DISCLAIMER: The Star Trek characters are the property of Paramount Studios, Inc. The story contents are the creation and property of Cheree Cargill and is copyright (c) 2002 by Cheree Cargill. This story is Rated NC-17 for sexual situations.

THE CASTAWAYS

by Cheree Cargill

PART TEN

"EAST OF EDEN"

With a mighty heave, Spock thrust the final log away from the opening he was creating in the mass of collapsed timbers that had once been a cabin. He paused to catch his breath, then leaned down and called into the dark hole.

"Christine! Sapel! Jenn! Can anyone hear me?"

"Papa!" came back Sapel's voice, echoed by T'Jenn's and the baby's weak cry. "Papa! Mama's hurt. I don't think she can get out!"

Spock leaned farther and peered into the collapsed structure. "You children come to me," he instructed. When the two oldest had crawled into the light, the Vulcan instructed, "Sapel, help Jenny up to reach me."

The eleven-year-old boy lifted up his younger sister and their father caught her hands, pulling her up to safety. "Now go get T'Kai," Spock ordered and the boy disappeared back into the dark. While he was gone, Spock took the opportunity to check over his little daughter. "Are you injured anywhere?" he asked, running his hands over her limbs and torso.

"I'm okay," the girl answered. "I just got a bumpie on my head." She rubbed at her filthy brown hair.

Dutifully, Spock peered at her scalp. "It is red, but I believe it will be all right." A child's crying interrupted him as Sapel reappeared with his year-old sister in his arms. "You go stand down there," Spock directed T'Jenn and lay down on his stomach. "Hold her up, Sapel."

The boy lifted the toddler into his father's reach and the whimpering child was brought up into the sunlight. There, the baby blinked and quieted in her father's familiar arms. After he had spent a moment comforting her, he did a quick exam of his youngest child, found her scraped and bruised, but otherwise unharmed, then took her down to be held by T'Jenn.

Spock returned and directed Sapel, "Give me your hands and I will pull you out."

"What about Mama?"

"I will check her as soon as you three are safe."

"You might need my help."

Spock almost smiled. "I do need your help, cha'i," he said. "I need for you to watch over your sisters right now. If I am unable to get your mother to safety by myself, then I will require your assistance."

Sapel nodded and reached up until his father's large hands engulfed his smaller ones. He was quickly pulled up and he had his first look at the wreckage left in the wake of the hurricane.

"Kah!" he exclaimed. "It's all gone!"

Spock sighed. "Very nearly so. Watch your sisters now. Be careful!" With that, the Vulcan dropped into the opening and made his way towards the rear of their demolished cabin, being forced to go down on his hands and knees through the debris. Far at the back, underneath the stone overhang, he found Christine lying pinned beneath a log that had caved in from the ceiling.

"Christine!" Spock exclaimed and reached out to touch her. His wife groaned and moved her head. "How badly are you hurt?"

"My leg," she answered. "My left leg is broken, I know. I can't move it."

"It is held down by this log beam," he answered. "I will left it, then try to pull your leg free."

It was difficult to gain enough leverage on his knees to shift the heavy timber, even with his Vulcan strength, but with his muscles straining, Spock finally managed to raise the beam a few inches.

"Now!" he said through gritted teeth. Christine tried to move her leg but cried out in pain. "I can't hold this, Chris! Move!!"

She took her thigh in both hands and, with a supreme effort, yanked her leg free. The movement was agonizing and she nearly blacked out as a result. Spock dropped the log clear of her and sucked in a deep breath. Then he turned his attention to his wife.

"I must set this before I can move you," he said, gently manipulating her lower leg, his long fingers locating the break in the tibia about midpoint of her shin. "I shall be back shortly."

Spock crawled away toward the front of the cabin, now a jumble of logs. Cautiously moving through the wreckage, he located a broken spear shaft and a length of braided bow string. There was one of T'Kai's rabbit-skin blankets as well and he snatched that up, then made his way back to where Christine lay.

As gently as he could, he straightened her leg, then wrapped the blanket around it and braced it with the spear lengths. Then he bound it with the bow string to hold the splint in place. Christine was white and drenched with sweat by the time he was done. He let her recover for a few minutes, then said, "This next will not be easy. I must drag you through the deadfall in order to get you out."

"I know," she answered. "Let's get on with it."

It took half an hour to move her the few feet to the opening and again she nearly fainted from the pain. As they rested, Spock touched her face softly and sent comforting thoughts her way. Still pale, Christine opened her eyes and smiled at him. "You're doing fine, love," she told him. "Don't worry about hurting me."

"I do, however," he responded and leaned to kiss her lips lightly. "I must get you out of here and you cannot climb." Spock stood and called, "Sapel!"

There was a scrambling sound and the boy appeared, peering down. "Yes, Pa?"

"Come down here. I need your help now."

Obediently, Sapel dropped the short distance into the opening. Spock continued. "Christine, I want you to stand -- Sapel will brace you. I'll pull you out of here then help him out once more."

She nodded and, with aid from her son and husband, got to her feet, balancing on her good leg and leaning on Sapel. Spock jumped and caught the log that anchored the opening, one of the long roof beams, and hefted himself clear. Once out, he pulled Christine free as he had done with the children, then brought Sapel out again.

With all five of them now reunited, the family moved to a relatively clear spot and sat on a log to gather themselves together and assess the situation. And it was here that the shock of it all began to set in.

Christine slumped and tears filled her eyes. "Oh, Spock... It's all gone. Everything we've worked to accomplish... everything we've done to survive... all of it." She began to cry hopelessly.

Indeed, it did seem that they had been wiped out yet again. The hurricane had demolished their cabin, blown down trees as if a gigantic scythe had mowed the forest in its deadly sweep, soaked everything that was left. Off to the side of the cabin, the lean-to and corral that had housed the mesohippus mare and her newborn colt were gone. The two animals were nowhere to be seen. Whether they were dead or had escaped, Spock could not tell. Although how they could have survived the storm's fury, he could not fathom.

Their home was a smashed pile of stone and wood, filled with mud and water and detritus. At first glance, it appeared that everything they possessed was either destroyed or ruined. The food cache was buried under the debris, their firewood was soaked through from the hours of constant, pouring rain, and they had only the clothes on their backs, all of it filthy and torn. Christine needed medical attention but there was little that Spock could do for her under these conditions. As he watched, she slipped down off the log, unable to sit any longer and now lay sprawled in the mud, weeping from pain and grief.

Picking up on their mother's despair, T'Jenn and T'Kai began to cry as well and even Sapel, slumped against his father's arm, could not control the trembling of his chin.

Overcome with a weariness and anguish he had never felt before, Spock leaned forward and, resting his elbows on his knees, buried his face in his hands. It was too much. It was all too much. This planet had tried every dirty trick and vicious attack it knew to kill them. They had survived floods and blizzards, tornadoes and fires, war and erupting volcanoes, each time clawing their way back to a survival level. Every now and then they managed to get two steps ahead of it, but the planet never gave up, never ceased looking for an angle it hadn't tried before. Wolves and lions, starvation and ceaseless toil to find food, children dead and countless injuries to all of them ... they had survived them all.

But it never gave up. Never stopped. Exhausted now almost beyond the capacity for rational thought, Spock raised his head, haggard and hollow-eyed, and stared sightlessly ahead of him. To start over ... again ... was more than he could deal with right now. It had seemed that way the last time, too, he remembered. The last time this damned planet had contrived to drive them from its lands forever...

* * *

The snow was falling faster than ever when Spock finally arrived back at the meager shelter they'd found. It was only another creek bank, cut back a little by long ago floods and now offering a small platform above the trickle of water still unfrozen in the creekbed that ran beside them. Spock had trekked back towards their abandoned valley and the erupting volcano at its head, until he found what he was searching for -- the carcass of an elk asphyxiated by ashfall but unspoiled as yet by predators. He had heaved the big animal over his shoulders and trudged back to where he had left his family.

While he'd been gone, Christine and the children had hunted over the fast-disappearing grass, the snow falling steadily now under a leaden sky, in search of fuel for a fire. On the treeless plains, there was no wood and they were reduced to collecting dried bison dung. There was plenty of it and Christine made a point of noting where more could be found. They lugged back as much as they could carry, enough to get a fire going but not enough to last through the night. Christine had sent Sapel on several trips for more fuel before the snow became too heavy.

Laying the buffalo chips in a mound, Christine got their Romulan fire starter out of her pack. It had long ago run out of fuel, but the friction sparks it could still generate soon had the fire crackling and hissing as snowflakes drifted down onto it.

The smoke rising from the fire gave Spock a good homing beacon and he soon arrived to find his family huddled around the blaze. His first order of business was to skin the elk and, when this was accomplished, he lugged the raw hide down to the rudimentary campsite.

"Give me your hunting spear, Sapel," he said. When the boy had complied, Spock stuck the end of it deep into the dirt of the creek shelf. He anchored his own spear beside it, then hefted the hide up and impaled it on the spear points, fur side in. Angled into the north wind, it provided a wind break and canopy over the group, blocking the frigid wind and snow.

Once this was done, Spock went back up to where he'd left the carcass and dragged it farther away from the camp. The scent of blood on the wind would soon attract scavengers and he wanted it far enough away that his family would not be harmed. Before he left it, though, he drew out his steel hunting knife and carved out two big chunks of meat from the haunches. These he took back with him. It was enough to last them a couple of days and he didn't plan to stay here any longer than necessary. His goal lay far to the east -- their valley home and the snug cave where they had lived for so long. But how far away it was -- and even where -- was something Spock did not yet know.

The chunks of meat were sliced thin and these cooked on knife points over the smoky fire. Still fairly rare, they were not an especially satisfying meal but nearly all there was. Supplemented by journey bread in their packs, it at least filled their stomachs. Sapel bore it stoically, but little Jenny cried fitfully until she finally fell asleep. She was about a year and a half old and barely weaned, but had been on solid food since late summer. Christine longed now to nurse her, but she no longer had milk to offer her baby daughter. The fact added to the misery the woman was feeling as she hugged the child against her body to keep her warm at least.

Their bodies huddled together under the worn fur blankets they had grabbed from the cabin generated enough heat to ward off the worst of the cold as night began to fall, the darkness coming early due to the heavy overcast. Sapel snuggled between his parents and listened to their soft conversation.

"What now, Spock?" Christine asked in a quiet voice, rocking T'Jenn in an almost unconscious motion of comfort.

"We wait out this storm," Spock answered in a like voice. "I think it will be over by morning. It's too early in the year for much of a snowstorm. After we eat tomorrow morning, we'll strike out to the east."

"Across the plains?"

"It is either that or go back south and risk encountering Teeli war parties."

Christine's brows came together slightly in thought. "I don't believe that will be a problem," she said finally.

"Indeed?"

"Yes. I don't think they'll be this far north in the winter. I think they'll stay on the coast."

Spock was silent for a while as he mulled that over. "Possibly," he finally said. "Very possibly."

"There'll be more game south of here," Christine continued her argument.

"Yes..."

"We know the hills, too, and--"

"Very well, wife!" Spock's eyes were crinkled in amusement. "You have persuaded me! But we will not go so far south as the ship crash. I do not want to get into lion territory either. And we will continue to work our way back toward the valley. That is my ultimate goal. I do not believe we are more than one hundred fifty miles from-- What's that?!"

Spock and Christine both jerked alert at the scrambling sound coming from the creek bank just above them. They had their knives at the ready at once and Sapel also pulled his obsidian blade and was poised to use it.

There was a small shower of dirt and snow from the rim, then a little head appeared, wide green eyes huge in an ash-caked face. Scruffy gave a glad meow and jumped down to greet her family. As the exultant reunion took place, there was a second crumble of dirt and another lithe little body landed among them.

"Ro!" exclaimed Sapel and made to grab Scruffy's nearly grown daughter. The hunting cat, however, squawled in pain and jerked away.

"She's hurt," Christine said and held out her hand to the kitten. "Come here, Rosy, baby. What's wrong, sweetie?"

After a moment, the cat made her way to the woman she knew so well. Quickly, Christine did an exam. "She's burned pretty bad. Here, see her flank?"

"Where's Pudge?" the boy wondered aloud, looking up, expecting to see the other kitten follow his mother and sister, but the night was quiet again.

"He may not have made it, honey," Christine said gently.

Sapel's face crumpled at the thought and T'Jenn, awake now and attuned to the emotions so strongly saturating the campsite, began to cry again.

Spock interceded strongly. "We cannot look for him tonight," he said. "We will search briefly in the morning, but at present there is nothing to be done. The cats must fend for themselves as best they can." He saw the look of distress on his son's face and his voice softened. "We will not abandon them, Sapel, but we cannot sacrifice ourselves for them either. Going out into the night would result in almost certain death, either from cold or attack by predators. They are wild animals, son, even though they choose to live with us. Scruffy has been feeding and caring for herself for over a year now and the kittens are the same. They are wild. In the spring, Scruffy will drive them both away to mate again and they will soon find mates of their own. Thus the cycle will continue as it has continued long before we came here. It is their way."

"I know, but I don't like it," the boy answered, hanging his head. After a moment, he looked back up. "I want to feed them!"

"By all means," his father nodded. "There is plenty of meat left."

Sapel offered the scraps of their meal to the hunting cats and Scruffy began to eat immediately, evidently starved after her long journey tracking her human family across the plains. After a moment, Ro joined in, gnawing off meat with her sharp molars and swallowing it nearly whole. After their stomachs were full, both cats had a drink from the creek, then returned to the relative warmth of the fire, licking blood from their own and each other's faces, grooming and seeking comfort in their surroundings.

Ro snuggled against her mother's side, trembling, her eyes nearly black as her hugely expanded pupils searched the darkness beyond the firelight. Up on the plains, scavengers had found the elk carcass and the sound of battle, feasting and pain rode on the howl of the north winds. But nothing came near the refuge on the creek bank and all eventually fell asleep, save Spock, who did not sleep and watched throughout the night.

* * *

"Spock, I've got to stop and rest," Christine panted and sat down on an outcropping of rock.

Her husband paused and turned to look at her. "I would like to make several more miles before we camp," he said.

"I'm not talking about camping," she answered and put T'Jenn down onto her own two feet. "But we need a break!"

Sapel plunked wearily beside his mother. "Yeah, Papa, we're all tired."

"Hun'gy," echoed Jenny.

Faced with across-the-board mutiny, Spock sighed. "Very well. I suppose a break for a meal would not be out of the question. That flat spot should be out of the wind and be suitable to build a fire."

"Hallelujah!" Christine muttered and got to her feet, reaching down to take her little daughter's hand.

They had been on the move for over a month now, making their way southeastward into the hills that rose from the plains and marked the rocky outriders of the mountain range far to the west. Long behind them was the Eden-like valley they had been forced to flee, although from the right perspectives they could still see the long gray plume of the volcano as it continued its eruption, now fitful after its initial blast.

Here in the hills there was more shelter and fuel than on the open plains directly to the east, but Spock was nevertheless determined to lead them in that direction. Somewhere eastward was the valley they had occupied for so long, its sheltered cave offering a snug haven. But it had been over two years since they had last been there and, in their wanderings, they had lost their bearings. East. That was all they knew.

All of them were sick and hungry, growing thin from the constant travel and persistent colds that sapped their strength. Even Spock was suffering a mild version of the cough and stuffiness that had plagued the human woman and children since they had been forced to contend with the constant wind and damp chill of the oncoming winter.

It was starting to catch up with all of them, tempers flaring as stamina wore down. Christine had already determined that they could not keep up the pace at which Spock was driving them. As they moved down off the hill top and onto the level area at the base of the rocky rise, she saw what she'd been looking for.

Facing southward, the tor was broken by an exposed rocky cut, forming an overhang that offered shelter. Moreover, scrubby bushes on either side partially blocked the wind and there was enough to provide firewood for a short period of time, a couple of weeks perhaps, and she could see a little creek meandering around the base of the hill, within easy distance to fetch water.

Christine headed for the overhang, children in tow, and let a smile crease her dust-smeared face as she stepped out of the cold wind. It felt warmer already. Spock followed, his face unreadable underneath the full black beard he had grown over the past weeks.

"Here!" Christine declared with finality and shrugged her pack off her shoulders.

"Christine, I do not want to camp yet," he stated, aware now of her intentions.

She turned to confront him, determined to stand her ground. "Fine -- hit the road! But the kids and I are parking it here until I determine we're well enough to go on!"

One dark eyebrow crawled up his forehead in response. "Indeed, wife! Have you now taken over leadership of our family?"

Her blue eyes narrowed in warning. "Don't pull that Vulcan macho shit on me, Spock! You know how far you'll get with it!"

For a long moment the two engaged in a stare-down contest, then he sighed and backed off. "Very well. It is useless to fight you when your mind is made up."

"Only because I'm right and you know it," Christine responded with a smile transforming her face. "We're all sick as dogs and we've got to rest and get better. I don't want four cases of pneumonia on my hands!"

"Logical," he conceded and doffed the large pack he carried. "Well, since we must stop, this appears to an adequate location to do so."

"I think so too. First then, let's get a fire going and see what we can find to eat. Sapel, you're on firewood detail."

The boy wiped his runny nose and complained, "Aw, Mama, I always hafta--"

"Sweetie, we all have our jobs," his mother answered. "I know you don't feel good, but the sooner we get the fire going, the sooner we'll have hot food."

"Come, cha'i," Spock said, laying his hand on his son's shoulder and steering him toward the scrub brush. "I shall help you gather wood. Then we can all rest."

* * *

The rocks had proved the location of a warren of hares and by the time dark descended, there were three lean rabbits sizzling on spits over the fire. Christine had pulled out the one cooking basket she'd managed to rescue from the hogan in Eden Valley and had a small amount of rabbit stew bubbling in that, too. It was a technique she had remembered from survival training long in the past. Heated stones were added to the liquid in the basket and kept moving with a wooden paddle. The heat transferred to the food but the stones did not rest in one place long enough to risk burning a hole through the reed basket.

The soup was for T'Jenn who was the sickest of the four of them. The toddler lay wrapped in a fur near the campfire, shivering with fever, her nose crusted with purulent discharge. Christine desperately wished for any of the medicinal herbs she knew of, but the little cache she had stored in the emergency packs was long since gone. The best she could do was keep her daughter warm, get protein-rich broth into her, and hope the child could beat the infection on her own.

Sapel was handling it better, having Spock's hardy Vulcan constitution. Nevertheless, the boy huddled close to the fire, sneezing occasionally and wiping his nose on his sleeve. Christine had an urge to tell him to use a tissue, but of course that was absurd. The nearest tissue was ... how many lightyears away?

The thought of such every day luxuries made Christine pause and gaze up wistfully at the stars just appearing in the sky. At home, all she would need to do was give each of them a quick shot of antiviral and the colds would be gone. Of course, at home it would be unlikely that any of them would have colds in the first place. Such things were nearly unheard of in modern day, controlled environments. Most diseases of Earth origin had been either eradicated or were controlled with inoculations. It was the alien bugs encountered as people moved farther out into the stars that kept 23rd century medics in business.

