Chapter 5

Malta turned out to be a lively little alarm clock. Just as false dawn started she was out of the furs and scampering out away from camp a little to squat and pee. She was back and putting on her clothes in a few minutes. She didn't try to urge me out of bed, but when she started tending the fires I got up to help.

After all the fires were going good again, Malta made more of the tea, as she handed me a cup she pointed to my skillet and said something which she knew I couldn't understand, but I also knew it was a question. We hadn't started a fire around the skillet when we mended the others so I went over and picked it up. It was the first time I had since I'd started using it.

It was heavier than I remembered it being. That wasn't a shock because at the time I put it in place I hadn't been all that familiar with what rocks weighed. Now though, I felt I was an expert on the weights of rocks. This one was too damned heavy to be a rock. I set it down on another nearby rock, took out my Plumb hammer and gave it a small whack. It returned the unmistakable sort of ring that metal makes when you do that. No wonder the heat didn't bother it.

Meanwhile Malta was amazed at the rock and also at the hammer I'd used on it. It seemed like she decided the hammer was another of my incomprehensible gadgets like the PVC cutter after a few seconds, but she was still curious about the skillet. By now she wasn't the only one.

The skillet was nearly ten inches in diameter and roughly circular. It was also pretty smooth all over as if it had spent thousands of years in a streambed being constantly smoothed by silty water flowing over it. That didn't make a bit of sense to me. If it had ever been in a streambed, how in the hell could it have gotten out? I knew it had possibly been here for thousands or even tens of thousands of years but I'd never heard of gravity being turned off ever and it was one of the densest things I'd found here. Hell, it was the densest. It was only a little over an inch thick and I know it weighed more than twenty pounds. I just shrugged my shoulders at Malta who was still waiting for an answer.

She seemed to understand the gesture perfectly. She made one of her own then toward the skillet and after a little hand waving and speaking slowly to each other, as if it would help, I came to understand her phrase for where did you get it and she came to understand "What?"

I didn't remember exactly where the thing had been when I found it but I knew the approximate location and I showed her, somehow making her understand it was somewhere 'round here. She started searching the ground at once and damned if she didn't find the exact place because there was still an indentation in the ground just the size of the skillet.

Frankly, I wondered what the big deal with finding the exact spot was but that curiosity was gone shortly when I became curious about what Malta was doing now. It looked for all the world like she was searching carefully for more of the skillets and she was using a spiraling outward search pattern from the spot she'd found. We exchanged words and hand motions neither of us could understand for a few more minutes, at my instigation, and she finally made me understand that I'd been right; she was looking for more skillets.

I didn't have much faith in her chances, but I didn't bother her. Instead I did what most good old boys will do when left to their own devices and there's no NASCAR race on the TV. I went fishing. The effect wasn't quite the same though because I didn't have a forty mile-per-hour capable Bass Boat and I didn't have a cooler full of beer. Another less fulfilling aspect was that I actually needed the fish, so it didn't really feel like proper fucking off time.

I'd just caught the first fish, and damned if it wasn't about a three-pound large mouth bass. Looking at it I realized all along I had been neglecting an important piece of fishing equipment. I needed a stringer. Hell, I threw the fish back and commenced construction right away.

I hadn't really needed a stringer while I was by myself. Heretofore, when I caught a fish, I cleaned it, cooked it, and ate it. Unless I missed my guess, I could now catch a mess of fish and rely on Malta to look at me with admiration as the, so to speak, bread winner. After that I was hopeful she would take the fish from me, clean them, and turn them into a meal. It was worth a shot anyway.

I used a burning twig, lit from one of the drying fires, to cut and glob the ends of three approximately eight foot lengths of the nylon twine. After three-plaiting them together I tied a loop in one end with a bowline knot and tied the other end around a sixteen penny nail that I found in the bottom of the tool bag - the bottom of the bag being the catch all section. Technically the catchall portion of a tool bag is equivalent to the household junk drawer but of course it is much smaller. The organization methods of the two are similar though, randomly in and randomly out.

Armed with my makeshift fish stringer I went back to the manly art of procuring food. It must have been a sign from heaven and I was humbled by it when I caught the same damned bass again right off the bat. I'm sure he was disappointed when he found himself on the stringer this time as I lowered him back into the water. I got two more bass and a five pounds or better catfish and called myself through for the day.

Malta was shocked out of her search when I found her and showed her the fish. She wasn't even nearly as gob smacked as I was though. Malta had found four more pieces of the strange type of metal rock. She had covered a lot of ground to do it but still it was amazing to me.

She marked her point of progress by scratching an X in the ground where she was, picked up her finds, and headed back toward the center of our camp. When we arrived she put her treasure in a pile and took the fish from me, then she was flummoxed again. She didn't know how to untie the knot I'd made in the stringer and she was also surprised by the nail.

