I have no idea how he knows how to stay afloat, but the current isn’t carrying him away and he is laughing out loud.
I don’t know if there’s winter on this planet, somehow I doubt it. I imagine being wet and relatively cool must feel like heaven to a male who’s toiled in the mine for years with only a trickle of water running down the wall to wash himself, so I just back off and enjoy his joy.
He drinks his fill, as do I at the water’s edge, but then motions for me to join him. I watch with envy, but I was never that girl who could shuck her clothes and go skinny dipping in high school, so I just hang on the sidelines and wait.
Slag gives me a few more minutes to decide on my own to join him, then swims to the shore, walks his naked dripping self over to me, and picks me up.
“No!” I say as he pretends to throw me in.
“Okay,” I slide down his body until my feet hit the ground and pull off my clothes. It’s not like we haven’t explored each other’s bodies already.
I make a shallow dive into the water and revel in the experience. It’s bathwater warm—the most comfortable I’ve been since I arrived on this planet. All the caked sand that has been glued to my skin with sweat is carried off by the water as I swim.
Slag flounders a bit as he dog-paddles, then he swims like he’s done it for years. It makes me wonder again what his life was like pre-Rhoid. He wasn’t born here. Did he have a home? Parents? People who loved him?
He approaches me and squirts me with water. Just like my dad used to do, and every boy I ever dated. What is it about bodies of water that turns people with testosterone into bullies?
I give as good as I get, though. You couldn’t grow up in my family without learning how to defend yourself. Once my dad showed me how to do that two-handed water squirty thing, I got quite accomplished at it. So, I squirt Slag right in the face from the other side of the pool.
Before he swims over, bent on retribution, I wade up on shore. My last nutrition bar was two days ago. I pull on my clothes after deciding it’s time to investigate the cave to see what’s edible.
When I wander off, I hear Slag emerge onto shore, and soon he’s at my side drip-drying as he accompanies me. Deeper into the cave, we see different species of plants and low and behold there’s a thick vine with dark red somethings hanging from every branch.
How did cavemen learn what plants were edible, I wonder. Then I realized they probably used trial and error—and the errors cost someone their life.
But damn, those round, red whatevers look good.
Slag reaches up, grabs a couple, hands me one, and bites into his. His eyes pop wide, then slam shut as he makes a sound that's scandalously close to the noise he makes when he comes.
He moves his chin in an ‘eat-up’ motion as he grabs a second fruit and takes a juicy bite. I snatch his fruit away from him, scolding, “This could kill you. Danger! We should wait to see if it makes you sick.”
I think he gets my meaning because he stops eating. He picks a few more of the fruits I’ve decided to call ‘reds’ and we mosey back to the flat bank where we originally waded in.
I start yanking kudzu vines off the cave walls, and although Slag has no idea what I’m doing, he pitches in. When we have enough, we carry them back to the bank and lay them in a criss-cross pattern to make a beach blanket.
Then we lie down and relax. It’s the first time I’ve relaxed, like really breathed a full and complete tranquil breath, since my abduction. There’s something about Slag’s presence that calms me.
He gets up, locates his discarded loincloth, rinses it, and puts it on wet. After sitting back down cross-legged, he urges my head onto his thigh. I let my thoughts drift, then assume I’m sleeping and dreaming of beautiful ethereal music.
But I’m not sleeping.
I open my eyes to see him playing his flute.
Calm happiness sweeps through me as I realize my friend might not be able to speak, but he thinks just fine. You don’t figure out how to make an instrument, or how to play it if you can’t think properly. Whatever the brain fog is that plagued both of us, maybe his is going away too.
I must have dozed off, but I awaken famished. I sit up and grab one of the three reds sitting on the mat we made.
“You feel okay big guy?” I ask before I take a bite.
He nods. I think he understands me! The red is juicy and sweet and tastes like watermelon and kiwi fruit rolled into one. It’s the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth. I wipe the liquid dripping down my chin with the back of my hand. I sure hope this fruit doesn’t kill me, because if it doesn’t I’m going to have another as soon as I finish this one.
Slag’s music is made even more beautiful by the acoustics in here. The room produces echoes upon echoes. It’s sublime.
As I’m munching my second red, it’s hard not to notice Slag’s raging hard-on. My mind throws me little snapshots of our first night together when he pleasured himself not a foot away from me. It was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.
A flare of lust slices through me. It’s so powerful I can feel the wave of energy swirl, then pool in my pelvis. One wave