Christine turned her attention back to the soup and noted that it was steaming and bubbling to her satisfaction. She lifted her wooden spoon from stirring the broth, blew on it, and delicately tasted the liquid, mindful of its temperature. Almost ready.

T'Jenn shifted and whimpered a bit, then settled down once again. Christine checked to make sure her little daughter was not in distress then gave the hot stones in the cooking basket another swirl.

A slight noise made her look up to find Spock coming back into the firelight. "All quiet," he reported and sank gracefully into a cross-legged seat beside the spits that held the roasting rabbits. Drawing his knife, he probed the lean flesh and nodded. The hares were done and ready to eat.

"I wish we had some vegetables to add to this," Christine said. "There's nothing here but protein and fat."

"Plant foods will be hard to find," Spock answered. "We will simply have to make do."

"I'll scout around tomorrow," she answered. "There might be something we can use."

T'Jenn sat up, sneezed and then coughed. " Mama, I hun'gy," she said.

"Oh, I know you are, baby girl," her mother answered soothingly. "I'll have some good soup for you in just a minute." As she spooned some of the broth into a stone bowl to cool, she said, "Sapel, come get something to eat, sweetie. You'll feel better when you do."

* * *

They spent nearly a month at the rock shelter before deciding that the limited food supply there had run out. Even Scruffy and Ro were only turning up mice and lemmings, which the family could not bring themselves to eat.

When the weather permitted by turning sunny and cold, they broke camp and headed out once more, turning northeast into the brisk wind that blew down over the plains. For two more weeks, they traveled through the foothills, taking advantage of any small game they found there, reluctant to strike out east over the open prairie.

But there was no good place to camp and each day they moved on, hoping to find someplace -- anyplace -- to make a long term campsite. The hills smoothed out into rolling plains, the sere yellowed grass bending before the wind where it wasn't covered with snow, but no shelter presented itself in the undulating land that stretched to the horizon.

Finally there came a day when Spock stood on a high point of ground and looked first eastward and then back to the west. He stood there for a long time and Christine let him be, aware that he was weighing all the factors about going on or turning back. To the east lay their valley home, but they would have to trek across miles of open, featureless steppe to get there. Whether there would be food or water was unknown.

To the west was an ash-covered purgatory, ravaged by the dragon's breath of volcanic fire. The peak continued its eruption and its ashfall changed at the whim of the wind. Even this far east, they sometimes were forced to endure the stinging rain of gray dust and cinders that poured into the atmosphere from the rumbling mountain on the western frontier.

Southward the hills stretched in rocky, barren mounds of gray granite, their thin soil cover supporting only the hares and other small game that had been their sustenance for the past few weeks.

North was only more miles of arid plains, deserted by the majority of the big game animals. The only ones that wintered over were the scattered herds of bison, the huge animals powerful enough to scrape away the snow cover to find the dried grass that lay below. They had no predators except the lupine creatures that Spock and Christine had early on dubbed "werewolves." A pack of such animals had nearly killed Spock their first winter here on Terra Two and a rogue male had snatched their newborn daughter, T'Larin, moments after Christine had given birth. The death of the child had driven Spock over the edge of madness and it had taken a painful pilgrimage into the wilderness before his grief was purged and he made his way home.

But that was in the past. Spock's dilemma now was which direction to lead his family. Logic told him to go back south or west where there lay a more certain chance of finding food, shelter and water. But his instinct, his gut feeling, pulled him eastward. Valley Home wasn't far. He felt it in the very coursing of his blood. He could not explain why he felt this way, when every fiber of Vulcan training demanded the safer route. Perhaps his Ancestors were speaking through his katra, urging him on a way only they could foresee.

Do you trust me? whispered a faint female voice deep within his mind.

T'Oman? Spock answered with a start. The voice was of his many-times-great grandmother, his spirit guide of the Ancestors within his soul. Yes, I do.

Then trust me! her voice replied with surety.

Spock's brows went up but he understood. It was a test of faith. The Grandmother had not abandoned him or steered him wrong yet. Her calmness and assurance flooded through him like warm honey and he relaxed as he put himself into her ancient hands.

East. They would go east and he would trust the Ancestors to lead them safe to their ultimate destination.

* * *

Christine blew on her numbed hands until she got a bit of feeling back in them, then grasped the digging stick and resumed pounding the frozen earth at the base of the cattails in the dry creekbed. The stalks and leaves were withered and dry, but beneath them their roots should be thick with stored nourishment, dormant until spring brought new shoots bursting forth. They wouldn't taste very good and would be fibrous even after cooking, but it was all she'd been able to find.

Shifting, Christine turned her back to the wind that blew ceaselessly across the plains and cut through her like a knife. It was damp and smelled of snow, but her mind was only on finding food. They hadn't eaten in two days and had been on reduced rations for six before that. Spock and Sapel were hunting, trying to bag something ... anything ... they could eat. Snuggled against her chest in her sling, T'Jenn dozed or possibly was unconscious. The child had ceased her whimpering and was ominously quiet, only her body's warmth and small movements letting her mother know she still lived.

It satisfied Christine, her mind as numbed as her wind-burned face. Her only hope of reviving her daughter was to get food into her and that possibility lay in digging up enough cattail roots to fill their stomachs.

The wind gusted and howled, sending a further stab of cold through the woman's body. It was hard to tell but she was sure the temperature was dropping. Her bones ached, something she'd learned to interpret as "storm coming." Spock ridiculed her gently about it, but Christine had learned to listen to her body. She had developed a low level arthritis during the time they'd lived in this rigorous environment and, when the barometric pressure fell, it made her joints throb in response.

Her digging stick struck something fairly solid and she pulled it out, pleased to see residue from a root clinging to it. With renewed enthusiasm, she pummeled the hard ground with the point, and was finally rewarded as the tubers were uncovered. After half an hour more of digging and scraping, she had gathered enough of the roots to make a meal.

Struggling up to her feet, Christine faced into the wind and laboriously made her way back to their campsite, not far away in a sheltered place along the creek. Here a trickle of water still ran, not yet frozen, and their elk-hide tent was staked to block the wind. It had never been cured properly and stank, but it was all they had.

Spock and Sapel weren't back yet and Christine settled down to prepare the tubers. Unslinging T'Jenn from her body, she made the child as comfortable as she could and stoked the fire back up, throwing dried bison dung and dried cattails onto the embers. It blazed quickly, the smoke blowing away from her on the north wind. Christine carried the roots to the creek and washed them in the icy water, her hands nearly turning blue in the process, then hurried back to the warmth of the fire.

She dropped the tubers into the embers to roast, then bent over the blaze, holding her hands as close as she dared. Even with the flames licking at her flesh, it took a long time for circulation to return. She was cold to the marrow of her bones and seemed to have forgotten that she'd ever been warm.

The crunch of footsteps alerted her to Spock and Sapel's return and within a minute they came trudging down the slope. Spock carried a half dozen small animals by their hind legs. At first she thought they were baby hares then she saw the long, scaly tails.

"Diggers," he confirmed wearily. "It's all we could find." He threw them down in disgust and bent to catch up the water skin. Left near the fire, it had not frozen and he took a long swallow, some of the water escaping to trickle through his filthy black beard. When he'd drunk, he handed the skin to his son and Sapel gulped it thirstily. It was hard to see the boy's normal skin color underneath the dirt and his matted black hair fell over his eyes, tangled and knotted by the wind that whipped it from beneath his fur hood.

"I found cattail roots," Christine told them and indicated the cooking tubers. "It should be enough."

"Diggers!" Spock repeated in loathing but drew his knife and squatted to gut and clean the rodents. He could not afford to be picky. His family was starving and even this would keep them going another day. In the back of his mind, he remembered a thought he'd had not long after he and Christine had been stranded here and he was wrestling with the problem of their survival.

He had been self-righteously vowing to himself that he would never eat meat, that he'd starve first, that he would find enough vegetable matter to live on. After all, Vulcans were extremely resilient and could go for a long time on very little food.

That was only for a week, a little voice in the back of his head had chided him. What are you going to do when weeks become months? You haven't been truly hungry yet. So hungry that you would eat anything to survive.

Spock recognized the voice now as T'Oman, the Grandmother spirit who guided him. Well, he'd been humbled since then. Spock, the proud Vulcan from the Clan of Surak, First Officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise, holder of four degrees from the Vulcan Science Academy and the Federation Institute of Advanced Technology, heir to the First Seat of the Vulcan Council, was about to cook and eat a rat. Moreover, he would be feeding the same to his family and would thank his Ancestors for as long as the meat held out. There were still miles to go before they reached their destination.

* * *

Snow gusted up with a particularly fierce blast of wind and Christine turned away instinctively, sheltering the child in the body sling underneath her fur wrap. Ahead of her, she could see Spock doing the same thing, pulling Sapel into his shadow until the gust passed. Was the snow getting heavier or was the wind simply whipping the powder into a white-out storm. Either way, they couldn't go much further.

The wind abated a little and Christine turned back to her husband. "Spock!" she called over the howl of the blizzard.

He angled toward her, the wind pummeling him as he did so.

"We've got to stop! We can't keep going!"

He held his place, steadying his son as Christine caught up with him. "We do not stop!" he shouted back. "Not this time!"

"We can't even see where we're going!" she argued.

"We will freeze to death if we stop! We push on!"

It was a command. He would brook no mutiny this time. Christine gave in. He was right. Stopping would be suicide. So would going on, but what choice did they have? Resolutely, they trudged on, Sapel between them to keep from being lost. They could see on no side of them, nor up nor down. The entire world had become a blinding blank of freezing whiteness. Only the sound and pressure varied with the rise and fall of the wind.

Sapel stumbled and went down, his feet and legs too numb to support him. Without speaking, Spock bent down and picked him up, cradling the boy close to him and plunging on through the snow. Christine struggled behind him with T'Jenn hugged against her own body warmth. Where the hunting cats were was anybody's guess. Likely they had found a hole to hide in until the storm passed.

Ahead of them, the whiteness began to gray. Christine ran a hand across her eyes and squinted again, trying to see. Yes, there was a definite line of dark something stretching as far as she could see on either side but her brain couldn't decipher what it was. She was too cold and the blowing snow distorted all perspective. Still, with every step the gray line grew larger and more defined.

"Spock! What is that?" she called.

He didn't answer, but shook his head, as puzzled as she, and continued to take step after determined step forward. As the gray line grew darker still and rose before them, he half-turned toward her. "I believe it is--"

With an abrupt cry of shock, the Vulcan disappeared from sight, as quickly as if the ground had opened up beneath him and swallowed he and Sapel in a single gulp.

"Spock!" Christine screamed and hurried forward. "Spock!!"

There was no answer. When she came to the place he'd been standing, she suddenly lurched back as she felt her foot start to go out from under her. She bent to look closer at the ground and now she saw it. A gully cut across their path and Spock had obviously stepped off into it, blinded by the snow.

"Spock?" she called again and this time she was rewarded by a low groan.

"Yes... I'm all right," his voice answered from somewhere below her. "Watch it -- there is a drop off."

"I see it. Are you hurt?"

"Just bruised. But I think Sapel is hurt."

"I'm coming down."

Christine used her digging stick to steady herself and gingerly felt her way down to where her husband was bent over their son. The boy was lying on his back, groaning in pain. "Here, take T'Jenn," the woman directed and handed the little girl over to Spock. Then she bent to examine her son, her medical training taking over.

"Where are you hurt, Sapel?" she asked.

"My left arm. It hurts bad -- ow!"

"I'll be gentle, baby," Christine assured him, but was running her practiced fingers over his arm. "Fractured, I think, but not broken clean through. We'll need to splint and bandage this."

She sat back and looked around them. Although snow still fell heavily, the wind was blocked here and the air was clearer and Christine felt a smile pulling at her numbed face. The dark wall that had spread on either side before them was in actuality a long line of trees, bare and gray, and they were following the course of a small river. Christine could see it through the tree trunks, its surface white with ice and snow. The gully was a run off trough that cut down from the plains ground level into the river's flood channel. The water itself was some fifty yards or so downslope.

"Darling," Christine said, looking at her husband, who was cradling their little daughter against his warmth. "I think we've found our River!"

* * *

The storm blew itself out after a day or so, leaving the world crystalline white underneath a nearly blinding blue sky. The air was cold and almost crackling with crispness, softening the landscape in long lavender shadows across the snow. Despite the frigid temperature, it was beautiful.

So too was the knowledge that they had finally stumbled, almost literally, upon the river that ran north past their home valley. All they had to do was follow it until they reached the area they wanted. There was still a problem in crossing it, though, for they needed to be on the eastern side. It was too wide and deep here to attempt wading and the ice that covered its surface was not thick enough to risk a crossing. They would have to backtrack along its sinuous length until they found a place.

Meanwhile, things seemed almost relaxed after their ordeal across the plains. Game was more plentiful here along the river and the trees provided both firewood and provender. Many of the trees bore brown, meaty nuts in bunches on the tips of their spreading branches and this year there had been a bumper crop. Tree dwellers had harvested more than their share, but the limbs still rattled with the ripened remainder, their husks opened and ready for the nuts to fall. The ground underneath the trees was covered and the family spent many hours gathering baskets full.

They had set up a real camp here, sheltered from the wind by the trees and the river bank, and decided to stay for a couple of weeks in order to rest, regain their strength and allow Sapel's arm to heal more. Christine had braced it with lengths of strong saplings then wrapped it securely in a fresh pelt from an otter-like animal Spock had killed. The raw pelt would contract and dry, forming an adequate cast, this tied firmly with sinew.

There were fish to be caught in the river, along with other small aquatic animals and mussel-like bivalves that went into the stew pot. More cattail tubers thickened the broth and provided variety.

Scruffy and Ro turned up a day after the storm abated, their golden coats frosted with snow, but otherwise in good health. They settled in as well, happily hunting through the woods, as was their usual custom. Ro was nearly fully healed of her burns and was now the size of her mother. She was hunting on her own and Christine wondered how much longer Scruffy would tolerate her presence. When spring came, Scruffy would come into season and would drive her grown kitten away. Likely Ro would go into heat herself and leave to find her own mate. But for the time being, mother and daughter still were inseparable companions.

Now, after a filling supper, the children were bedded down underneath their furs on one side of the fire as Christine and Spock settled on the other. Sapel had complained about having T'Jenn sleep with him, but had finally accepted the situation as his adoring little sister nestled into his side and fell immediately into slumber. It wasn't long before he was snoring softly himself, glad of her added body warmth in the cold night.

Christine snuggled her back into Spock's front and sighed as he wrapped himself around her, pulling her close. "Mmm, that feels good," she whispered with a smile.

"Indeed," he answered back and nuzzled into her hair. They lay quietly for sometime, slowly growing more aware of the other's thoughts and moods, savoring the companionable nearness in the dark, speaking subliminally, touch for their common speech. His arms around her was comforting and the strong masculinity of his aura surrounded her with a sense of well-being, warm and strong. Likewise, the sweet, honeyed feminine psyche that brushed his mind filled him with the taste of home, fertility, and hearth fires. It was said truly in Vulcan marriage oaths that the man was the protector and maker of the home, the woman its keeper and heart. Spock knew within the depth of his soul that, even here in the wilderness, Christine embodied all that he had ever wanted.

He gave a deep sigh of contentment and tightened his hold on the lush woman who lay in his arms. She snuggled deeper into his embrace and the banked fires deep within his belly began to grow in radiance. Beyond home and hearth, she was the mate of his soul and body, the sheath to his sword, the welcome tinder to his fire.

Spock moved his hand up and softly cupped her breast, caressing the rounded swell with a casualness that belied the evidence of his interest that was pressing into her bottom. Even through the leather of her tunic, he could feel her nipple come up hard to greet his touch.

With a throaty murmur of pleasure, Christine whispered, "Now that really feels good." In answer, he tightened his hold just a bit, gently squeezing her breast and massaging the lush mound with more force. When she indicated her willingness with a low moan, he changed his position around her, slipping his hand up underneath the tunic and finding her warm flesh aroused against his palm.

For several minutes, he kneaded and stroked the full globe, feeling the nipple swell up through his fingers, echoing the throbbing protrusion snugged into her buttocks. Her own excitement growing, she squirmed into him, rubbing against the hardening probe, and he felt his erection pulse with electricity in response. The fire within him was now blazing up into a conflagration, their long abstinence fueling his need for her until he could not have extinguished it now even had he the will to do so.

Whispering, he drew suddenly away from her. "Get up. Don't wake the children."

Silently he rose from the bedding, pulling her up after him. For a second, she hesitated, then with the internal fire roaring through her own veins, she followed him just outside the circle of the firelight into the darkness, to the cut of the river bank beside which they camped. It rose about eight feet above the water level and marked where floods had eroded the soil. Here it was deep and silent and concealed, only the starlight offering a glimmer of illumination.

But they needed none. No sooner had they reached the seclusion of the cutbank than Spock pushed her back against it and claimed her mouth with his. She answered him eagerly, tongue pushing between his lips and dancing with his own. In the cold night air, their frantic breaths came in exhalations of steam, wreathing them as if it were the manifestation of the inferno raging within each of them.

His hands sought her breasts through the tunic and massaged them hard, then slipped down to pull her tunic up, exposing her loin cloth. For a moment, he fumbled, then his fingers found the leather strap and quickly worked it off her, exposing to his searching touch the moist, hot folds hidden there.

Her hands were not still by any means. She had reached down to grasp him through his own breechclout but, when she felt him removing hers, she hurriedly freed his engorged member to her seeking fingers, pushing the leather aside. The long, thick shaft filled her hand as she pumped him and she felt him groan into her mouth as they frantically kissed.

With his free hand, he found her thigh and brought her leg up to curve around his hip and she was guiding him in before the action was even finished. It was all the encouragement he needed. Still grasping her thigh to hold her steady, he probed blindly for a few seconds, then found his goal. With a determined shove, he rammed himself home, almost lifting her off her feet with the power of his entry. Her gasp was smothered as his mouth once more covered hers.

Then he lifted his head from hers and began pumping into her in earnest, unable to hold back the overwhelming need that drove him. Arms around his neck, she clung to him, biting her bottom lip to keep from crying aloud as he hammered into her. For several long intense minutes, they were locked in their emphatic embrace, then Spock abruptly faltered in the rhythm of his thrusts. With an involuntary gasp, he stiffened and gave one last lunge into her depths, freezing as culmination seized him.

Christine froze as well, her breath held so long that she wondered if she remembered how to breathe, waiting in knife-edged anticipation. Then he was there, filling her with his heat and wet, poised in her as deep as he could go. She arched against him, lost in the mental and physical explosion of his climax. She soared up with him for an unimaginable time and gradually became aware that he had relaxed against her, still holding firm within her, his penis still pulsing as it shuddered to completion.