Another incomprehensible exchange of words and hand signals resolved the issue with me untying the stringer and releasing the fish. She took them back to the stream promptly and did a number on them with one of those sharp flint pieces she seemed to have plenty of. Meanwhile, I put the skillet back into its place of honor and built another fire around it.

Malta didn't know the first thing about catfish steaks and so she cut it up like the others, being careful to remove the meat and leave the bones. Hell, I didn't mind a bit cause I liked filets too. She let me fry the catfish when I indicated I wanted to and she put the rest in the big skin bag cooker she had, added water and put the thing over the main campfire and built a fire to suit herself. She saved her magic for last when she added something that looked like the ever-popular herbs and spices to her brew. Then we cooked in silence, mostly.

The wooden bowls she had came in handy again when it was time to eat the fish stew she'd made. She even had a sort of wooden plate to put my catfish on. We drank water with this meal since there was still a lot of stew in the bag and she couldn't make tea again. No matter, I considered this one of the best meals I'd had here and couldn't quite decide if I liked my bison steaks better than her fish stew or not.

After I helped Malta clean up from the meal, whether she wanted me to or not, she went back to her search and I sat on my ass on a handy rock. No, it wasn't all that comfortable. I had visions of making a real chair in my head and mostly daydreamed the afternoon away while Malta searched for more of the magic rocks.

It got me started wondering about our metal rocks. Obviously Malta had some idea about them and about other uses they might have. I still couldn't fathom how they came to be and more importantly, how they came to be here instead of at the bottom of some stream or deeper in the earth. I knew I wasn't all that familiar with the natural processes of the earth, if this was earth, but I still couldn't fathom how these metal rocks could just be lying around on the surface. Shit like that just didn't happen in Texas, and even though I knew I wasn't in Texas any longer it was still the only reference point I had to work from.

We had more stew near sunset and we mended all the fires that were warding off sneak thieves from our drying meat. When it came time for crawling in the furs again Malta seemed practically delighted when she saw that her little strip-show had once again roused the raging monster I fondly thought of as my dick. Hell, she seemed happier about it than I was. She promptly hit her hands and knees on the furs and started waving her delightful ass at me. Who was I to complain?

Dog style was one of my favorite positions, but it always reminded me of that old joke at first. You know the one - the Rodeo Fuck - where you mount your woman dogstyle, grab hold of both titties, and whisper "Your sister's better" into her ear and try to hold on for eight seconds. I didn't know if Malta even had a sister and didn't even know the word for sister if she did have one, besides, I wanted to get up close and personal with those titties.

I got on the furs beside her and gently pulled her out of doggie position and onto her back. She gave me the strangest look until I moved over and sucked one of her fat nipples into my mouth. She started trying to tell me something, but I didn't have any idea what it was and I was too busy to play talk nonsense and wave hands around at that moment.

After making sure both her nipples were as plump and firm as they'd get I started kissing my way up around her neck and then detoured to make sure I nibbled both earlobes. Malta wasn't trying to tell me anything now, but she was making sounds. Mostly sighs, and I was pretty sure they were encouragement. When I kissed her lips and started tongue tag with her again I was sure. Even if her active tongue hadn't clued me in, the way her hips were squirming was a dead giveaway.

When I left off kissing around her face and neck and started nibbling my way down between her breasts Malta stiffened for a second and then commenced babbling again. She shivered when I kissed and nipped on the flesh around her navel and when I swabbed it out with my tongue. When I moved my kissing twatward after that she began trembling slightly, all over.

She didn't have any doubts where I was headed when my lips and tongue entered her surprisingly tidy bush. She knew exactly what was coming next and she gasped, loudly sucking in a lungful of air and then her legs practically flew apart. Hell, I could see an open armed invitation as easily as the next guy so I put my mouth to the pussylips to do my job like a man.

The surprise was mine when I tasted her twat. Despite the no doubt rudimentary means available to her, Malta's pussy was scrupulously clean and her taste was delightful. I couldn't smell even a hint of urine and it didn't hurt my feelings a bit.

I gave her lips and tunnel as good an inspection as my tongue could provide and then I teased her button with its tip as I slipped first one finger and then two up her to pump for pussy juice. She was making plenty and by now her sighs had turned to low moans and her hips were pumping in time with my fingers.

She went off sooner than I expected again, but I didn't give up the ghost just yet. I sucked, licked, and even nibbled a little all around her pussy, but made sure not to bother her little clitty any more incase it was too sensitive for such. Many women do not want you anywhere near the magic button for quite a while after they've gotten their cookies. I didn't want to take any chances this time.

After Malta settled down a little and had her breathing under her own control again I moved up to lay beside her, kissing her lips and around over her face again. She looked into my face and her expression seemed almost like adoration. That couldn't hurt.