Chapter 12

Jeff's recovery was absolutely miraculous! He was walking with a cane at the end of a week, and he seemed to be completely recovered by the end of another week. Nobody could figure out why he got well so fast, but everybody was happy at his phenomenal recovery. Jeff reported that he had never felt better and attributed it to Julie's exceptional cooking. Julie knew that he was teasing, but still was secretly pleased that he cared enough to tease her about it.

Julie was the official teacher of flint knapping, and she held classes almost every night. The younger children were her prime pupils, and they were happily working away, when Shirley let out a shriek of pain. She had a minor accident and cut a long, but not very deep gash in her left palm. Everybody rushed to her aid, and they were all astounded as they watched the ending of blood flow and the closure of the wound, all in a period of 15 seconds! A small chip of flint had been left in the wound, but, in less than a minute, it rose to the surface and was left lying in her palm.

Julie wondered about this strange occurrence to the point that she had to experiment. She took a small chip of flint and cut a small wound into her arm. She was completely mystified as she watched the wound heal. She certainly had never before had this remarkable healing ability, so there was the burning question of where the ability came from. The next question was, did all of the children have this ability?

There was only one way to find out. She used her flint knife to cut a small line in the arm of each of the girls. In every case, the wounds healed immediately. She was a little reluctant to test him, but she had to test Jeff, Jr. for the ability. Mary objected at first, but Julie convinced her by cutting her own arm and then cutting Mary. Both healed quickly enough to convince Mary that the experiment was appropriate.

She held her son while Julie made a careful cut in his arm. As with everybody else, the wound healed within a few seconds. They were all in possession of this strange and wonderful ability, but they wondered where it had come from. Now, the question was, what else could their bodies do? They certainly weren't going to inflict serious injuries on themselves, but they anxiously awaited new manifestations of this ability.

The next episode in the revelation of this skill was on a hunting trip. Jeff had returned to the team of hunters and he, Tricia, Sue, and Alice were looking for a scorpion in an area more swampy than usual. This was a hunt for food, so they were using non-poisoned broadhead arrows. They finally found a scorpion and set out to kill it in their usual manner. Jeff and Alice formed one team and Tricia and Sue formed the other. They approached the scorpion spaced far enough apart to force the scorpion to choose which one to attack.

For no obvious reason, the scorpion went after Jeff and Alice. They all fired arrows at the scorpion, but this was a very large example of the bug, so they were having to shoot more arrows than usual. In her excitement, Alice ran too close to the scorpion and had to dodge back to escape a swing from a claw. In doing so, she stepped into a soggy hole and fell. The scorpion pounced and went after the girl with its poison-tipped tail. She screamed and tried to roll away from the scorpion.

This move seemed to save her life from the point of view of the physical wound. She moved far enough to one side so that the stinger did not catch her in the middle of her body where it was aimed. Instead, the stinger came down in such a way that it scraped along her back, gouging out layers of skin and leaving a trail of poison in the scrape.

She screamed in pain and didn't say anything else. The poison worked very quickly, so it shut off Alice's ability to breathe within a couple of seconds. She collapsed onto the ground as control of her other muscles ceased. The other three humans seemed to go into a berserk fury as they attacked the scorpion with arrows fired as fast as possible. Finally, the scorpion stopped moving and the three humans ran to see what, if anything, could be done for Alice.

All three were crying so hard that they would have been easy pickings if another carnivorous bug had come along. Alice appeared to be dead as far as anybody could see! They all squatted beside her, crying for all they were worth, when Alice groaned. This was enough to freeze the others in their tracks. A few moments later, Alice groaned again, and tried to sit up.

Jeff held her, and Tricia shouted, "LOOK AT HER BACK!" While they watched, the gouge repaired itself, and the wound disappeared as if it had never been there. A couple of minutes later, Alice demanded to be allowed to stand up. She was not feeling the effects of the poison nor the blow to her back at all. Was this another manifestation of their bodies' new abilities?

Within another 10 minutes, Alice appeared to be completely recovered, and she was helping to field dress the scorpion and load it into the wagon. She was able to do her usual part in helping to push the wagon home. As far as anybody could tell, Alice was fully recovered from her attack by the scorpion.

After supper, Jeff took Julie aside and they discussed what had happened to Alice. Julie agreed that it seemed that they were now protected from scorpion poison, and possibly others. That was a great boon, provided that it was true. They decided to take on faith that they all had the resistance to scorpion poison that Alice had, so they could start using poisoned arrows for hunting. It would certainly make hunting a hell of a lot safer.

Later that same evening, Jeff called all of the hunters together and told them of the decision to switch to poisoned tips for hunting. Tricia asked, "Does that mean that we can switch to the repeating crossbows? They are easier to use and more accurate than the longbows."

Jeff replied, "I don't see why not. That sounds like a very good idea. What do you other girls think?" Both agreed, so the decision was made.

That evening, in bed, Julie announced that her regular periods had seemed to return. Furthermore, they discovered that Tricia's hymen had grown back! To tease him, the girls looked to see if Jeff's foreskin was growing back, and they discovered that it was! It seemed like their bodies were returning to what it thought of as perfect health in a normal body. Jeff remarked, with a fake leer, that he did not find sex as tiring as it had been six months ago. With that statement, all of the women attacked him, and he was forced to fuck three of them that night, only Alice escaped, and she was really pissed, though she did find relief with girl-on-girl sex with her mother.

The main topic of conversation at meals, now, was the strange things that were happening with their bodies. For one thing, they all seemed hungry all of the time. Their food consumption had gone up, and Julie asked if they wanted to shift to five meals a day. Mary suggested that they give four meals a try, with meals a about 10:30 and 2:30, instead of one meal at noon. The vote was unanimous to to give that a try.

Both Tricia and Sue became pregnant at their next opportunity. They discussed the training of a new hunter. The decision was to hold off a little bit. Alice would be available to help Jeff, and Mary should be fully available by the time that she was needed. The switch to poisoned bolts made hunting so easy that they did not need as many hunters as previously.

Both Jeff and Julie discovered that they remembered many things from the 21^st Century that they had not ever thought about. They discussed it, and figured out that they were remembering facts from books and TV programs that they had seen on Discovery, Science, and History channels. Some of the things they remembered were from network situation comedies, but those memories were not obtrusive like the technical memories were.

For example, Jeff had once seen a TV program on blacksmithing, and found that he remembered every detail of the program. Julie could remember every one of the elegant proofs from a spherical trigonometry textbook she had once read. Was this another one of those grand abilities that they were developing? Maybe other memories would come back as they were needed.