She became aware that she was shaking, whether from the cold or enervation following her orgasm she could not tell. He realized it at the same moment and released the leg he still held, allowing her stand on both feet once more. With a deep sigh, he withdrew from her and reached down to arrange his loincloth back over himself.

Christine remained standing for a long moment, allowing her heart and breathing to come back to normal, then squatted and felt around for her own loincloth, dropped at her feet. After she had fitted it back into place, Spock pulled her back into his arms and kissed her long and tenderly. When he drew back, he said, "It seems as if years have gone past since we last made love. Do you remember the night?"

"How could I forget?" she answered. "It was the night the volcano blew! Talk about making the earth shake!" She laughed softly.

"I feel the same way tonight." He kissed her once again, then said, "Why don't you go back to bed, t'hy'la? I need to walk a bit and center myself before I do so, or else I will think of nothing more than being within you for the rest of the night."

That brought a lascivious grin, her teeth showing in the darkness. "The 'rest of the night' is good," she answered suggestively.

He couldn't suppress a low chuckle. "In other circumstances, I would give you a night you would not forget ... but not here. When we return home, I plan to build a real house for us, with a place for the children and a place for us. Then there will be no need to steal away into the darkness in order to make love to you."

There was a soft whimper from the direction of the campfire and Christine turned her head to listen. "Just Jenny having a dream," she said after a second. "But you're right. I'm cold and tired. We both need rest. And I'm going to hold you to that all nighter," she smiled, reaching up to kiss him hard.

"I will not disappoint you," he promised. "Go to bed now, beloved. I will return shortly, then we will discuss our plans in the morning."

One more kiss and she went back to the fire, slipping between the bed furs. Spock watched her go and then looked up at the spread of stars scattered across the night sky. "When we return home..." he whispered to himself. "When we return home..."

* * *

It had rained lightly that morning but the clouds were burning off and the sun beginning to shine through as Spock pushed the dripping bushes aside and looked out onto a sight he'd searched for over the past five days.

"Christine!" he called, a smile of relief pulling at his mouth. "We're here!"

Behind him Christine and Sapel crowded forward. "Thank God," she said.

They had found the ford, the place where they always crossed the river to and from their homesite on the eastern side. The river did not flow so deep here, being above the point where the smaller stream they called the Creek flowed into it. Here sand bars had built stepping stone islands that allowed them to cross without wading through treacherous currents.

"We'll be there in only a couple more hours," Spock responded.

"Then let's get moving!"

The knowledge that they were so close to reaching their goal spurred them on. It took them about half an hour to make their way to the eastern bank and up it to more level ground. From here, the going was easy. By mid-afternoon their surroundings had taken on a decided familiarity, although the passage of two years had changed things subtly. But then the view opened to one of sweet recognition and they stopped to drink in the sight of their home.

The family stood on the northern bank overlooking the little valley where they had lived for most of the nine years they'd been marooned here. To their right, the waterfall dribbled over the embankment and into the pond at its base, both still ice-encrusted and only just beginning to feel the lifting temperatures of dawning spring. Later, as snowmelt poured into the channels, the turbid brown water would gush over the rim and turn the pond and creek into a swollen torrent for days on end. Now, however, the creek was a mere trickle between its frozen banks.

Directly across from them, the family could see their homesite and the mouth of their dwelling cave. Spock surveyed it with particular attention, for in their two year absence, it was almost certain that another resident had claimed it. The question was -- what? It could be anything from the long-legged hares of the plains to a ferocious werewolf, the vicious carnivores that inhabited the woods to the east. There was the detritus of cracked bones and bits of fur showing through the snow around its entrance but no footprints. Was the animal gone? Dead? What?

Spock doffed his pack and caught up his heavy hunting spear. "Stay with the children," he directed Christine and started down the slope to the creek bank. They had long ago laid stepping stones across it which made the traverse from one bank to the other easy in all but high water conditions. Now Spock made his way gingerly across these, mindful of their icy coating, and stepped without incident onto the far shore.

There he paused for a long time, using all his senses to probe the situation. The whole area had a rank smell about it -- one of decay and old death, of scat and animal odor. Yet the area seemed deserted as well, as if nothing had been here for a long time. Still, Spock's instincts were on high alert. There was danger here, lurking unseen, ready to pounce.

With great care, spear at the ready, he crept toward the cave entrance, frequently pausing to reassess things. At the cave's mouth, he stopped once more. The animal stench was nearly overpowering and from within the darkness he could hear both a deep purring sound and the higher pitched squeak of young. Something was definitely denning here.

Looking around, Spock located a good sized rock and hefted it in his right hand, his spear clutched in his left. Backing off slightly, he drew back and, with a screech meant to startle the cave's occupants, lobbed the rock with all his might into the cave's entrance.

There was an instant roar of outrage and surprise from the depths and something man-sized and furry exploded out of the opening, all teeth and blood-red eyes.

Spock was ready and met the charge head-on. The heavy spear buried itself halfway into the chest of the animal and Spock leaped away, drawing his knife in the same instant, prepared for the next attack. But the spear had punctured heart and lungs, and the creature was writhing in a flying froth of blood, snapping at the spear embedded in its chest. With a final howling cry, it shuddered and lay still.

Spock still did not relax, for the creature might have a mate lurking in the cave. But there was no sound save the alarmed squeaks issuing from the back. Cautiously the Vulcan ventured inside and was gone for several minutes. After a short time, he re-emerged, carrying the limp bodies of two tiny cubs by the scruff of their necks. These he tossed next to the carcass of their mother, then turned and went back across the creek to where his own family waited.

"What are those things?" Christine asked, frowning in consternation as they finally all approached the cave and the bodies. "I've never seen anything like these before!"

"I don't know," Spock answered. "It appears to be almost a missing link between bears and dogs." He prodded the biggest carcass with the toe of his mocassin. "The body is quite bear-like, but the face and tail are more like a wolf."

"Why'd you kill the babies, Papa?" Sapel asked, bending over to examine the little bodies.

"They could not survive without their mother and these are animals that we definitely could not raise!" Spock told him. "It was necessary, Sapel."

The boy straightened and nodded. Christine was peering into the cave and wrinkled her nose. "Phfew! We can't move in until we clean this place up!"

"Indeed. I suggest we camp down closer to the pond until we make the cave habitable again."

His wife nodded. We'll have to keep an eye on T'Jenn, but that sounds good to me." She patted the little girl snuggled against her front in her carry sling, then looked up at her husband and smiled. "Gee, it's good to be home," she sighed.

* * *

Spring seemed to have coincided with their arrival, for the weather warmed and turned sunny for the next two weeks. With the energy borne of new hope and homecoming, they set to work the next morning cleaning and re-establishing their homesite. The bear-dogs were skinned and the hides rolled and packed in snow until they could be tanned properly. Spock and Sapel dragged the carcasses out away from the camp so that scavengers could dispose of the remains.

The yard facing the cave entrance was swept clean and then Christine tackled the cave itself. They had left a lot of pots, bowls and other tools they could not pack. Now Christine gathered these up and scrubbed them clean, using the biggest pots to heat water for washing and cleaning.

Within a week the cave was fit to live in once again. Spock rebuilt the door guard and he and Sapel spent an entire day cutting and hauling firewood from the woods to the northeast of them. The real forest was a few miles away to the east, but the trees that followed the creek across the prairie offered enough timber to supply their needs. They also used what was left of the brush pile on the other side of the creek, the remains of a long ago storm.

On the day they moved back into their cave home, they started anew by declaring it "Bath Day". It was an all-day procedure. Other than the haphazard washes here and there, none of them had had a proper bath since the day the volcano had erupted and driven them from Eden. Christine had surveyed her husband and children and clucked her tongue disapprovingly.

"We look like a bunch of Neanderthals!" she declared. "And we all smell like gorillas!"

"What's a Nander ... Nan ... er..." Sapel asked.

"Nanner!" echoed T'Jenn.

Spock lifted an eyebrow at her and scratched at his unkempt black beard. "I doubt whether the Neanderthals or gorillas would appreciate such a comparison," he answered wryly.

"What's a grilla?"

"Riller!"

"Quiet, you two," Christine replied. "Spock, you get a good fire going. Sapel, you start hauling water. This family is going to take a bath!"

"Whether they need it or not," Spock interjected with a twinkle in his dark eyes.

T'Jenn, being junior in the line-up and also the one with the least patience, was the first to be dunked. The two-year-old did not like it one bit and it took Spock holding her while Christine washed, rubbed and rinsed her squirming and screaming daughter. Afterwards, though, she looked like a human child once again, pink of skin and with her matted brown locks shorn close. There was no way to comb the tangles free and she had also acquired passengers in her travels. Christine grimaced as she threw the piles of hair into the fire.

The day before she had washed and laid to dry their spare clothing and bedding, and now she wrapped T'Jenn in these and put her down to nap.

While Christine was seeing to the toddler, Sapel took his turn, aided by Spock who scrubbed places he couldn't reach and cut the boy's long black tangles, ridding him as well of the lice-like parasites he bore. The boy didn't fuss the way his sister had. After all, he was nearly eight now, in Terra Two years, but closer to eleven on Earth or Vulcan. He was not embarrassed to be nude in front of his father, for their way of living did not allow a great deal of privacy or false modesty. Neither did Spock feel it a thing of shame as his young son dried off and donned a clean loin cloth and garments. He did note silently that Sapel was beginning to develop a bit. His penis was bigger and there was a dusting of pubic hair on his groin. It would be time soon for the ack'n'vohl ceremony that would prepare the boy for manhood. If he followed Vulcan norm, Sapel would likely begin his Awakening -- his sexual puberty -- within a year or two. He should be prepared when it occurred.

"What's the matter, Papa?" Sapel asked, interrupting his thoughts.

"Hmm? Nothing, cha'i. Go and get something to eat."

It was late afternoon by now and the sun was sinking into the west as Spock refilled the pot with clean water and began his own ablutions. Christine came to help him and together they scrubbed him down until his skin glowed green all over. She cut his hair short and he shaved his beard. As he redressed, Christine looked him over with a smile.

"You look like you did on the Enterprise," she commented.

"Then let us see if we can return your appearance to those days," he answered with a soft smile.

For a moment they gazed at each other with a wistfulness that spoke of the memories both were experiencing. Then Spock said, "I'll fetch fresh water for you."

Christine's only regret later was that the pot of bath water wasn't large enough to stretch out in and soak. But it was worth that sacrifice to feel Spock's big, powerful hands working their magic over her entire body.

"If the kids weren't here, I'd jump your bones," she whispered to him.

"Indeed?" he murmured back. "I believe we can find the time and opportunity now to do that more often." She laughed in her deep, throaty chuckle. "Do you wish your hair cut as well?"

"Lord, yes! It's itching me to death!"

Spock complied, gently shearing his wife's waist-length braids until she sported a short cap of dark brown locks. After it was all done, Christine washed her scalp vigorously and then fluffed her curls with her fingers as she stood near the heat of the fire, dressed in clean clothing.

"I feel human again!" she proclaimed, shaking her head and loving the feel of her newly lightened hair.

"You are beautiful," Spock answered and pulled her into his arms for a kiss. His embrace and kiss tightened for a moment then they were interrupted by giggles.

Sapel and T'Jenn were watching them. "Mama! Papa! You look funny!" the boy declared and the two children went into peals of laughter.

"No more than you two!" their mother responded and pounced at them. There ensued a brief but raucous tickling match, which Spock watched with martyred patience.

When it was all over, he sighed and pronounced the melee "totally illogical."

He was the next target.

* * *

Winter gave them one last punch with a late season ice storm, but the cold weather didn't last more than a few days before the wind turned around to the south and the snow melted away, leaving puddles and mud in its wake. As if the warm southern wind had breathed spring over the land, the world began to turn green as if overnight. New grass pushed up through the dead thatch of the previous year, leaf buds appeared on trees, and the earliest of early bloomers exploded into color.

Game was still scarce, the herds not having migrated north yet, but Spock managed to bag an old bull elk that had wandered to the edge of the woods looking for food. The venison was lean and tough, but they cut and dried it into jerky anyway. Grated and boiled with grain they'd managed to collect from last year's crop, it made a suitable porridge. There would be new meat coming into the area soon enough.

Christine salvaged the pelt and soon had it and those of the bear-dogs tacked up and curing, well on their way to tanning. She preserved the fur on the bear-dog pelts, , but soaked and scraped the elk hide clean, processing it into buckskin leather. She would be making a lot of clothing this year. They had lost nearly everything in the flight from Eden.

Fortunately, their caches in and near the cave had mostly survived their two year absence. Grain had been for the most part eaten by rodents, but enough came through unscathed to be useful for basic foods such as gruel and bred flour. Most of the tubers and fruits were ruined and those were disposed of. The salt barrels stood untouched and there was still fish and some meat packed far down that had defied any attempts by marauders to get at them. In any case, the brine cured meat was too intensely salty to eat unless soaked and drained for several days.

When the ground had dried so that travel was feasible, Spock and Sapel made the trip to the salt licks several miles away and brought back heaping packs of the essential mineral. Gradually, as spring progressed, their lives began to settle back into the routine of years past.

The spring weather brought a change in Scruffy's behavior as well. She became increasingly short-tempered with her now grown daughter, Ro, hissing and spitting at her whenever the young cat came too close. This obviously puzzled and upset Ro a good deal, making her seek her mother's company all the more. It culminated one morning in a brief but spectacular cat fight which ended with Scruffy chasing the frightened Ro at full speed up the bluff and away toward the woods. It was the last they ever saw of Ro in camp, now banished as her mother prepared for this year's litter of kittens.

The hunting cat vanished for nearly a week, presumably searching for a mate. It must have taken a while, for this valley was on the extreme northern range of hunting cat territory. But the power of pheromones and mating drives were not to be underestimated, for eventually Scruffy returned, serene, purring and obviously pleased with herself. Christine did a quick count on her fingers and estimated kittens due about the first of April, some 65 days away.

They would spy Ro now and again hunting through the tall grass as the year progressed and were not surprised later that summer to see two tawny kittens at her side. Likely their father was the same male who sired Scruffy's brood. There weren't all that many hunting cats in this area.

Spring on the plains that year exploded with new life everywhere. The herds of bison, antelope and horses returned in strength, all dropping calves and foals as the abundant grass provided the best forage of the year. There were plenty of the usual predators following the herds, but food was plentiful all around and there hardly seemed a dent made in the vast herds of grazers that spread across the prairies.

Along the creek and river, the stands of cattails and reeds hosted water fowl and other birds, now nesting and laying eggs, which the family regularly collected, along with clams and water creatures and fish. The young sprouts of the plants themselves provided succulent greens and vegetable fare. And on the day Christine and the children discovered a patch of wild berries turning red-black with ripeness in their first yield of the year, they came home with lips and fingers stained and still enough picked to enjoy that evening.

They found Spock back from his hunt, dressing out a small ruminant they called a bush pig. It wasn't a pig, of course, but resembled one, weighing in at about 30 pounds or so. Spock already had the fire pit going and would cook the pig whole in it once the coals had burned down to red hot embers. He would cover it with the excavated dirt, let it slow cook overnight, and it would be succulent and tender by the next day.

Christine stood watching him for a long moment, then announced, "I just had a great idea! Spock, I am declaring tomorrow a holiday. We are going to celebrate the First Annual Terra Two Spring Fest and Thanksgiving Picnic!"

* * *

Spock drew his long legs up and rested his forearms across his knees, watching his children run through the grass, chasing flutter-bys among the wildflowers. "That was an excellent meal," he said to his wife, who was stretched out beside him in the shade of the big tree towering above them. "I feel quite decadent for having eaten so much."

Christine made a lazy sound deep in her throat but did not open her eyes. Her husband cocked an appraising eyebrow and continued, "What do you plan for the dessert course?"

Christine stretched her arms up high, then tucked her hands behind her head. "Oh ... Baked Alaska ... flaming Cherries Jubilee ... souffle of Vegan corre'lander fruit topped with fresh nagesh cream..."

"No handmade k'orto'k'rax?" Spock teased, his dark eyes crinkled in amusement.

"Oh, of course! I've been kneading and stringing k'orto dough for days!"

"Then it should be spectacular indeed."

They fell silent for a few minutes then T'Jenn ran up clutching a handful of white flowers. "Look for you!" she declared and threw them open-handed onto her mother's supine form.

"Oh, thank you, Jenny!" Christine answered, gathering the 2-year-old's gift. "Mmm ... they small so good!"

The little girl giggled happily and ran off again to join her brother in a game of tag. Christine sat up and leaned back against the trunk of the tree. "I should've done some Easter eggs for the kids to hunt."

"It is not Easter," Spock replied. "That would be counted as the first full moon -- or in our case, moons -- following the vernal equinox."

"Oh, hush!"

"In any case, we have never, positively, calculated that date--"

"Hush, I said! It's the spirit that counts. Easter is as much a spring celebration as anything."

"Not counting the religious aspect." Christine gave a little grunt of assent and Spock continued the conversation. "You told me once that your mother was quite religious. Did you observe Easter then?"

"Oh, yes." Christine paused and an impish grin split her face. "Religiously, you might say!" She laughed at her own joke. "We were there in our best clothes, following all the traditions." As her memories flooded back, her eyes clouded over and her voice softened. "My sisters and I always got a brand new dress for Easter service. Then afterwards, we'd have a special big dinner at my grandparents' house and later we'd all hunt Easter eggs on the lawn. My sister Jess lives on the old homestead now."

Tears suddenly slid down her cheeks. Christine hurriedly dashed them away. "I'm sorry. I just miss them all so much sometimes. I don't know who's dead or alive, who's gotten married or had babies... If we'll ever see them again..."

Spock shifted his position and slid his arm around his wife's shoulder. "It is only natural that you miss your family, t'hy'la. Do not be ashamed of your grief for them."

"It's not very Vulcan, is it?"

"You are not Vulcan," he pointed out. "And even if you were, it would still be a logical reaction. I too miss my family and friends."

Christine sighed and wiped her face, then smiled up at him, her blue eyes still bright with moisture. "Do you think we'll ever be found, Spock?"

"Ever? That is a very long time and the odds are that we will eventually, but by whom I cannot predict. I believe us to be deep within Romulan space, thus they are the logical candidates. But I truly cannot foresee the future, so I cannot say."

She nodded contritely. "I just still hold out a fragment of hope that one day we'll look up and see Jim and Leonard and Scotty coming across the meadow and taking us home again."

Spock peered at her gently. "Not a particularly realistic hope. If they have not found us by now, it is unlikely they ever will. I am certain we have been declared dead and our files closed."

That threatened to bring on a new bout of tears, so he changed the subject. "I have been considering our living situation here. The cave is rather crowded with four of us now, plus storage. I have been thinking about building us a house here."

"Where?" she asked. "And out of what? The forest is too far away to cut timber and there aren't enough stones for a cabin like that."

"I have not come to a definite plan yet. Perhaps a sod dwelling would work. Or perhaps we could build on to the cave as an extension."

