Valley of The Wildlings
A Sci-Fi Micro Fiction
We landed in the harshest conditions, but we were able to breathe and live in the atmosphere. Though it was much hotter than the hottest places on Earth, there was very high humidity.
There was little left of our puddle jumper. We’d fallen into a warp hole when a larger damaged cruiser went into light drive. By all accounts, we were lost in a sea of stars.
On the second day, we found a river. The water was swampy but the current towards the middle was deep and quick enough to move away from the sounds that kept us awake at night.
We’d been afloat on the river for 3 days. Rogers had lifted a fish from the murky water the day before, but we found it inedible. He used a hand torch on a sheet of metal from the craft to warm it. What else could we do? He finally ate it raw and was sick all night. Heaving over the side.
The jungle was uninhabitable. The large carnivorous creatures had driven us to the river. We were headed south and by the hour, we noticed we were becoming faster. It was then that Rogers was struck by what looked like a large arrow from an unknown trajectory.
I looked to the Eastern shore and saw no one. In the early morning hours, the early morning songs of birds drowned out what could have been voices. The primate-like creatures of trees were just as dangerous as the lizards. I call them primate-like because of their extra set of arms. The lizards? They have feathers but are flightless. I checked the time on my wristwatch when the cacophonic crescendo erupted.
It was then that I noticed as if a warning that I was alone and coming quickly to a waterfall. I leaped from the craft as we’d lost the paddles on the first day. As I swam to shore, I felt the wild current take my body further and faster than I was expecting. As I started to feel my feet touch the bottom, in a panic I struck a root.
I woke naked by a fire in the middle of the night. At night, it seemed we were living on a tundra. Rogers suspected the flora to be evergreen.
She tapped my arm. Perfect and human. Her golden hair and bright blue eyes were angelic. And the firelight brought warming to heart and soul to see some sort of intelligence. Even human, I was effulgent.
She handed me a hunk of meat and smiled. I was so hungry that I didn’t think twice. I took the meat and ripped it from the bone with my teeth. I chewed my mouth full and swallowed. After a second helping, I smiled back at her.
“Meat?” I asked, pointing at the flesh on the bone.
“Meat.” she parroted back. She pointed at the floating craft that had been docked. Roger’s leg had been severed. “Meat, meat.” she slapped my leg.
I tried to remain calm but lost my stomach behind a tree.
Yeah, I liked that. It felt like something from Heavy Metal without the physical images.