“For half a moment there, I thought I’d have to bite her,” Trel whispered.
“Same,” Sheela whispered.
“Huh? Who?” Galmine looked around the hut with confusion, and Jinx let out a chirp.
“Kacerie,” I whispered even softer than Trel and Sheela. “She just got her powers back, and we were worried that she might use them on us.”
“Really?” Galmine’s emerald eyes were open wide. “But Kacerie is so nice, she’s been so helpful. I wasn’t worried at all.”
The three of us laughed, and then we all leaned down so we were laying on my sleeping mat.
“Galmine, don’t ever change,” I said. “I love how you are.”
“Don’t worry, Victor,” she said as she crawled over to me. “I will be who I am for you always.”
The gray-skinned woman came into my arms and lay on top of me while Trel moved over to lie against my back. I turned across the fire to look at Sheela, and then I gestured for her to join us. The blonde woman nodded and stepped around the flame to lay opposite of Trel. The three of them cuddled near me made the hut incredibly hot, but I didn’t care. I’d have to wake up for my watch shift in a few hours, and the feel of my lovers’ warm bodies against me while I slept was worth all the work I’d done so far in Dinosaurland.
Chapter 16
The next morning went exactly as I planned. The holes we burned in the logs were all perfect, save for one that Trel said had burned a bit too wide. We ended up using the remainder of our clay to fill the gap between it and the dowel and still used it for the wall.
Scavengers that had feasted on the corpses of the waring birds for the last few days moved onto the corpses of the carnos. The pile of those bodies was all the way on the other side of the clearing though, so we didn’t have to worry about any of the small dinosaurs being near us. I’d actually thought about burying the carno bodies, but it would have been a giant hole, and taken time away from pushing down the trees. I had to balance us getting the wall built with the threat of scavengers.
I still worried about the new species of raptors, and the dark smoke in the distant north. The smoke plumed in the air less than it had yesterday, and I finally took Hope up to the nearest crest of the north hill with Sheela. We got off the parasaur some thirty feet from the top of the ridge and crawled the rest of the way to the top of the slope so that we wouldn’t accidentally be seen. It really didn’t matter though, the smoke was significant, but it seemed to be thirty or maybe forty miles away. It looked like it was near the coast of the beach, but it was too hard to tell.
“A wooden wall isn’t going to stop flames,” I said to Sheela as we watched the distant smoke.
“No,” she said. “Perhaps we can use some of the clay to fortify the walls?”
“That’s a good idea,” I said. “It would be like stucco. I’ll add it to the list, but I’m worried we are going to run out of clay from our spot. We could use mud, but I don’t think it will be as strong.”
“We could also use stone,” Sheela suggested. “We’ll need to find a quarry and cut some.”
“That’s a lot more work,” I said, “but we might have to do that. Let’s go back to camp and work with what we have. The new walls will stop those raptors and keep our dinos safe. We can finish tomorrow if we push hard enough today.”
We rode Hope back down to our camp and continued to build. The parasaurs pushed down more trees, Sheela and Kacerie chopped the branches off and set the cuts for the burns. Trel and I used Katie and Nicole to lift up the logs in the wall while we hammered in the connecting dowels. We’d all become efficient at our tasks, and we’d ended up raising forty-four logs before it was time for lunch.
The women took a break inside the smaller fort while I took the dinos to get their lunch drink. The trip was quick, and I returned to find them cooking our second to last chunk of carnotaurus. We’d be good for tonight, but tomorrow I’d have to get the wall up and also hunt for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Trel and I finished erecting all the available logs a few hours after lunch. It was around the time the parasaurs pushed down the last tree we thought we would need. The wall was about three-fourths built, and it looked all sorts of badass. The posts we’d sunk into the trenches didn’t wiggle at all when I had Tom do a test lean into them, and they were a good fifteen feet tall. We ended up finishing our fort work for that day a few hours ahead of schedule, and I started to feel like everything was falling right into place.
Then I remembered that we needed to make another clay run.
“I will go with you,” Sheela said.
“Me too,” Kacerie said.
“It might be dangerous,” I said. “I’m just going to take Bob, get in, and then get out as fast as I can.”
“That is why you need help,” Sheela said in a way that made me think I wasn’t going to be able to argue with her.
“You’ll need me also,” Kacerie said. “If you do get attacked, I can take out the first two raptors in an instant.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But we only have two spots on the sadd--”
“We can cram together,” Kacerie said. “It only takes us ten minutes or so to ride there. We can all sit on each other’s laps.”
“Take Kacerie,” Trel urged. “I’ll stay here and work on the stand for our filters. Just be quick, or Galmine might worry.”
“Ahh, just Galmine will worry?” I winked at her, and she gave me a quick kiss before she handed us the leaf baskets.
Sheela and Kacerie put the baskets on Bob’s saddle, and then we all climbed on. Kacerie ended up sitting between Sheela and me, but there was just enough room on the saddle for all three of us. I turned the parasaur around toward the northeast side of our valley, ordered the rest of my dinosaur pets to patrol around the fort, and then set off toward the lake.
We made it to the other valley without issue, but I paused near the top of the ridge so that we could carefully study the lake. The water in the main part of the lake was no longer the beautiful turquoise, it was now a dirty rust color that almost made it to the smaller finger lakes closest to us. The area where we got our clay was clear of dinosaurs, but there must have been thirty of the dark red and black raptors lounging on the beach beside the two carcasses of the brontos. Each of them was half eaten, and I was thankful the wind was blowing from the south so that we couldn’t smell the corpses.
“Sheela, what do you think?” I asked.
“They look lethargic,” the cat-woman said. “Half of them are resting and the other half are rutting together. I doubt that they will be looking over to where the clay is, but even if they do see us, I doubt they will give chase because of the ample food they already have.”
“Okay,” I said. “Here is the plan: We’ll ride directly down there and I’ll have Bob crouch near the clay. Kacerie, you are going to stay on his back while Sheela and I scoop. You’ll keep an eye out around us and then tie the baskets when we give them to you. Everyone got it?”
“Yes, Victor,” they said in unison, and then I commanded Bob to run down to the side of the finger where the clay was.
We took the direct route that led down the hill without putting us in the jungle. It meant that the raptors could see us if they bothered to look over in this direction, but I kept my eyes glued to the group across the lake, and none of them seemed to notice us.
Bob skidded to a stop right next to the clay, and I jumped off his back the moment he lowered himself. Sheela and I started flinging clay into the baskets five seconds later, but I kept glancing up toward the other side of the lake.
“I’ll watch them, just go!” Kacerie hissed, and I turned my head back down so that I could focus on putting as much clay in the basket as possible.
As soon as my first one was full, I heaved it up and ran the fifteen feet back to Bob. Kacerie helped me set it on the back part of his saddle, and I sprinted back to the clay while Sheela lifted hers up to Kacerie.