"That might work," Christine agreed. "There's enough room in front of the cave to build an addition. I think we could come up with enough material around here."

"I shall put that high on my list of activities for this summer."

"It's going to be a busy summer," Christine answered, snuggling against his shoulder. "For both of us."

* * *

Hefting the maul over his shoulder, Spock slammed it down onto the pike wedged into the long tree trunk stretched before him. The timber popped and split farther, but did not separate. Once more Spock drew the maul up and sent it crashing down onto the wedge. This time the tree trunk gave a rending crack and fell into two clean pieces, opened lengthwise along its span.

Spock paused and wiped sweat off his face, then set the maul down and bent to prop one half of the tree into position so that he could drive the wedges into its length to split a plank from it. He had been at this job for over two weeks now, first selecting trees in the woods that were tall and straight enough to serve his purpose, then hacking them down with his stone axe and finally dragging them closer to the homesite. For the past four days he had labored at splitting them into crude lumber and stacking those into a pile to dry and cure.

He had spent the rainy weeks of the spring planning out how he would construct the addition to their home. After studying the layout of the valley, he decided that a partially dugout dwelling, faced and roofed with sod, was the best choice. The timber he was splitting would serve as the framework. While it was curing in the summer heat, their next task would be to excavate back into the hillside next to the cave opening. They wouldn't be able to go far because of the limestone escarpment which made up the bedrock in this area and from which the cave had eroded. But with luck and hard work, they would be able to chop their way several feet back into the cliffside, making a second room next to the cave. From there they could break through into the cave proper and make a doorway to the new room.

Sod "bricks" cut from the prairie would form the front walls of the new room, with a door and window set into it, and once the roof was built and roughly shingled, then more sod would be laid over that, forming an insulating covering. It would be cool in summer and warm in winter, imperious to prairie fire, and expandable as they needed in the future. Granted, it was far from luxurious, but it would be functional and practical. This winter, Spock decided, he'd work on furniture as he had at Sea Home.

As he bent to hammer the wedges into the half-log, Christine's voice interrupted him. "I hear Abe Lincoln got his start splitting rails," she said.

He straightened, his bare torso gleaming with sweat from his exertion, wood chips clinging to his biceps and the dark hair on his chest. With his black hair growing long again and a leather sweatband tied around his forehead, he was magnificantly male and she couldn't help but let her eyes sweep over his lean, bronzed figure, from maghogany eyes beneath upswept brows, down over his muscular shoulders and arms, to his flat stomach and long, buckskin-clad legs and moccasins.

He noted her appraisal of him but also noted that she came bearing a carved wooden cup in her hand. "So they say," he replied, his breath still coming a bit fast from the physical toil he'd been doing. "However, I believe it is a dubious way to achieve fame."

"I brought you some water," she said.

"Thank you." He took the proffered cup and up-ended it, his throat working as he downed the cool, welcome drink.

When he'd finished, Christine asked, "How's it coming?"

Spock wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and handed the cup back to his wife. "I am almost finished splitting the lumber. One more log after this one should be enough for the framing. When this is done, we'll start excavating the dugout. I estimate that by late summer we may be able to begin cutting and laying sod."

"God willin' and the creek don't rise, as my granny would say." Chrisitne put her fists on her hips and shook her head. "I feel like I ought to be wearing a long skirt and a sun bonnet! Little house on the prairie!"

"But it should prove adequate shelter. Jim told me once that, when his ancestors first migrated west to Iowa, they built a sod house and lived there for over ten years before they were able to afford lumber to build a wooden cabin. He had ancient 2-D photographs that had been passed down through his family for generations. I would not have believed it possible for people to live in such dwellings."

"Oh, it's amazing the number of ways people have come up with to provide shelter for themselves! I just hope we're able to get this thing built in a reasonable timeframe."

"With diligence and good weather, it will be ready for habitation before winter sets in," he answered confidently.

"It's already summer," Christine pointed out. "And you still have to hunt for us and the kids and I still have to gather and store food, not to mention the time I spend tanning leather and making clothes. That dugout is going to take a lot of work and it'll be autumn before we know it."

Spock's brows were creeping up toward his sweatband and he crossed his arms over his chest. "I did not realize that time is passing so quickly or that this project would take so much work. I shall abandon it immediately, as is your obvious wish!"

She punched him in the shoulder. "Don't be a smartass. I was just making an observation about the time involved."

"I am quite aware of the time and the season of the year," he responded, still looking down at her in a slightly impervious manner. "And it is passing swiftly as we stand here talking."

"Then I'll leave!" She turned and walked away, then looked back over her shoulder at him, her eyes twinkling, knowing the "argument" had not been a serious one. "Don't work too late," she told him. "Supper should be ready about sundown."

"I am almost done here," he responded with a smile. "Later ... after the children are asleep ... would you be agreeable to a swim?"

Her lips pulled into a wide, lascivious smile. "Last one in has to scrub the other's back!"

* * *

Spock surfaced and flung wet hair out of his face. The water had seemed a bit cool at first but now was comfortably tepid against his bare skin, retaining the day's warmth. Behind him, Christine popped to the surface and pounced on him, dunking him back under almost before he could catch a quick breath. His response was immediate, though, yanking her down with him. She floundered frantically and they both came up together, face to face this time, laughing, even the stoic Vulcan caught in the joy of the moment. For several seconds, they both gasped for air then Christine laughed again and moved into his arms. As their lips came together, she could feel the contours of his body sink against those of her own, his firm pectorals pressing into her breasts, stomachs molding together, groins seeking the other's form. She wrapped her legs around his hips and allowed his erection to slip into the valley of her womanhood. There was no penetration yet, just teasing contact and closeness.

Tongues dancing together, the two spent some time exploring each other's mouths and lips, then the kisses moved on to faces, jawlines, throats and ears. Christine could feel herself throbbing hungrily against the hardening shaft between her legs but it wasn't time yet. There was unspoken agreement that tonight would be slow and lingering, a celebration of their love and an end to the long weeks of denial they had been forced to endure over the winter. They had made love, of course, but this was the first time this year that they'd had the luxury of a long midnight swim together.

Christine became aware that Spock was steering them toward the big flat rocks on the edge of the pool and knew instinctively what he had in mind. Sure enough, when they reached the platform, he hefted her up onto it and came up to rest beside her. The night air was sultry against their naked skin, the stars brilliant overhead. The three moons had already set, but the pale arc of the galactic arm that stretched across the sky provided a faint, lambent illumination, all they needed.

Pushing her gently flat onto the boulder, Spock bent over her, beginning at her collarbone to kiss and lick the moisture from her skin. His lips worked their way down her chest to the valley between the soft globes of her breasts. There he spent a very long time, running his tongue up and over her flesh, tracing the tip around her hard, upright nipples, pulling them gently between his teeth, taking them whole into his mouth and sucking hard until she moaned and rose beneath him. As she did so, he slipped one hand between her legs and ever-so-gently stroked her swollen clitoris, barely touching her, just enough to drive her to the very edge of climax.

Then he backed off, leaving her writhing and wanting more. Shifting up onto his hands and knees, he let his lips trail down her soft, quivering stomach, pivoting his body as he did so until he was head down toward her feet and his hips were alongside her shoulders. His mouth continued to work its way down her abdomen until at last he reached the dense triangle of dark hair at its base and the soft folds hidden below.

Christine groaned and allowed her legs to fall apart, giving him ready entrance and at the same time reached up to grasp the long thick pole that jutted from his groin. He obliged her by swinging his leg across her, straddling her, giving her full access to the tantalizing evidence of his masculinity. Meanwhile, he bent to her own treasures, inhaling her rich odor, gently spreading her with his thumbs, drawing the tip of his tongue down across the sensitive nub and into the nectar coating her secret opening. For just an instant, a hint of a different flavor rested on his tongue but was so fleeting he couldn't be sure it was truly there. Still, he lifted his head from her.

"Christine, where are you in your cycle?"

She was occupied with her own oral explorations and answered distractedly. "Nowhere. I don't have one anymore."

"Are you certain?"

"Hmmm... Positive. I haven't had a period in six or seven months. Why?" She nuzzled into the olive green sac hanging above her and diddled it playfully with her tongue, swirling the tip along the contours within.

"I thought I detected a change in your odor."

"Forget it. My body's shut down the baby factory." She kissed each globe tenderly and sucked gently at them. "Get back to what you were doing."

His arousal growing stronger with each movement of his wife's lips and tongue, Spock gave in. The faint aroma was gone and only her delicious musk filled his nostrils. Putting his concern aside, he bent back to her widespread thighs and covered her with his mouth, his tongue delving vigorously into her valley, up and down, as he drank her wine, and finally plunging like a miniature penis as deeply as he could into her very heart, working his tongue into her, out and in once more, again and again.

Gasping, she seized the shaft of his rearing manhood and dragged it to her lips, engulfing the sensitive head and taking as much of him as she could, pressing him to the roof of her mouth and sucking with eagerness. Spock jerked her head up and went rigid, a long groan escaping his throat. In her mind, she suddenly received the plea to release him. Puzzled, she did so, then was further startled as he rolled them both over so that he was beneath and she on top.

Delighted, she dived back to her attack, licking and lightly nipping along his length, kissing and teasing, feeling him harden to steel beneath her ministrations. Beads of opal moisture had gathered like pearls along the tip and she ran her tongue full over the head, taking them away with one swipe, then engulfed him again, devouring the great mushroom crown as deeply as she could.

Spock uttered a sonorous moan and she heard his strained voice resonate through her mind. "Oh, khrasau' palikau!"

Before she had time to do more than understand his words on a subliminal level - "I'm coming!" - her throat was flooded with the strong, coppery jet of his orgasm. She tried to swallow, but gagged and had to turn her face away, allowing the remainder to spurt onto her throat and chest. She bent back to catch the last then gently licked him clean as he lay panting beneath her.

"I'm sorry," he whispered hoarsely. "I lost control..."

"Hush," she answered. "I've told you before, when I give you a blow job, I expect results!"

"But I have dirtied you--"

"It'll wash off! Stop being silly!" She bent and kissed his softening member. "Nothing we do together dirties me. Your pleasure is mine, husband." He didn't answer but she could feel the warmth of his affection flow through their bond. "Let's take another dip and see what we can come up with." With a wink, she moved off him and slipped back into the dark waters of the pond. When he recovered from his surprise and followed her, she was already nearly to the waterfall, her pale form cutting like a half-mythical water creature through the inky, star-frosted surface.

He struck out after her and caught her at the cascade.

* * *

Rock shattered and chips flew as another chunk of limestone succumbed to the powerful blow of Spock's wooden maul onto antler tine wedges. They had worked to excavate the overlying soil of the dugout but once the white chalk of the bedrock was reached, they could only pound away with antler picks and brute force.

It made little difference. The rock as damnably hard. After two weeks' work, Spock sat back and pondered the problem. Inspiration dawned when little T'Jenn, hammering at a rock stuck in a crack, caused the split to widen and a fist-sized clump to break away. As if the proverbial lightbulb had popped on over his head, Spock retrieved the wedges and maul he'd been using to split logs into lumber and turned the same technology to quarrying. It was a millenia-old technique and he chastised himself for not thinking of it sooner.

"You know, you can't think of everything," Christine chided him.

The days fell into a sort of pattern as the hot summer progressed. About every four or five days, Spock and Sapel would hunt. With the plains teeming with game, it was an easy business to bag a fat antelope or horse or bush pig. It would be butchered where it fell, the pelt stripped and laid out to catch the chunks of meat that were cut away, and any other odds and ends of use.

Scruffy and her three new cubs, dubbed Tic, Tac and Toe by Christine, much to Spock's exasperation, were always quick to pounce on the carcass and feed while the presence of the two Vulcans kept away larger predators. As soon as the carcass was abandoned, it was claimed by the waiting spectators - canids and carrion birds - all eager for a free meal.

Christine and Jenny spent their days gathering ripening fruits and vegetables and other plant foods. Jenny wasn't old enough to help much, but Christine thoroughly enjoyed the presence of her little daughter. The two-year-old was beginning to talk, although it was still mostly gibberish, and the child's fair hair and twinkling blue eyes seemed tailor-made for the summer season. Christine let the girl run naked much of the time and to see her plump little form romping through the flower-strewn grass reminded Christine of a fairy child, an impression enhanced by the slightly pointed tips of her ears. Often Christine would weave together a circlet of wild flowers to adorn T'Jenn's head, which sent the toddler into paroxysms of glee.

On the days following "food days", Spock and Christine devoted time to domestic matters - cutting and hanging meat to dry, salting other portions in the brine barrels, working on leather, sewing clothes, repairing or making weapons and tools, or other things necessary for survival.

But always, at least one day a week or whenever other chores weren't demanding their time, they all tackled the project of excavating their new dwelling. It went faster after Spock began breaking the rock up with the sledge. Now he shattered rock while Christine and Sapel loaded the detritus onto a bull hide and dragged it away to dump it near the place where the valley opened out onto the plains. All three kept an eye on Jenny, but otherwise she was allowed to play with the kittens underneath the big shade tree nearby.

By the time the leaves on that tree began to show a hint of yellow around their edges, the dugout was nearly finished and they were smoothing down the back walls preparatory to construction on the roof and front wall frame. All in all, Spock was very pleased with its progress.

That was about the time it began to rain.

* * *

It had rained steadily for three days, forcing the family to remain in the cave. The children had done school work (at least in Sapel's case) and played with the few homemade toys they had. Sapel had also worked on weapons and tools with his father while T'Jenn napped and Christine sewed near the light of the cave opening. She was just finishing up a pair of boots for T'Jenn made from the pelts of the bear-dog cubs. The mother's hide had already been transformed into a warm cape for Sapel. Christine had been working hard all summer on winter clothing for the four of them.

Darkness came early and on this third day of rain, the children had been restless and bored. It had taken a very long story session at bedtime before they had finally settled down to sleep.

Christine was already wrapped in the sleeping furs when Spock returned from a trip to their indoor latrine, a small offshoot cavern with a long crack in the floor that opened to a lower cave room. That one had a little stream running through it and served perfectly as a toilet when they needed it. The usual one, however, was downstream on the creek, where the rushing water served to carry waste away. But, in bad weather, the indoor "privy" was a necessity.

It was late as he checked to make sure the children were fast asleep. The four hunting cats, Scruffy and her three half-grown cubs, were warm and dry, curled up on the furs at the back of the cave where Sapel and T'Jenn slept. Scruffy blinked up lazily at the tall man, her eyes glowing green in the muted firelight, her throat vibrating softly with a low purr. Yawning, her ivory fangs bared and her tongue curling at the tip, the mother cat tucked her paws in and closed her eyes, supremely comfortable and contented.

Satisfied that all was well, Spock paused by his own bed and let his loin cloth drop to the ground, then slid into the furs beside his wife. She was deliciously warm compared to the damp chill that crept around the door guard and he pulled her into his arms, nuzzling into her neck, kissing her nape beneath her shoulder-length brown hair.

"I thought you were tired," she murmured with a smile and turned over onto her back, bringing her face up to his.

"You revitalize me," he whispered and caught her mouth in a long, searching kiss. Wriggling still farther to face him, Christine slipped an arm around his back, her fingers exploring the smooth contours of solid muscle and naked skin. Her hand trailed down the line of his vertebrae, to the small of his back and up again until finally reaching the hard sinews of his shoulders. There she slipped her fingers up the cords of his neck and into the thick dark expanse of his hair, now grown back to a glorious mane of raven black. Within she found his ear and sensuously stroked down from the tip to the lobe, accentuating her actions by plying her tongue along his upper lip and into his mouth.

She could feel the surge of fire that went through him and, his lips and tongue still devouring hers, he brought his right hand up to her face and centered his fingertips unerringly onto her meld points. Christine gasped against his mouth as his mind slipped effortlessly into hers and she opened her psyche full to him. Thunder grumbled in accompaniment to their meld, causing her to laugh softly, mentally.

//Do you remember, Spock? It was storming the first time we made love.//

//Of course, I remember.// He projected the image he had seen of her -- her wet buckskin dress pooled around her feet, her long sun-streaked hair cascading down her naked back as she shook it free, the luscious curve of her buttocks and the graceful sweep of her long legs as she stood in the firelight, her back to him.

Now, as then, his body responded to her utter femininity, his manhood stretching and hardening in attentiveness. This time she could feel it pushing against her lower abdomen. Before, she had turned to see him approaching her with hunger and longing in his eyes, naked from the waist up, rain trickling from his long jet hair down over his arms and sculpted chest. His loincloth had not hidden the impressive erection that jutted before him, evidence of his desire for her, and it had caused an answering jolt to surge through her own body.

Their minds entwined, the two relived the glorious moment of their first joining, as together they stripped him free of his soaked clothing and he took her down onto the bed furs that had heretofore been hers alone. There he claimed her as his own and she had tasted for the first time a Vulcan's hidden passion and the ecstasy of his fire exploding through her veins.

Christine smiled and moaned a little as she replayed the memory through her mind. //I see you remember it, too, my beloved,// his thoughts said within hers.

//And it's only gotten better since then,// she answered, looking up into his dark, hypnotic eyes. //Maybe we should go out and play in the rain,// she suggested with a wicked smile. //I really like it when you're wet.//

An eyebrow went up. //The temperature is quite cool outside. I think I prefer a nice warm *dry* bed tonight.//

//You're no fun,// she pouted, but her blue eyes twinkled. //Well, it won't be *too* dry. I think we can generate a *little* moisture, don't you?//

//Indeed,// he agreed. He took his hand away from her face and slid it beneath her soft leather nightdress. It was her only clothing, in keeping with her habit of not wearing a loin cloth to bed unless it was her time of the month, and that was now long past. The very fact of her near nakedness never failed to excite him and this time was no exception. His fingers found her soft, fur-covered mound and the velvety lips beneath and he stroked her gently, encouraging her to produce the silky oil of building arousal. She did not disappoint and, after a few seconds, her nether lips parted to allow his fingertips to sink into the wonderful moisture that fountained from her wellspring. Eagerly but gently, he spread it over the cleft of her sex, between the alluring folds and finally to swirl it around and over the rearing nub that swelled to his beguiling touch.

Christine groaned and moved in counterpoint to his rhythmic stroking. Abruptly, she reached down with both hands and stripped off her bed dress, falling back naked and open and writhing beneath his ministrations. Her breasts heaved up in invitation, firm and rosy in the firelight, tipped with taunt pink peaks of hungry flesh. He bent and seized one in his mouth, sucking at it vigorously and working it with his tongue.

Against her thigh, she could feel his rigid tool stabbing into her hip and she grasped it firmly, her fist closing about the shaft and pumping up and down in the same tempo he was playing on her. The pulse of his arousal reverberated throughout her soul and simultaneously she felt him swell harder and droplets of his imminent climax seep out to ease the way of his entry. She took his dew onto her fingertips and smeared it over the sensitive head of his penis, gasping aloud as she felt through the bond what her touch was doing to him.

