules than we successfully knapped due to our inexperience. By the time we went to bed, though, both women had produced an equally evil spearhead as the one I had knapped, and I had knapped three more.

We went to bed, and Zurai and Feshe were both ridden hard and put away wet before we fell asleep.

DAY 9

Waking in the morning, tangled up among three naked women is definitely enjoyable, although not as enjoyable as making love to them and falling asleep amidst them last night. And I realized that I hadn’t thought even once about my Earth family yesterday. I was both saddened and heartened.

I could tell that the women wanted to say something this morning, so I reminded them that I always wanted their advice and criticism. Zurai was evidently chosen as their spokesman and explained that they felt I should find two or three more mates. With all the different projects I had going, more help would allow more work to be done. They hadn’t seen the finished results of the clay bowl yet but understood what I explained and had confidence in me that it would work. Other mates could help with knapping more spear tips and knife blades, or helping with the braiding.