In answer his fingers suddenly thrust inside her and probed again and again, triggering a burst of elation that surged back through her back to his. The intense exhilaration echoed back and forth between them, growing in strength with each gyration until it sang a pure and urgent note of demand between them.

Quickly he withdrew his fingers and moved into position atop her, snugging his hips into the welcoming cradle of her wide-spread thighs. It took only a second to sink into her valley and there he made himself pause, gazing down into her flushed and enraptured face. With a kiss, he thrust his hips forward and plunged hilt-deep within her, even as thunder rumbled and the ground shuddered beneath them. The entry was sudden and powerful and her hips lifted in answer, her back arched up in ecstasy. He drew back and lunged again, then settled into a strong, steady cadence, the rain outside pounding heavily as if providing a tympany to his rhythm.

The storm seemed to build along with their own intensity and there was a tremendous crash of thunder as Spock slammed into her a final time and the fury of their own tempest unleashed itself in a rapturous orgasm, their minds soaring and bodies exploding in a lightning storm of euphoria.

In the back of the cave, both children stirred and murmured, then quieted and slept on. The two adults clung to one another and rode their cyclone to a whirlwind and finally to a zepher of summer warmth. They remained joined, hearts beating in meter, breath gusting against each other's mouths, until at last they could bring themselves back to the darkness of their home, clutching one another in the afterglow of their love.

//I'm going to start calling you the Storm King,// Christine thought to him. //There's just something about thunderstorms that bring out the best in you.//

He rose on his forearms over her and bent to kiss her, then thrust his still firm erection into her depths once more, teasingly, provocatively. //It must be the electricity in the air,// he answered with a playful smile. //It continues to energize me. I'm afraid we shall simply have to continue our activities as long as the storm lasts. I simply have no choice in the matter.//

She wriggled and that encouraged a pulse of his hardening shaft within her as his erection renewed itself to full strength. //Ah, well, if we must, we must,// she grinned up at him, her mind conveying her own replenished arousal. Pulling him down to meet her lips, she sighed and projected to him, //My wonderful Storm God ... your goddess awaits your thunderbolts yet again!//

That brought an amused, skeptical reaction chuckling from Spock's thoughts. //Do not get carried away, Christine! A modest ejaculation is hardly the stuff of legends!//

//Mmmm ... speak for yourself, Thor! And get busy with those thunderbolts!//

* * *

Hands on his hips, Spock surveyed the damage the last few days of rain had done to the excavation. Hollowed down about three inches below surface level, the entire area of the cabin dugout was filled with muddy water, its surface ruffling in the light breeze and sloshing over the rim to drizzling in a little runnel down the slope toward the creek.

Christine clucked her tongue and shook her head. "What a mess!"

"Indeed," Spock answered. "This must be drained and then it will take at least a week to dry out enough to allow us to sink the framing posts. And the lumber needs to dry as well. It is soaked from the rain."

"What's the best way to drain this?"

"Well, we have not yet cut the door opening into the foundation. Beginning the cut ought to create a channel that will serve as a drain," the Vulcan sighed.

"Sounds good to me."

"Very well. Mark where you want the door and I will get the tools to begin."

As Spock went to retrieve the elk shoulder blade that served as a spade, Christine took one of the antler picks and began scratching out the dimensions of a doorway. Behind her, little T'Jenn stood watching, one dirty finger stuck in her mouth. Sapel had gone down to the pond to watch the torrent of runoff pouring over the waterfall and that, in turn, surging out into the creek to flow away toward the main river. The creek itself was up to the top of its banks, its current filled with debris from its journey through the woods above the falls.

Spock returned and spent a few minutes gouging out a three inch cut in the foundation wall, then stood back as water gushed out of the opening and galloped down the hill in a turbid rivelet. It picked up leaves and tiny twigs as it did so, carrying them along with it.

T'Jenn's blue eyes widened with delight as she spotted a bright colored leaf afloat in the miniature river, and she set out in pursuit of the make-shift boat. Neither Spock nor Christine noticed her departure, their attention turned on the draining water from the cabin's ankle-deep foundation pit. "That ought to do it," the woman commented. "It'll still be muddy as hell for a few days, but if we don't get anymore rain, it should dry up nicely."

Spock nodded agreement. "I regret the time lost in the next week, but I shall put it to good advantage. I noticed that the herds are beginning to move. Sapel and I will carry out a hunt up on the open plains as soon as the creek recedes enough to allow us to cross. Meanwhile, we should be able to bag game on this side near the woods. I spotted a small herd of prairie deer there four days ago. They do not go far and--"

Christine had been looking around behind her, brows beginning to lower in concern, and she interrupted her husband. "Where's T'Jenn?" she demanded.

Her alarm growing, Christine started toward the creek, calling, "Jenny? Jenn, where are you?!" Spock followed her. His wife's walk became a trot and then an all-out run, punctuated by a near-hysterical scream. "JENNY!!" Then she dived head-long into the turbid, roiling waters.

Spock skidded to a halt on the bank, his eyes wildly scanning the stream. Christine popped up mid-way across and thirty yards downstream, gasped for air, and struck out toward an object on the far side. It was hard to see what it was, then a flash of pink skin and what appeared to be a limb surfaced for a second before being pulled under again.

"Jenny!!" the Vulcan exclaimed and began to run down the bank, trying to catch and keep apace of the woman who was struggling to reach the spot where the little body had last appeared. But Christine was having trouble. The current was too swift and deep and she was being sucked under herself. Spock made an instant decision and dived in, too.

At once, the raging waters sought to push him to the bottom but his Vulcan strength allowed him to fight his way up for a gulp of air. The current was pushing him swiftly downstream, but he struggled with all his might toward the place he'd last seen his daughter. There! The body bobbed up again and Spock made a lunge to grab it.

What he caught nearly stunned him into disaster, into losing his battle with the creek. It wasn't Jenny! The pinkish body was that of a drowned bush pig, child-sized and disguised by the muddy waters roiling around them. Instantly, Spock released it and searched around him. No Jenny, but instead he saw his wife, far downstream now and obviously in serious trouble. She was flailing wildly against the rush of the waters, being pulled under more often than she was above, and she was rushing at break neck speed toward the little cataract where the creek emptied into the main river, itself wide and beyond flood stage.

Spock launched himself after her and swam as if his life -- no, her life -- depended on it. It seemed to take years and the creek fought him every foot of the way, pushing him underneath the deadly waters, pummeling him with debris, eddies and whirlpools pushing him off course. And he could no longer see her! He'd lost her in the torrent!

Frantic, he reached out with his mind, searching through their bond for her. She didn't answer and he searched harder. So intent was he in his mental grappling, that he nearly missed her physical body, hung up on an uprooted tree that had fallen over into the creek, but not yet torn completely loose.

"Christine!" he managed to gasp and fought his way to her. She didn't respond, limp and face-down in the water. With inhuman strength, he got her loose and dragged her up onto the shore, well away from the creek's grasp, and laid her flat on the grass. "Christine!"

Underneath the mud streaking her form, her skin was pale and bluish, her eyes closed, her body preternaturally still. Frantically, he went to work on her. Checking first for a pulse -- there was none -- he began CPR, alternately pumping her heart with the heels of his hands and then locking his mouth over hers to force air into her lungs. It took four repetitions before she abruptly jerked, choked and water gushed from her mouth.

Quickly, Spock turned her onto her side, head down, and held her in that position as she vomited water and bile. For the next several minutes, Christine retched, choked, coughed and struggled to breathe. After a very long time, she was drawing in shallow breaths, still coughing deeply and bringing up dark mucous, but breathing on her own.

Spock clutched her against his soaked and mud-streaked body, holding her as if afraid to let her go, and tears of relief and sorrow cut channels through the grime covering his face.

"Jenn?" Christine managed to gasp.

"It wasn't her," her husband answered. "I couldn't find her. She's gone, beloved. She's ... gone."

He broke down and Christine dissolved into sobs as well, punctuated by wracking coughs. Cold, drenched and covered with the filth of the raging creek behind them, the two parents huddled in each other's arms, weeping for their lost child.

"Papa?" came Sapel's tremulous voice. "Mama? Are you okay?"

Spock and Christine looked up from their shared sorrow to see their son and Christine gave a small cry. Sapel had T'Jenn parked on his hip, the toddler peering at them curiously, her thumb stuck in her mouth. She was dry and had obviously been nowhere near the water.

Both adults were struck dumb in their state of emotional overload, so Sapel explained, "I saw her going down toward the creek. I got her before she could fall in. Then I saw the two of you run and jump into the water."

"Oh, Sapel," Christine managed to say then dissolved into tears that mingled joy, grief and shock at all that had happened in so short a period of time.

Spock had quickly regained control of himself and nodded. "You did the right thing, Sapel. Now let's get back home. Your mother and I are sorely in need of a bath and dry clothing."

Spock got to his feet and reached to help Christine up, but she staggered and went back down in a fit of coughing. Quietly, he knelt and gathered her into his arms, standing again effortlessly. Together, the foursome made their way back to the cave, Christine limp and still crying softly in her husband's strong embrace.

* * *

Christine continued to wheeze and breathe shallowly the next day, coughing and bringing up mucous. By the day after that, she had a raging fever and was huddled in her furs, alternately sweating and shivering. Spock did for her what he could, but both knew their medical options were practically nil.

"Pneumonia," she whispered. "My lungs ... infected from ... water in them."

"I know," Spock told her solemnly. "I've gathered nettle root. I'm making a tea from it."

"Clamber vine," she wheezed. "Add that. Opens ... lungs."

"I will. You lie still now," he admonished her gently. "Are you warm enough?"

Christine nodded and coughed a little. "Prop me up ... a little. Breathe better."

He did so then went to check on the tea. Bringing her a steaming bowl, he assisted her to drink then asked, "Do you feel well enough for me to leave you for a short time? I need to work a bit on the cabin."

"Sure. I'm just ... going to sleep," she answered then coughed for a moment.

"I will not be far," he assured her. "I will have the children with me. And I will check on you shortly."

Christine nodded and snuggled down into the furs, closing her eyes. She heard Spock go out and after a while there came the muted sounds of activity near the new sod house. She drifted into sleep, dozing and dreaming for an indeterminate time.

She awoke with her abdomen twisting in a cramp. "Oh, great," she muttered. Just what she needed. Undoubtedly, the water she'd swallowed had been contaminated. Likely she'd picked up a bacteria or parasite and was about to be blessed with dysentery or something similar.

Throwing off her covers, Christine managed to get up and staggered into the latrine, where she squatted astride the crack in the floor. For a long while, nothing happened, except for the hard cramps, then she realized something warm was trickling down her thighs. Looking down, she saw blood, bright and thick, and for a second panicked. Then she snorted in disgust.

Nothing for months and I suddenly have a period! she thought. Great timing, body!

Her abdomen twisted again and she felt more blood ooze out. Realizing that she needed assistance, she squeezed her eyes shot and concentrated on Spock. She was in no way telepathic, but she could often reach him through their mind bond.

He was there in two minutes. "Christine, what is it-- You're bleeding!"

"Help me," she managed as another cramp hit. "Get my ... padding."

He complied instantly, returning with a long strip of leather and a thick wad of sphagnum moss. As he helped her with the makeshift sanitary belt and napkin, he said, "I didn't think you were menstruating any longer."

"That's menopause ... for you," she answered breathlessly.

The activity had made her weak and pale. After they had her cleaned up, Spock carried her back to bed and got her settled once more. He reheated the tea and propped her up so that she could drink some more. The brew was stronger now, its medicinal qualities more pronounced. It eased her cramps and fever and she quickly fell back asleep. After making sure that she was dozing peacefully, Spock went back to his work.

Her temperature had risen while she was up and her mind sank in and out of troubled dreams. She settled into one that was especially disturbing. She was crouched naked over the latrine opening, her belly swollen with pregnancy, laboring to give birth. That she was pregnant mystified her. She wasn't able to have any more children. She was too old and her menses had stopped.

But there was definitely a baby coming now, and she put her hands down between her legs to catch the child issuing out of her. There was a gush of blood and birth fluids and abruptly her hands were clutching a minuscule, thumb-sized baby, fully formed and perfect. It was a tiny little boy, the image of Spock. No, he was human, like her father ... or maybe he was a blend of both. She couldn't tell. Her vision was blurred. All she knew was that he was impossibly small, no more than two inches, and covered with slimy birth mucous. In fact, she was having trouble holding onto him.

He opened his eyes and looked up at her then, amazingly, spoke in a clear voice. "You're wrong," he said. "Turn loose."

Christine gave a cry and nearly dropped him, but the baby struggled with unnatural vigor and finally turned his head and sank a full set of teeth into the ball of her thumb.

Instinctively, she jerked her hand away and the tiny infant was slung free, plummeting down into the crack to the latrine pit and small stream below.

"Nooo!" screamed the horrified woman and went down on her hands and knees, searching frantically in the semi-darkness for her child.

There was no sign of him or, indeed, that she'd ever given birth. Her stomach was flat, she was not bleeding, and she was abruptly back in her bed of furs, her face soaked with perspiration and her body trembling with the aftermath of the dream.

And, of course, that's all it was, she told herself as she tried to still her thudding heart. Just a fever dream. A bad dream brought on by illness. Reaching for the cup beside her, Christine drank some of the now cold tea, its bitterness softened by honey, and lay back once more. Positive, happy thoughts, she ordered herself. But as she drifted into sleep, the dreams began again and this time she was lost on the plains and couldn't find her way home.

* * *

The fever had lessened by the next morning and Christine felt better, although still with lungs full of permacrete and limbs that had no more strength than a new colt. Spock brought her breakfast and cleaned her, sponging warm water over her body to wash away the sweat. He assisted her to the latrine and brought her fresh padding.

"I'm okay," she insisted. "Go tend the kids. I need to 'go' ... and I don't need ... an audience."

"Very well. I shall check on you shortly," he answered and left her alone.

Christine untied the knot that was holding her moss-filled absorbent strap and lower it to dump out the fouled packing. In the act, she paused and stared at the sphagnum lining. It was engorged with shed blood and tissue that she had passed. Nothing unusual except for its being a very heavy flow, but in its midst was a rather large, red-black lump.

Christine frowned at it for a long time, her dream coming back to her and her mind frantically trying to see a baby in the shreds of flesh.

It's not a miscarriage, she told herself firmly. It's just a clot. It is nothing but shed uterine lining. You know what an embryo looks like, Chapel. Stop imagining things! But still she stared, her heart a tight ball within her chest.

"Christine?" Spock's voice interrupted her. "Is something wrong?"

She snapped out of her reverie. "No. I'm fine. Give me ... five minutes."

"As you wish," he answered and stepped back out to allow her to finish her morning business. Christine steeled herself and dumped the soiled padding down the crack to disappear in the darkness.

* * *

The morning sun did a lot to offset the chill of the autumn morning and Christine relished being outside in the fresh air. Wrapped in her furs and clutching a cup of steaming tea between her hands, she watched Spock work at securing the uprights that would form the frame of the new addition. It had been a month since her near fatal drowning and she was still recovering from the effects of pneumonia and the shock to her system. Spock worried over her and refused to let her over-exert herself, but gradually she was doing more and more. But this morning she was content to enjoy her post-breakfast tea and watch her tall husband work.

Sapel was helping him plant the uprights and secure them together with wooden pegs hammered into the cross beams. The cabin was beginning to take shape. The doorway was framed and Spock had promised her a window once the sod bricks began to form the wall.

Jenny came to her mother and snugged underneath the warm furs. Christine cuddled her little daughter close, mindful of how close she'd come to losing her.

"Dink, Mama," the child said and Christine let her sip at the hot herbal tea.

"Do you want to help Mama find berries today?" the woman asked.

"Bewwies!"

"Okay, when it warms up a little." Christine had been keeping an eye on the tangle of berry vines that had overgrown the pile of detritus left from a long ago flood and which they'd piled up on the far side of the creek. The stream was small and mild once more, only ankle-to-shin deep, and easily crossed by the stepping stones they had laid down years before. The blueberry-like fruit was now bursting with purple juice and Christine knew that they would have to scramble to get any or lose the crop to foraging birds and small game. Already the feasters were beginning to gather as the fruit ripened.

"In fact," Christine said, almost to herself, "let's get going. I don't relish having to push into those brambles to get what's left!"

Rising, she went back into the cave to retrieve their gathering baskets, regular-sized for her and a miniature one for T'Jenn, then started toward the crossing, her daughter in tow.

"Christine?" Spock's voice stopped her. He was watching her with concern etched on his face, pausing in his work.

"I'm just going to the berry bush," she answered. "Don't get upset. I'll be right over there."

"Do not over-tax yourself," he cautioned.

"Pooh! I'm fit enough to pick berries," she retorted. "You fuss like an old hen."

"I simply do not want--"

She waved him to silence and continued on her way. The climb up the far bank winded her a little, but soon she and Jenny were busy at their berry gathering. At least Christine was. The little girl had more berries smashed around her mouth and squished between her fingers than found their way into her basket.

"Madame, you are a mess!" her mother scolded. "You are going to be dyed purple for a month!"

T'Jenn giggled in delight and stuck her juice-covered fingers in her mouth, sucking on their tart taste.

After a couple of hours, Christine was out of energy and they walked back to the cave. Spock and Sapel had the cabin frame up and were working on the roof timbers, Sapel straddling a beam and pounding pegs into pre-drilled holes to lock the lumber into place.

"It looks great!" Christine approved. "You'll have it finished in no time!"

"This is the easy part," Spock replied, wiping his face with the back of his leather-gloved hand. He had shed his shirt, as had Sapel, in the day's increasing heat and Christine paused to enjoy the view. "Once we begin cutting and laying the sod, our progress will slow down markedly. I had planned on all three of us working, but that is now impossible."

Christine felt as if a bucket of cold water had been thrown over her and she snapped her gaze back up to his face. "I'm sorry I loused up your plans," she responded in a hard voice.

That caused Spock to stop and fix her with an intent glance, her abrupt change of mood both puzzling and irritating him as its backwash flooded through their mindbond. "I have not accused you of anything," he answered in a fairly icy tone. "Your condition results from circumstances we could not have foreseen. I fail to see the reason for your defensiveness."

"I'm not defensive! But I'm tired of being treated like an invalid!"

"You are not well yet," he pointed out in that maddening "logical" inflection he still used when certain he was right about something.

Christine felt her teeth grit. "You are asking for it!" she warned.

"Askin' for what, Mama?" queried Sapel, who had been watching the argument in delight.

As suddenly as her bad mood had overtaken her, it was gone, replaced by her son's mischievous disposition. She turned to him and narrowed her eyes. "A spanking," she answered, directing her remark at the boy.

Sapel laughed out loud with glee. "You gonna spank Papa?" he demanded incredulously. "He's bigger'n you!"

Christine glanced at Spock who was now standing with his arms crossed over his chest and one eyebrow elevated in a superior, challenging manner. And he had drawn up to his full height, emphasizing the fact that he had several inches on her.

"Yes, but you're not bigger than me!" she said and abruptly grabbed the boy's ankle, making as if to yank him off his perch.

Sapel shrieked and grabbed at the crossbeams he was straddling. Simultaneously, Spock leaped forward to catch him if he fell and the family ended up in a tangle on the ground, laughing. T'Jenn pounced on the heaped bodies a second later, leaving a trail of smeared purple juice wherever she touched.

* * *

"Mama!" Sapel demanded in utter frustration. "Make her quit it!"

T'Jenn's high-pitched squeal punctuated his plea and the two-year-old slammed her fist into her brother's back.

"Ow! Jen, I'm gonna knock you silly!" the boy roared and vaulted to his feet. T'Jenn shrieked again, this time in terror, and made a dash for her mother's protection.

"Stop! It!" Christine commanded at the top of her voice in a tone that halted both children in their tracks. There was an interlude of stunned silence then Christine continued, "I have had it! You two are driving me insane!" Indeed, the red-faced woman did appear on her way to a nervous breakdown. "Sapel, you get back over there and finish peeling those tubers like I told you to! T'Jenn, you sit yourself down right there and be quiet! You are in time out, young lady!"

"No!" the child retorted with her bottom lip stuck out defiantly.

"Sit!" Christine indicated the spot with a pointed finger. Jenny stamped her foot but otherwise refused to move. Her mother was in no mood for it. It had been a long day and she was exhausted. She spun the toddler around, landed a swat on her backside, and plunked her down in the spot indicated. "Do not move from there until I say you can!"

Jenny's face wrinkled up, her complexion turned beet red, and she let out a howl of outrage. Then she fell over on her back and began to kick and scream with all her might.

Spock chose that moment to duck into the cave opening, holding a brace of skinned and cleaned rock hares by the hind legs, ready to roast. His expression somewhere between alarm and puzzlement, he demanded, "What's wrong?! Is she hurt?"

"No, she's mad," Christine answered sharply, attempting to continue with her supper preparations. "She's having a knock-down, drag-out temper tantrum."

"This is unacceptable," the Vulcan declared and put the hares down by the fire, then turned to his daughter.

"Leave her alone!" Christine snapped.

"But I can stop her crying."

"You are not going to reward this behavior with attention!" His wife leveled a glare at him that could have cut dutronium.

Spock straightened back up. "It is highly illogical to allow her continued emotional outburst."

His wife's blue eyes bored into him as did the overflow of her anger. "I will handle this," she responded tightly. So saying, she rose to her feet and marched to where T'Jenn had settled into a rhythm of scream-kick-draw breath, scream-kick-draw breath. The woman picked the child up without further ado and took her outside the cave entrance. Putting her down out of sight of the doorway, she said, "There. Knock yourself out. When you get ready to act right, you can come back in."

Spinning back around, Christine returned to the cave and her cooking. Spock remained where he had been standing and looked back and forth between his wife and the doorway. Outside, the furious screams continued for a couple of moments, then began to taper off. After five minutes, there was silence.

"Remarkable!" he commented. "How did you know how to deal with this?"

"I'm the mother of a two-year-old," Christine answered. "Don't think this is the first time I've had to handle this. She's just going through the Terrible Two's and she's asserting her independence. She's been pushing the envelope all day."

"Sapel never acted this way."

"Yes, he did. You just never witnessed it. And he's more Vulcan in nature. Jenny takes after the human side of the family." Christine looked up to find her daughter peeking around the corner of the door. When the child saw that she had her mother's attention, she immediately fell down and began to scream again. Christine snapped, "Get back to where you're supposed to be!"

Wailing even louder, Jenny crept back out of sight. This caused Spock's brows to soar toward his hairline. "What was that all about?" he demanded.

"Oh, a temper tantrum's not any fun unless you have an audience," his wife explained with a snort. "She'll be back in a few minutes."

Sure enough, the noise only lasted half as long this time and when T'Jenn made a reappearance in the doorway, the toddler was sniffling sorrowfully and her huge blue eyes were streaming genuine tears. "Are you ready to behave?" her mother asked quietly. The little girl nodded, sticking a finger in her mouth. "All right. You can come back in now."

The child made straight for her mother and snuggled into her lap, where Christine kissed and comforted her, rocking her gently. "When you act bad, you get punished," she told her. "When you're a good girl, you get a treat. Can you be a good girl?" Again T'Jenn nodded. "Okay. Here's a little bite of berry cake, made with the berries you helped Mommy pick the other day. Is that good?"

Jenny nodded again and stuffed the sweet cake into her mouth. "Have more?" she asked, her voice muffled.

"No, not now. We'll be having supper pretty soon." Christine brushed the crumbs away from her mouth. "Why don't you let Papa take you and wash that pretty face of yours, hmm?"

That brought a watery smile and Jenny scampered into her tall father's arms. "Papa! Saw a red birdie today!"

"Did you now?" Spock asked as he carried his daughter out to clean her tear-streaked face. "Where?"

Their conversation was lost as they moved away from the cave entrance and a very tired Christine returned to get the two hares on the fire and roasting.

* * *

She was turned on her side and nearly asleep when Spock slipped into the furs behind her. Her tension and fatigue were obvious as soon as he touched her and instinctively he pulled her close. "What's wrong?" he murmured against her hair. "You have not been yourself this past month."

"I'm okay. Just tired."

"No, it is more than that. You have been ... moody, I believe is the term. One moment happy, the next depressed, then contented again, then angry."

She shrugged. "It's just menopause," she answered. "Mood swings are part of it."

"I believe it is more than that," he persisted softly. "You have been especially emotional since your unexpected menstrual period a month ago. Are you upset because you had thought you were done with that part of your life? Tell me what troubles you, t'hy'la."

Christine was silent for a long moment, then turned in his arms and buried her face in his chest, tears breaking through despite her attempt to contain them. "Spock, I think I had a miscarriage," she managed then gave herself over to her grief.

He was stunned and for a while simply held his sobbing wife as he attempted to assimilate this sudden news. At last he said, "Why did you not tell me?"

"Because I wasn't sure. It might have been nothing."

"But you don't believe that," he prodded gently.

"I don't know. I really don't know," she answered and wiped her face. "I'm just so torn up emotionally ... in a lot of ways. That I might have lost a baby. That I could still get pregnant when I thought I couldn't. That we've been careless because of that." She sniffed and brushed away tears again.

He tilted her face up and kissed her. When he lifted his lips from hers, he held her gaze meaningfully, his brown eyes solemn, and assured her, "I am to blame if that is true, my wife. I have not been vigilant either, believing the same as you. More than once I thought I detected a change in the scent of your skin when we made love, but I dismissed it."

"Oh, Spock, that's such lousy way of birth control!"

"Perhaps, but the only other way I know of is to cease sexual relations completely."

Her eyes filled again and she shook her head. "No. I couldn't bear that. I love you so much and I love loving you so much! I'd rather take our chances than give up sex with you!"

He pulled her back into his arms and kissed her forehead. "I am of much the same mind, my beloved," he whispered. "I cherish thee above all else and the loss of intimacy would distress me greatly. We will be more mindful that you might still be able to conceive and attempt to avoid such an occurrence. But for now, go to sleep. You are tired and still not fully recovered. We will talk about it more tomorrow. Rest."

Enclosed in his protective embrace, she relaxed for the first time in days and was soon asleep, secure that Spock would do all he could to put things right. She dreamed silly, contented dreams that night and, when morning finally came and found her still curled in her husband's strong arms, she somehow felt as if she'd left her burdens behind and everything would be all right once again.

* * *

The season's first light snowfall greeted them one morning early in winter, but it barely frosted the yellowed grass and naked trees. The wind had already turned around to the south and melting snow was dripping from glazed limbs and branches. Along the overhang of the cave, a fringe of long icicles glittered in the sun and the children were delighted when Christine snapped off one for each of them. Laughing, they sucked on the frozen treats until the cold penetrated and they threw them down, shattering the ice into crystal shards that melted quickly on the sun-warmed rock. Then they began again with freshly harvested icicles in hand.

Scruffy and her nearly grown cubs ventured out, stepping delicately and vigorously shaking their paws clear of the clinging snow before bounding up the slope behind the cave and disappearing to hunt. They would probably be back at nightfall, the temperatures now too cold to pass up a warm shelter.

Spock followed the hunting cats up to the bluff and stood for a long time gazing out over the rolling plains, the wind whipping his long black hair about his face and chapping his high cheekbones a verdant green. Clad in fringed buckskins and a fur-hooded parka, he looked supremely at home on the wild prairie, as if he'd been born there and not on some cultured desert world half a galaxy away.

Watching him, Christine let her thoughts sweep back for a moment to her own family and home and to the friends they had left behind on the Enterprise. She could barely remember it now, a lifetime lost eons ago. The spark of hope that they would be rescued had nearly ceased to exist, grown so faint that it no longer showed any signs of life. And yet it was still there, buried deep and refusing to fully go away. Some day, she thought. Some day I'll look up and it'll be Jim standing there.

And yet something inside her knew it wasn't true. They would have been found long ago if they were ever going to be. It was nearly ten years now since Tal had stranded them here, some place so far removed from civilization that even the free traders didn't come here. There had just been that one time, that one rogue ship of Cardassian pirates, and they had only been following the errant distress signal from the derelict Romulan ship they'd discovered. Spock had destroyed the downed ship after that, too fearful of that sort of discovery to risk it happening again. Better to live here free than be "rescued" to a life in slavery.

Feeling eyes upon her, Christine looked up to find Spock's gaze resting on her from where he stood at the top of the hill. His lips were curved into a slight smile and his dark brown eyes were crinkled with love and humor. It was an expression she realized she had seem him wear on the Enterprise, usually in the company of the Captain or Leonard or Uhura, but occasionally directed at her, when he thought she wasn't looking or when no one else would see. Now his love for her was open, their mated-bond firm and as natural as breathing.

She smiled back and he strode down to stand beside her, his breath fogging in the still frigid air. They exchanged a light kiss and Spock gave a sigh, crossing his arms in a characteristic manner.

"I need to hunt before the winter really sets in and the herds move," he said, watching his children throw slushy snowballs at each other. "We have a good larder set in, but it won't hurt to stock more meat in cold storage."

Christine nodded. "The summer's been good and so far the winter's been mild, but it's still a long way 'til spring. A lot can happen by then."

"Sapel and I will go tomorrow. There are still herds on the far pastures and I could hear elk bugling while I was up there. They're still in rut. They'll be easy to get before they move into the deep woods for the winter."

"I don't want you going after elk," she answered, frowning. "I can't forget what happened before."

"Now who is fussing like an old hen?" he teased her. "That was only one incident and I have not suffered such a mishap since. But I'll see what tomorrow brings. Right now, I need to begin getting our supplies together and checking weapons. I'll want to start early tomorrow morning."

* * *

Their dun-colored clothing further disguised with tied-on branches and leaves, Spock and Sapel crept forward as quietly as they could. They were downwind of the bull elk and his cows, but the deer could hear and see them if they moved too abruptly. The bull was massive, well over six feet at the shoulder, thickly muscled neck and shoulders supporting a gigantic rack of antlers, these further enhanced by the ripped up grasses and small branches he had thrashed with them and torn apart. They hung from the spreading rack like tattered banners, proclaiming his power and dominance. His hard, well-developed body was covered with scars and small wounds, evidencing the battles he had fought with other bulls. Always vigilant for interlopers that might attempt to steal one of his harem, his temper was now further sharpened by the high level of testosterone surging through his system. He was chasing a cow in estrus, her tantalizing scent causing him to salivate and champ his teeth, his excitement prominent. He would tolerate no interference with his duties and desires now. Distracted by her nearness, he turned back to the cow.

The hunters inched forward a bit more and again the bull halted, anxiously scanning the forest, ears and nose trembling for any sound, any scent. But all was quiet and motionless. After a minute, he lowered his head to the cow's rump, sniffing at her tail. She responded by squatting and urinating. He curled his upper lip and snuffed the air through his open mouth in a flamen gesture, tasting her scent even more strongly. It pushed him over the edge and he quickly mounted her. For a few minutes, the bull thrust and grunted, then gave a bellow and was done. Dismounting, he stood running his tongue in and out of his mouth while he again scanned for danger. The cow, unconcerned, moved off to graze.

Spock glanced sideways at his son and noted that the boy's eyes were wide, fixed on the elk, and the father flicked an eyebrow up appraisingly. He must sit down with Sapel very soon. He was close to twelve in Vulcan years and his Awakening would come before long.

But at the moment his attention turned back to the elk herd. There were four cows and two yearling calves grazing while the bull kept watch. Spock's target was one of the yearlings. Either would offer tender meat and neither would be of breeding age yet. By spring their mothers would have new calves and the now grown elk would be on their own. Spock watched closely and determined that one calf was male, the other female. He chose the male calf as his target and whispered that information to Sapel.

The bull was still suspicious, his instincts alerting him to danger he couldn't see. Spock and Sapel held motionless for long minutes, camouflaged and silent. After an endless stand off, the bull snorted and turned to graze, cropping the short yellow grass that protruded through the thin snow cover.

The hunters crept forward again. As the herd began to move off, Spock rose and nocked an arrow onto the braided sinew bowstring, pulling it back taunt. The bow creaked from the strain and instantly the bull's head came around with a grunt of alarm, ears forward, eyes fixed on the man.

The arrow was already in flight and it thunked on target into the yearling's ribcage, straight into its heart. But Spock never saw the elk calf go down, because the bull was on him in a whirlwind of slashing, pounding hooves, the huge wicked antlers plowing into him, flipping him into the air and stabbing through his clothing like spears. Spock tried to both fight and protect himself, but a man was no match for a ton of enraged giant deer, and finally he curled into a ball and simply tried to make himself as small as possible, all the while feeling bones crack and muscles scream as the attack went on and on and on.

Suddenly there was a high-pitched war screech and an arrow slammed into the bull's shoulder. Another embedded itself in the muscular neck and the bull elk had had enough. He wheeled and raced after his fleeing herd, disappearing into the forest.

Sapel was instantly at his father's side, falling to his knees beside the groaning man. "Papa! Are you all right? How bad are you hurt?"

Spock gulped, his eyes closed, and mentally went over his wounds. "Collarbone … ribs…" he gasped. "Broken … maybe punctured lung … don't know." He coughed, groaned and spat flecks of green blood into the snow.

"What can I do?" the boy asked anxiously.

Spock struggled for breath once more. "Build fire … then go get … Mama." He paused to draw several painful inhalations and coughed up more blood. "Tell her … bring things … for travois. Can't walk."

Sapel helped his father sit up with his back to a tree trunk, enabling Spock to breathe a little better, then he quickly gathered firewood and piled it near to hand so that it was within easy reach and Spock could feed the fire while he was alone. They didn't have their fire starter with them, but Sapel was practiced at starting fires and he soon had a blaze going.

Making sure that Spock's hunting spear was at hand, he checked his father one last time and then took off at a dead run for home.

T'Jenn in her arms, Christine was already coming out to meet him as soon as she saw his figure appear in the distance. "Sapel, what's wrong?" she demanded.

"It's Pa!" he panted, gasping to catch his breath. "Elk got 'em!"

"I knew it! I felt that something had happened!" Christine collected herself then asked, "How bad is he?"

"Thinks his ribs are broke," Sapel gulped. "Collarbone, too, maybe. And he can't breathe good."

"Okay. Let's get what we need and go get him." The woman's innate strength and calm under fire were asserting themselves. "Tell me what happened."

On the way back to the cave, Sapel related the events as clearly as he could. Christine was busy calculating what Spock's condition might be and began tossing everything she needed onto a bull hide tent, including bandages, furs and medicines. Then she caught up a couple of long, straight spears propped against the wall, gathered up her children, and they set out toward the thin column of smoke rising from the edge of the woods about two miles away.

* * *

Spock awoke with a start as a soft hand touched his cheek. He had been drifting, his body automatically shutting down into a healing trance, unable to resist the autonomic reflexes of an injured Vulcan body. Now he blinked muzzily at his wife's face, hovering over him in concern.

"Must heal..." he mumbled as her face swam in and out of focus.

"Spock, stay awake!" she commanded, glaring at him sternly. "I need to get you home first!"

"Can't ... so tired..." he murmured and his eyes fluttered shut. "Two days..." And everything went black.

* * *

The hand that touched his cheek this time wasn't soft. Instead it connected with such force that he nearly saw stars. Pain exploded through his body and his eyes flew open, wild and searching. It was cold and seemed oddly dark and he hurt abominably, particularly in his chest. When he tried to draw breath, his lungs didn't want to work and, for a moment, he gasped frantically, choking.

Then two hands seized his face and Christine's sharp voice cut through the fog. "Kroykah! Stop fighting! Take a long, slow breath and let it out. Good. Now another. How do you feel?"

Spock tried to get his vision to stop dancing but couldn't make his irises obey his will. His body was outraged at being awakened before it was ready. It hadn't healed yet. There hadn't been time. Confused, he glared at the fuzzy face above him.

"Spock, you must stay awake!" his wife's voice demanded. "You have to tell me where you are hurt! I have to know before I can move you!"

He struggled, using the pain to center himself, to grab and hold onto. She was right. If he sank into a healing trance here, in the open, he would die of exposure. And predators would come soon to take the carcass of the elk calf. Already he could hear them howling in the woods. There were sounds of fighting, too. The wolves had probably found the wounded bull and pulled him down. But they were always hungry, always seeking fresh prey.

Spock's eyes opened again and he looked wildly around. It was nearly twilight already. The darkness was the shadows of the forest spreading out before the setting sun. The campfire still blazed, fed back up by Sapel, who was keeping his little sister out of the way as Christine tended to her wounded husband.

The Vulcan took a deep breath, felt his lungs fill, although there was excruciating pain in his left side when he did so. "Ribs..." he said. "Three ... maybe four ... broken." Christine nodded, observing him keenly, clinically. "Left clavicle ... cracked." He took another experimental breath. "I do not believe ... my lung ... is punctured."

"Yet," Christine answered. "But it could be if we move you too roughly. I'm going to have to wrap your ribs and immobilize your shoulder. I brought you a numbstick to chew on while I do it. It's going to hurt like hell, but I don't have anything to give you right now. Once we get back home..."

"I will endure it," he answered. "Once home ... I will ... entrance and heal."

There was a mournful howl uncomfortably close from the depths of the woods.

"You should hurry," Spock told her tightly. "We should leave ... here before ... dark."

"My thoughts exactly," the woman replied grimly. "Let's get started."

* * *

The night went on for years, Spock slipping into and out of consciousness, Christine and Sapel laboring to pull the travois bearing his body over the muddy ground. T'Jenn rode beside her father, huddling under the furs that covered him, unable to understand why he didn't always respond when she questioned him about the howls that rent the night behind them. The three moons were nearly full and cast a cold, ghostly pallor over the plain.

The moons had crawled to the western edge of the sky before the dark slit of the valley opened before them. It took Christine and Sapel a full hour to maneuver the travois down the rough slope in the dark and, by the time they had pulled it into the cave and wedged the door guard shut, Spock was lying motionless, his face white, his jaw clenched, and streaks of tears tracking down from the corners of his tightly squeezed eyes. The last part of their journey must have been excruitiating.

While Sapel again stoked up the fire in the hearth, Christine helped her husband off the travois and onto his bed furs. "Make some tea," she directed her son. "Put a handful of those reddish leaves in it and let it boil."

"Will that help him, Mama?" Sapel asked.

"The tea's for me," she answered. "I've still got a lot to do and I need an energy shot." She turned back to tend to her husband.

Spock was out cold and she had the hunch that he'd held off as long as he could on the healing trance. Now that he was home, his body would not wait any longer. She leaned over him and spoke loudly, knowing that on some level, deep within his mind, he could hear her.

"I'll be with you, Spock. Call to me when you're ready to wake up. Right now, I'm going to undress and examine you and do what I can."

She sat back on her heels and wiped a tear from her eye. She didn't have time for that now, she told herself firmly. "Sapel," she called softly and the boy joined her. "Put your sister to bed for me and then come back and eat something and drink some tea. We've got a lot to do before we can sleep tonight."

* * *

Two days in a healing trance accomplished the task of knitting Spock's broken bones back together, although his ribs remained tender for two more weeks. Christine had slapped him awake as he gasped his way toward consciousness until he finally caught her hand and said, "That is sufficient. Thank you."

Christine helped him sit up and gave him a sip of herb tea, which he accepted gratefully, soothing his parched throat. She checked his various wounds, now healed over, and tested the strength of his fractures. "I'll keep these bandaged for a while yet. I don't want to risk damaging them again," the woman told him. His left side was discolored by a huge bruise, ranging from sickly yellow-green to an angry emerald so dark as to be nearly black. "That's going to be there for a little while."

"It will heal in time," Spock replied with a tired sigh. His face was gaunt with pain and fatigue, his eyes shadowed by dark smudges.

Christine peered at him for a moment then said, "If you weren't still so sick, I'd knock your block off and say, 'Don't ever do that to me again!'. I will also refrain from saying 'I told you so', although I told you so!"

Spock quirked an eyebrow up at that. "Christine, that is completely illogical."

"Hmmph. Here, drink the rest of your tea, then lie back down. You are still confined to bed."

"By whose order?" he asked.

"The Chief Medical Officer," she replied. "In other words, me."

She made good on her orders, although after a day or so, Spock pushed her tolerance by being an insufferable patient until she finally let him do whatever he felt like, within reason. Restless, what he did was spend time walking on the grasslands that spread out to the east of the cave and mentally marking out blocks of sod to be cut for the house. When the ground had dried out a bit but was still soft with moisture, Spock decided it was time.

He cobbled together a crude template, four straight sticks tied together in the approximate size he wanted, then he, Christine and Sapel set to work. It was slow going -- cut out the sod block with an elk shoulder blade, pry it up and then place it on a large hide for transport. Once two or three were loaded, the hide was pulled back to the building site and the block laid grass-side down in place to form part of the wall. Then it was back for more.

On a really good day, they could lay ten to twelve blocks. After three days, the height of the walls was depressingly low. Spock had also exhausted his still reduced strength and Christine made him rest for two more days.

The moons began a new cycle, setting early in the evening with thin crescents barely showing before they sank below the horizon. It was now winter, the month they called December. The next wasn't January, however. Terra Two took fifteen turnings of its three small moons to orbit its sun. Those three extra months they had dubbed Tasmeen, Ah'keth and et'Dhior after Vulcan's winter seasons.

It should have been fairly cold by now with snow on the ground, but this year the snow hadn't come and the prevailing wind was more often out of the south than the north. Sometimes the ground appeared frosted, but it was a deception. The light gray, powdery substance was volcanic ash, blown on the wind from the still erupting mountain far out of sight to the southwest. Whether this eruption had affected the weather patterns was unknown, but there was definitely a difference from previous years.

Spock and Sapel went hunting again on the high plains, bringing back an antelope doe. Another day went by as they prepared the meat, cutting it into strips and hanging it to dry into jerky, discarding the bits they couldn't use for the hunting cats to eat, and staking out the hide to begin the tanning process. The doe's pelt was thick and soft, ready for winter, and would make a good coat for one of the children. They also discovered during the butchering process that the doe was pregnant with a barely formed foetus. This too was given to Scruffy and her nearly grown cubs, who made short work of the tiny body, as they did with all the scraps tossed their way. Nothing went to waste.

So went December. Spock healed fully and soon regained his strength, and work on the sod house resumed. Slowly, steadily, the walls increased in height. It was harder going now. They had to move farther afield, haul them farther to get them back, and the turf was drier now, harder to chisel free. And the wind had turned back around to the north now, blowing constantly over the plains with a ceaseless bite that cut through even their warmest clothes, sucking the moisture from everything it touched, human, Vulcan and prairie soil alike. There was still no sign of snow but this continuous glacial blast promised that deep winter would not pass them by.

* * *

As the month of Tasmeen set in, winter remained unusually dry, but Spock took advantage of the relatively good weather and worked harder than ever on the sod house. Something in him sensed a coming change in the weather and he pushed himself to keep working, long after Christine and Sapel had collapsed in exhaustion.

On this particular evening in mid-month, it was long after dark and the three moons were high in the evening sky when Spock hoisted the final slab of half-frozen sod onto the roof supports and maneuvered it into place. The walls were complete and the roof blocks, turf-side up here, would grow to form a living barrier come springtime.

"There," Spock declared, his breath fogging in a great exhalation. "It still needs a window covering and a door, but our new addition is, for all intents and purposes, finished."

Christine hefted T'Jenn closer in her arms, making sure the fur wrap was snug about the child, and answered, "Good! I don't think it's a moment too soon! Look at those moons and the clouds coming in. There's snow on the way or my name's not Betsy!"

"Christine, your name is not Betsy," Spock replied, puzzled.

"It's just an expression, Spock," she retorted in exasperation. "But I'm not kidding about the snow. Look."

He turned his gaze skyward. All three of the small moons had fuzzy haloes and the stars were shining with a peculiar frostiness. To the north, all along the horizon, lay a low, dark cloud bank, heavy with moisture and approaching with ominous purpose. "Ice crystals aloft," Spock observed. "And that appears to be a cold front. It could very well snow tonight, but that is not certain."

"My bones say it's certain," Christine responded. "I'm aching like I've been beaten."

Having learned to pay attention to his wife's arthritic pains, Spock climbed down from the roof. "Then perhaps it would be prudent to bring in more wood before we retire. Sapel, help me, please."

In short order, the stack of wood inside the cave was higher and the door guard with its leather covering to block the wind was in place, sealing them in for the night. Christine already had stew and hot tea waiting for them, along with fresh-baked flatbread.

There was an air of contentment and satisfaction around the hearth of their cozy home. The firelight painting their features golden-orange and throwing long shadows on the walls, Christine served up supper and they all settled back to eat. Outside they heard the wind pick up and before long there was an almost perceptible change in the barometric pressure as the expected cold front arrived and swept over the valley.

"Reminds me of a winter night at home," Christine sighed.

"Tell us about your home, Mama," said Sapel. Of course, she had told him this story before, but it was a good evening for stories and she felt like telling it again.

"Well, when I was a little girl, just about your age, T'Jenn, I lived in a pretty valley not too different from this one. There was a river that ran through it and trees full of birds and fields with horses and cows," Christine began.

"What're cows?" asked Jenny, her blue eyes huge. "They like Scuffy?"

"Oh, no, sweetie," her mother answered. "They're more like the buffalo out on the plains, only they're not mean and you can pet them."

Spock stretched out on his side and propped himself on his elbow, making himself comfortable for the long tale to come. His little daughter scooted back and nestled against his stomach.

"Tell us about wintertime," Sapel interjected.

"All right," Christine agreed. "I'll tell you about Christmas."

"What's Kismus?" Jenny piped up.

"Oh, it's the most wonderful time of the year," their mother answered, her voice taking on the rhythm of a very old Earth song. "We would always go into the woods and cut down a great big tree, but not just any tree..."

Spock closed his eyes and let himself drift away on the sounds of his family's voices and the wind moaning outside their door. For the first time in quite a while, he allowed himself to feel utterly content and relaxed, warm and fulfilled as, outside, the first snowflakes of winter began to drift silently down.

* * *

Spock snuggled closer against his wife's back and slipped his hand up under her nightdress. Her skin was warm against his palm and he reached to cup her breast, gently massaging. She wriggled pleasantly in response and, encouraged, he bent to nuzzle her neck and ear.

"Mmmm..." she responded in a murmur. "Everyone asleep?"

He gave a soft grunt in acknowledgment. "Tucked in their beds," he answered.

They had added a new feature to the snug cave. Over on the far side, where Spock had originally slept during the first days he and Christine had taken shelter here, they had erected a screen made of a large hide stretched on a framework of poles. Sapel had moved to that area and the screen gave him a modicum of privacy in their cramped quarters. All was silent from behind the divider and, in the back of the cave, T'Jenn was breathing softly in sleep, two of the hunting cats curled up with her. The other two were undoubtedly with Sapel, sharing the warmth of his bed.

"Good," Christine whispered and twisted in her husband's embrace, lifting her face up to kiss him. Lips parted and tongues fenced as their passions grew and sang back and forth through their mind bond.

Spock pulled her closer in his arms, his mouth coming down harder on hers, and she could feel the evidence of his arousal pressing into her stomach. She worked her nightdress up and slung a leg over his hip, grinding her nakedness against the leather breechclout that covered his.

He responded with a provocative thrust, the leather rubbing against her clitoris, and she abruptly pushed him flat on his back and straddled him. Cross-handed, she caught the hem of her tunic and peeled it off over her head, leaving her body faintly limned by the glowing embers of the hearth.

For a moment she teased him, hefting her full breasts with both hands, pressing them together and bending to run her tongue along the top of one. Pulling on her nipples until they were fully extended, she arched her back to present them to their full advantage, reaching up and back to tangle her hands amid the wild mass of her hair.

Spock was watching her performance eagerly, his gaze locked rapaciously on her lush feminine form, his erection hard and hot between her legs, still covered by his loincloth. Christine dropped her fingers to his bare chest and let her nails rake lightly through the hair over his taut nipples, down along his ribs and across his stomach. He shuddered involuntarily as his muscles shivered with ticklishness but she had moved on.

Scooting down, still straddling his thighs so that her legs were widespread across his, her hands went to the tie that held his loincloth in place and quickly had it loosened. Bending forward, she began to nuzzle him through the loose leather covering, slowly but surely working the cloth free.

It didn't take long before the rigid shaft of flesh was exposed, bobbing slightly as the loincloth was removed. Christine grasped the leather strip with her teeth and pulled. It slid up between his legs, slipping over his testicles in a way that made him lift up off the fur blanket and gasp. Smiling, his wife tossed the garment to the side and bent back to her work.

His masculine muskiness filled her senses as she swirled her tongue up the turgid pillar, over the ridges standing out along its length, and then across the smooth, mushroom head. Spock gasped again and his hips came up to meet her once more, but she ignored him and concentrated on her wet, oral explorations, taking him into her mouth and working him with her tongue and lips.

Through their bond, she could feel his excitement building into an uncontrollable burst of flame and a flurry of erotic images, both Vulcan and human, flashed through her mind. Before his arousal reached a critical point, however, she suddenly released him and sat up. Dazed, he opened his eyes and stared at her, his chest heaving and glistening in the firelight.

Moving on her hands and knees, she positioned herself with her groin over his and knelt astride him, sitting back on her heels so that he had an unobstructed view of the tantalizing sights between her legs. Then she reached down and began to fondle herself, all the while keeping her eyes locked on his.

His penis jerked upward in response, visibly throbbing with excitement, and she took pity on him. Taking the pulsing shaft in her hand, she stroked the head up and down the slick valley of her sex, pausing to rub it against her own swollen organ, then goading him by bringing it to the very brink of her well, but moving it away before he could push inside.

Spock swallowed hard and she heard his warning rumble within her mind. He couldn't hold himself in check much longer. Deliberately, she moved his erection back to her inviting opening and held him there, just in place, letting him quiver with anticipation. Then, with maddening slowness, she began to guide him in.

Abruptly, she was on her back, his movement snake-like in his quickness as he had grasped her shoulders and rolled her beneath him. Almost as quickly, he had slammed fully within her in one mighty shove.

"You should not have teased me like that," he growled next to her ear and then he was thrusting inside her with deep, powerful drives, building them both to unimaginable heights.

Christine clamped down on her bottom lip to keep from screaming, wrapping her legs around his bucking hips and digging her nails into the straining muscles of his back. Burying his face against her neck to muffle his own outcry, Spock gave a deep groan and he was there, the sensations of mutual orgasm nearly overwhelming them both.

For an eternity they hung on a knife's edge, then the rapture slacked off, releasing them to return to their own sweating, panting bodies. Tenderly they kissed, their oneness still alive and electric through their bond. Then, weak with the aftermath of the explosion that had overtaken him, Spock lifted himself and withdrew from her, his spent frame collapsing close beside her, already falling into sleep.

Christine lasted long enough to pull the covers over them, then she sank into slumber as well, exhausted.

* * *

Behind the deerhide screen that separated his sleeping space from the others', Sapel lay awake and silent, listening to his parents' activities. He had become intensely aware whenever they had sex, although they took pains to be quiet about it and always waited until they thought him asleep. It was a subject that had occupied a significant amount of his time this past year. He had watched the animals rut and go through their various mating rituals and had realized that his parents were doing the same thing.

It made him curiously excited and his body had begun to react to the very thought of it. Cautiously he reached a hand down to his penis and found it upright and firm. Touching it brought a strange and exhilarating sensation to his body and he wondered if this was what his father felt when his own penis grew long and hard. It was only one step farther to wonder what it must feel like to put his penis inside a female and move his hips back and forth. It must be good, he decided, or they wouldn't keep doing it so much.

But here Sapel reached an impasse. The males he saw around him all had a mate. The bucks had their does, the bull bison their cows, the plains stallions their mares. Even the birds and small animals and insects all had mates. Even Papa. Mama was his mate. But Sapel could see no other female for him except his sister and she was just a baby.

Then his thoughts turned back to another female he knew. Picku, his Lemurian friend. Maybe if he could find Picku again, she would be his mate.

But he had no idea where she was and, anyway, she was a very long way away and might not even still be alive. No, he could feel her, somewhere deep within his mind. Picku was still there and he vowed he would find her one day. Meanwhile, the cave had grown quiet except for soft breathing sounds and his father's quiet snoring, the howl of the wind outside the door guard, and the gentle snapping of the wood burning low in the hearth.

Sapel turned on his side in his furs and curled up into a ball, pulling the covers close around him. He went rapidly to sleep, his dreams filled with memories of his Teela'u companion.

* * *

Once begun, winter hit with a vengeance and for two months the snow was heavy and deep. Partway through the month of et'Dhior, their food supplies began to diminish and Spock and Christine began to wonder if they would have enough to see them through until spring was well underway.

Spock made the decision to hunt, despite the snow, and he and Sapel set off to the southeast, their snowshoes leaving long parallel tracks in the white blanket that covered the landscape. About a mile from home, they turned toward the woods that stretched along the eastern horizon.

"I thought we were going after plainsbuck," Sapel said, puzzlement in his voice.

Spock kept up his steady stride, his eyes ahead and a confident expression on his face. "I changed my mind," he said. "We are going for elk."

"Pa!" Sapel blurted in complete astonishment. "They've almost killed you twice!"

"Then perhaps the third time will be the charm, as your mother would say." He cut a glance at his son from the corner of his eye.

"Mama's gonna gut you!"

Spock turned a reproving gaze on the boy. "Mama is not sa'mekh'fulag'tor of this family. In Vulcan society, it is the Eldest Male who leads his clan. Only an Eldest One, male or female, may supercede that authority ... and in either case, I am the ranking Elder."

"She's still gonna gut you if you get hurt again," the boy observed, an eyebrow going up in an impressive imitation of his sire.

"Then I shall endeavor not to get hurt again," Spock replied serenely. "I believe we will find game at the salt scrape near Little Horse Creek. I have often seen elk tracks there."

* * *

"Mama! Mama!" came Sapel's agitated voice.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Not again!" Christine leapt to her feet from where she had been sewing and rushed outside to see her son galloping down the slope from the bluff above the cave.

"Mama! Papa needs help!"

"I'll kill him!" she answered, going to meet the boy. Behind her, T'Jenn stood in the entryway of the cave, wiping a runny nose with the back of her hand.

"What's wrong, Sapel?" Christine demanded. "Where is he? How bad?"

"Huh?" The boy stopped short and peered up at her.

"How badly is he hurt?"

"He's not hurt," Sapel replied as if this was the most obvious thing in the world.

"You said he needs help," his mother snapped back. "Where is he?"

"Right there," Sapel replied and looked up toward the bluff.

Spock stood with his arms crossed and an amused smirk lifting the corners of his lips, the cold wind ruffling the fur around the hood of his parka. At his wife's expression of mixed relief, surprise and exasperation, he commented in his most infuriatingly Vulcan tone, "Really, Christine. There is no reason to jump to such conclusions. It is quite illogical."

"I ... will ... KILL ... you," she answered, slowly and forcefully.

His brows lifted in what she'd always thought of as a "Spockian" manner. "If you truly feel that is necessary, but you might wish to help me move this elk carcass down the hill before you do so. Sapel and I were able to transport it over level ground, but getting it down this hillside is a bit more difficult."

"Elk?! You told me you weren't going after elk again," Christine replied, climbing up to where he stood.

"The opportunity presented itself." He gave her a hand up the final step then was silent as she surveyed the massive animal lying on the crude travois to which it was lashed.

"God, it's huge!" she exclaimed, looking over the two-year-old bull. It was still a youngster, a bachelor male, not yet mature enough to challenge the big stags but almost fully grown. This far into winter, it had long since shed its rack of antlers and the buds of new growth hadn't yet appeared.

"This'll keep us fed for a month!"

"At least," Spock answered, then shivered slightly as the wintery wind gusted, blowing snow into a flurry. "Let's talk after we get it downhill. It was quite a long, cold trip back. I am ready for some hot food and a fire and I know that Sapel must be half frozen."

* * *

"Look, Mama, flowers!" cried T'Jenn, squatting down and peering intently at the little purple blossoms pushing up through the snow.

"It's early for those," Christine replied. "Maybe we're going to have an early spring this year."

Indeed, looking around her, there was a tangible air of freshness that seemed to permeate their surroundings. The snow was already beginning to melt and the ice on the creek was breaking up. Everywhere was the drip and gurgle of water. Trees were still bare, birds had not yet returned to the area, and it was still very cold, but Christine could feel the change.

Moreover, she could feel it in herself. It was as if the grip of winter had broken and new life was ready to vault into being all around her. She felt free and slightly silly, playful and even a bit sexy. In fact, when she thought of Spock just now, she felt downright horny!

Christine laughed out loud in embarrassment and surprise, which made Jenny look up at her mother and laugh, too, although she didn't know why.

"Wanna find more flowers!" the little girl announced and seized Christine's hand, pulling her along to the next patch of color in the broken mantle of white.

* * *

Spock let his breath go in a great sigh as the tension in his body released abruptly. Beneath him, Christine gave a moan of completion and lifted her hips to meet his thrust, reveling in the incredible sensation of mutual climax. It was one of the great benefits of their mindbond -- each felt what the other experienced during Joining and the combined rapture was like nothing she had ever experienced.

As his body ended its exquisite spasm and began to soften, he slumped against her for a moment, then raised himself off her and bent his head to capture her mouth in a long, tender kiss. His love for her still echoed through their bond and he smiled as he slipped off her. Both were exhausted, their lovemaking short but very satisfying, and he nestled against her, thinking almost subliminally how good she smelled, how warm and erotic and womanly. There was something about her tonight that excited him and, if he weren't so bone-tired, he would do something about it.

But he had spent the last three days working furiously on getting the sod addition finished completely and had managed to do so late in the day. The room was now habitable, with a sturdy door and shutter over the window which could be barred to keep out weather and unfriendly creatures, leather linings pegged securely over all the walls and ceiling to both insulate and contain the inevitable dust and dirt from the turf blocks, a level, flagstone floor and a fireplace that currently contained a cheerfully cracking woodfire for heat and light.

It also contained the thick straw mattresses and sleeping furs of the two youngest members of the household. An entryway had been laboriously hacked through from the cave into the room addition next door and at long, long last the children had their own room, leaving the cave itself as the sleeping quarters of their parents, as well as the kitchen hearth and main living area. The new-found privacy for the adults was absolutely decadent. They had celebrated in bed after the children had retired for the evening and were fast asleep.

Spock just wished that the work hadn't worn him out so much. The winter had been a long one and food was beginning to run low again. Spring may be coming, but it would still be a considerable time before greens were growing and the herds returned to the plains from their migration to the south. They were all a bit thin and run down.

But at this particular moment, the only thing on his mind was the delicious proximity of his wife's luscious body to his and the sensual, musky odor that clung to her like primeval spring itself, full of promise and raw sexuality. With that last thought hovering in his subconscious, Spock fell asleep and began to dream.

* * *

The drug-laced smoke that permeated the thick atmosphere of the club was adding to the light-headedness Spock was already feeling. The smoke was coming from the spice pipes that the two Ferengis were inhaling nearby and it combined with the effects of the alcohol the Vulcan had consumed over the course of the evening. There was also the odor of sex in the air, the pheromones and secretions of a dozen different species who had gathered here to be entertained by strip dancers and live acts on the stage at the center of the small room.

Spock couldn't remember anymore why he was here, sprawled on the cushions that littered the floor, but he was not in uniform and was wearing the robes of a Vulcan trader. At the moment, however, he didn't particularly care because the nubile little slave girl who was his personal attendant tonight had brought him another flute of Romulan ale and had snuggled down close to his side to await his further bidding. On stage, two Andorian women were just finishing a session of mutual stimulation, their antennae entwining together sensuously.

The two Klingons who were sitting next to Spock pounded their little serving table enthusiastically while the Ferengi and the humans present clapped and whistled. A Tellarite merchant made a grunt/snort noise of appreciation as the girls left the stage.

The club proprietor, a fat Rigellian dressed in garish silks and satins, came on stage and addressed his clients. "I thank you for your exuberance, gentles. Now I have a special treat for you as the ... ahem ... climax--" He chuckled suggestively. "--of the evening. I have procured one of those famous -- and infamous -- Orion animal women and she will perform for your enjoyment. To add to your pleasure, she will be allowed to choose a partner from the audience to join her on stage."

That brought a roar of drunken approval from the Klingons, who banged their mugs of blood wine loudly on the table. "The rest of you can go home!" shouted the captain. "Once she sees the blade of a Klingon, she will think there is no one else here but suckling boys!" He and his lieutenant guffawed and downed another hardy swallow of wine.

The proprietor continued, "Now remember, gentle beings, it will be her choice! Do not be insulted if she does not choose you!" He cast a nervous glance at the Klingons. "Like all beings, she has her own personal tastes. To salve your hurt feelings, however--" Again he chuckled meaningfully. "--the rest of our performers will move among you and will be at your disposal. Now -- let the revels begin!"

He clapped his hands together once and moved back into the shadows. In his place, two of the male performers, naked, well-built humans, rolled a force-cage onto the stage in which crouched the wild-haired figure of a green Orion woman. As the cage reached the center of the platform, she stood, revealing her long, lithe body, clad only in the pelt of some golden spotted animal, loosely tied around her hips. Startling blue eyes made a sharp contrast with her verdant skin and jet black hair, finely arched brows like birds' wings accenting the azure of their depths. Her full breasts hung free, adorned with fetish objects that dangled from her large, dark, pierced nipples. Streaked down her abdomen, following the curve of her body, were painted lines, all ending ultimately in the thick tangle of black hair at her pubic region.

The two male dancers did a turn around the force cage to the beat of a low, commanding rhythm track, thrusting their pelvises in the woman's direction and making their penises swing back and forth in sexual display, teasing her. She was like an animal, following their movements, her eyes hungrily on their actions, almost salivating to get at them. Then one of the men suddenly flipped a switch on the cage's base and the force field was gone.

The Orion woman leaped away from the cage and landed in the spotlight, hunkered down, feral and uncontrollable, her gaze sweeping over each member of the audience. As she did so, the dancers quietly removed the cage from the background and melted back into the darkness.

Exotic, compelling music began and the woman began to move to it, her tall, muscular body bending into patterns that seemed impossible, each more blatantly sexual than the last. The pelt did nothing to hide the secret areas of her body and finally it fell away altogether, leaving her naked but for her painted adornments and jewelry.

The tempo of the music picked up and now she really went to work, writhing on the floor, stroking and fondling herself, beginning to dance specifically for certain members of the audience. Turning her attention to the Klingons, she slithered toward them on her belly, growling low in her throat, baring her teeth in a snarl. The captain responded with delight, growling back and reaching down to open the front of his trousers, releasing a massive scaled phallus for her inspection. Not to be outdone, his lieutenant did the same and they both rumbled with laughter and encouragement as the green woman slunk to kneel before them, rubbing her face back and forth against the huge erections, purring and moaning as her already intense arousal built up.

The captain finally grabbed a handful of black hair and pulled her head up toward him, stabbing his gigantic organ against her lips. "Open your mouth, slut," he ground out roughly. "If you want it that bad."

He made to shove himself between her teeth but the Orion had other ideas. She bit him, not hard enough to really hurt, but enough to get her point across. Hissing and spitting, she jerked away and scurried back, blue eyes blazing. The Klingon lieutenant howled with glee at the surprised and outraged expression on his captain's face, but defused the situation by pumping his own erection with a leather-gloved fist and saying something in Klingonese that made the captain erupt in raucous laughter as well.

"She's too skinny anyway!" the captain declared loudly to the room. "I need a real woman who can take me all the way!" He drained his mug of blood wine and turned to his male servant. "Why is this empty?! More!!"

The rest of the clientele of the club joined in the laughter and turned their attention back to the lush woman before them. Spock did not laugh with the others, but deep down felt satisfaction that the Orion dancer had rejected the crude Klingon's brutality. He was becoming aware of a definite stirring in his own body as he watched her. There was something about her that was shoving aside his Vulcan restraints and generating a heat within his gut.

She had moved toward three humans who were sitting together, undulating in a provocative manner, squatting and spreading her legs to show her genitals, running her fingers down her wet slit and then licking her fingers with relish. Inspired by the Klingons, one of the men, a big, bearded spacer, stood up and unbuckled his pants, letting them drop, exposing a thick, upright erection. "Here, baby," he grinned. "You don't like Klingon -- try suckin' this down that hot throat of yours."

The woman reached to caress him, then leaned closer and dragged her tongue full over the purple head.

"Yeah, baby!" crowed the man's cohorts. "Yeah! Suck that dick, bitch!"

"Jerk him off, baby!"

She suddenly grasped the man's testicles with both hands and raked her long, claw-like nails over them and up the shaft and across the glans. The spacer yelped and fell backwards onto the cushions. The woman also leaped back out of reach, licking her lips and growling. The spacer was hurriedly inspecting himself but she hadn't even drawn blood. She knew exactly what she was doing to them. She was a wild animal and she was dangerous game.

Downing another long swallow of Romulan ale, Spock watched in amusement. The woman was a real professional. He let a slow smile pull at his lips as he watched her, the heat within him continuing to grow.

The dancer noticed his intense gaze and the enraptured expression and turned to Spock with an athletic, sensuous move. Suddenly she seemed both very Vulcan and very alien at once. More than that she seemed familiar, her body strong and tall, long-legged and clean-limbed, and built to be wrapped around his. She did a smooth roll and came up right in his face, staring directly and challengingly into his eyes.

The high-cheekboned face and classically sculpted features came into abrupt focus for the Vulcan's liquor-fogged mind.

The Orion slave dancer was Christine!

Spock closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind. Of course this wasn't Christine, he told himself, but when he opened his eyes once more, it was still his wife's face and body that swam before him. His confusion delighted her, as did the bulge he could not hide at the front of his robe. Eagerly, she reached to caress him, pushing him back onto the cushions and almost ripping the folds of cloth apart in her zeal.

The other club patrons were cheering her on. "Fuck him, baby!" "Hey, I hear they can only get it up once every seven years!" "Better get that green cunt on that green cock before it's too late!"

The robe opened and she had her hands immediately inside, grasping him, stroking him, leaning over him with her eyes locked on his. Before he could react, she was kissing him, her tongue shoved between his lips, hot and wanton, her taste oh-so-familiar in his mouth. This close, the scent of her skin overwhelmed him and its primal, earthy redolence triggered a response in him that had been simmering from the moment he had laid eyes on her.

Without thinking, he reached up to grip her shoulders and kissed her back, his own tongue pushing back against hers. His penis leapt erect in her hand and his blood burst into flame within his veins, consuming him with a blast of sexual need that he had only felt a few times before in his life, when the ancient drive had taken control of his mind and body. The sordid surroundings of the club, the lewd shouts, the very air he breathed ceased to exist save for the woman -- his mate -- hovering above him.

Her sapphire eyes narrowed and her emerald cheeks pulled into a cunning smile. With a seductive purr, she drew away from him and retreated to the stage, lying back on a chaise that had appeared there. Dazed, mesmerized, his blood thundering in his ears, Spock rose from the cushions and followed her onto the spot-lighted dais, heedless of anything but the his wife lying hot and and open and ready to receive him.

* * *

Spock snapped awake, drenched with sweat, feeling as if he had a solid primasite pipe protruding from his groin. Gasping, he tried to move so that the pressure there was eased, but it was to no avail. He was swelled so tight as to be in real pain, his penis about to burst, stretched to its very limit. He had to have relief.

"Christine!" he whispered, waking her. "Please! I need -- I must be inside you!" It was nearly a sob and already he was scrambling atop her.

Startled but still too groggy comprehend fully what he was saying, Christine tried to stop him. "Wait -- give me a few moments--"

"I cannot!" The pressure was too much. He couldn't stand it. He had to be in her now!

He thrust and tried to enter her, but despite their earlier lovemaking she was too dry. His frantic jab was blocked at her entrance. It didn't matter. The minute his distended member came into contact with her opening, he turned loose with a helpless cry. He had lost control over it. The hot ejaculate lubed and softened her and, before the last pulse had pumped from his helpless body, he was buried to the hilt within her, still thrusting in a mad frenzy, still as hard as ever.

Too stunned to even protest, Christine clutched at his body and hung on. He gasped and came again and again found no relief. He had to get deeper, had to pound his way into the very core of her womanhood. His breath sobbing in his throat, he began to thrust again.

"No!" gasped Christine and shoved at his shoulders. He was beginning to hurt her as she felt the head of his massive erection punching against the barrier of her cervix.

Instead of stopping, his right hand came up and locked onto her face, a steel grip she could not break. And suddenly he was in her mind and she was in his -- and they were both on a stage in some lurid brothel, about to perform before a hooting, cheering crowd of drunken, aroused and completely out-of-control alien men.

* * *

Christine found herself in a nightmarish scenario she had never imagined possible. She was lying on a chaise lounge with a spotlight focused on her naked, sweating -- and green! -- body. Spock was standing at the foot of the chaise, dressed only in an open Vulcan robe and sporting an impressive erection. His eyes were fixed intently on hers and there was a glazed, slightly mad quality to them that frightened her.

The noise was deafening. Exotic music throbbed loudly and all around them, males of several different races -- human, Klingon, Ferengi, Tellarite -- were yelling and cheering, working themselves into a frenzy as naked slaves, both male and female, began to join them on the cushions covering the floor. The air was thick with incense and drug fumes, body scents and other odors her dizzy brain could not identify. It was all combining to turn her stomach.

Christine's eyes moved back to Spock and saw that he was no longer alone either. Two alien girls were disrobing him while a third had gone down on her knees before him. To her horror, Christine watched as the girl began to lick and suckle his erection, arousing him even farther than he already was. The other two joined her in fondling him erotically, their hands and lips trailing over every part of his nude body. Still he remained stock still, staring at Christine with unblinking fierceness.

"Spock!" she said pleadingly and reached out to him.

At once he moved forward, brushing aside the girls who were fawning over him. Frantically, they scrambled to keep up with him, to continue their stroking and nuzzling, but he was focused only on Christine. Without hesitation, he shoved her legs wide and crawled up onto the chaise between them.

"Spock," Christine begged him again. "Wake up! This isn't real!"

He didn't answer except to slide his hands underneath her buttocks and lift her higher to meet him, and then, with a hard lunge, he was within her.

The cheers from the audience reached a new peak as he began pounding into her, his fevered eyes locked onto hers. She reached up and grasped his face, shocked at the heat radiating from his skin. He was burning up inside, his face flushing a vivid green that almost matched the hue of her own Orion skin.

"Spock! Wake up! You're caught in a dream of some sort!" Still he didn't respond save to hoist himself up farther, going even deeper in his single-minded compulsion to mate. Desperate, Christine moved her hands up to cover his ears and pinched the tips of both as hard as she could.

"Ahh!!" Spock jerked back and winced as the pain registered, but he was too deep within whatever bizarre delirium had triggered this nightmare. Instead of stopping, their surroundings changed abruptly.

Christine was still lying on a chaise lounge, Spock still coupling with her frenetically, but they were no longer in the sex club. Instead, their environs were that of a perverted vision of Greco-Roman architecture. Columns rose from marbled floors and the sounds of a lyre permeated the air. But they were still on a stage, still performing for an appreciative audience, and the sense of violation was still all too real.

Horrified, Christine knew where they were -- and she didn't need to turn her head to know that the soft grunting sound and muffled cries coming from her right were emanating from Jim and Nyota, being forced to copulate to the tune of Parmen's sadistic directions. It never happened, it never happened, it never happened! she decreed to herself, but still it went on and on.

"Not here, Spock!" she whimpered finally, clutching at the Vulcan desperately. "This is worse than the other place! Please -- not here!!"

"No..." his tortured voice came against her ear. "No ... this ... isn't ... right..."

With a supreme effort that she could feel through their bondlink, he pulled them from this memory and into another, one deep from his subconscious.

Heat assailed her -- dry, dusty, oven-like -- and thin, sharp air that cut into her lungs as she tried to inhale made her cough and gasp to breathe. Beneath her was a bed of yielding sand, sparkling with shards of bright quartz and mica, like a hot plate burning into her naked skin. Overhead was an open sky the color of ripe tangerines and all around them was a ring of standing stones, like Stonehenge but more ancient, more alien. More ... Vulcan.

Suddenly she knew this place, too. Spock had brought them to his family's place of koon-ut-kali-fi, to the Place of Marriage or Challenge. Leonard had described it to her that time when Spock had had to go home, when he'd been taken by--

"Pon farr!" Christine exclaimed. "No! Spock, it isn't time!"

Spock somehow managed to stop himself, although he didn't uncouple from her, and shook his head violently. "It's not pon farr," he grated between clenched teeth. "I cannot understand-- Don't know what-- Ahhh!"

Again, their surroundings morphed, this time to some place dark and quiet. Again the air was scented with incense, but this time it was pleasing, almost like sandalwood. Beneath them was a real bed, firm but comfortable, with a quilted red coverlet, the mattress so familiar as to make her think that she was not caught in a dream at all, but indeed had awoken from one, long, incredible one to find herself safe in her own cabin on the Enterprise. Only it was Spock's cabin they inhabited, for the walls of the bedchamber were hung with red velvet drapes, the ancient firepot smouldered on the shelf to one side, and the Vulcan ka'athyra, the lyre, rested in its honored place nearby.

"Now," Spock whispered and caught her in an empassioned embrace, his mouth coming down on hers in a fiery kiss. Christine slid her hands up over his back and pulled him to her, feeling him surrender once more to the blood fever that had inexplicably taken him. If he could only find relief in a dream setting, then this was one she was content to share. With a near sob, he threw himself back into the fervent coupling and she didn't interfere as she felt him finally reach the climax he had been so urgently seeking.

As he sagged weakly atop her, she held him close, and murmured again, "Wake up, my love. It's all over now. Wake up."

And they were suddenly back in the cave, in their disarrayed bedding, with Spock raising his head to peer groggily around him. He rolled off her and fell heavily onto his back, eyes closed, panting for breath. Christine sat up and leaned over him, concerned, for his body continued to radiate enormous heat.

"Spock, what's wrong with you?" she demanded softly, mindful of not waking the children in the new room next door. "You're on fire!"

He only moaned. "So hot..." he wheezed and then doubled over coughing. When it had eased, he whispered, "Water. Need water... My throat..."

Hurriedly Christine rose from their bed, bruised and bleeding from the fierce intercourse she had just endured, and retrieved the water skin from its peg on the wall. Spock gulped thirstily, then a chill seemed to take him. Shivering violently, he turned onto his side, pulling the furs up about his neck.

Christine's medical instincts all kicked into high gear. Without further ado, she put her night clothes back on and went to stoke up the fire in the hearth, already mentally going over her meager pharmacopeia, hoping she had something at hand that would heal whatever illness Spock was suffering. She didn't hold out much hope of a miracle cure.

* * *

Spock's fever raged for three days, sometimes ebbing, then soaring back to a level that would have killed a human. By the time his fever broke, both Jenny and Sapel had it, not quite so badly as their father -- either the illness did not effect humans as severely as Vulcans or the kids were simply more resistant -- and then it hit Christine as well.

All four of them were sleeping in the same bedding area by this time, for Christine was too ill to get up more than she had to and this way her three patients were all housed in one place. When Spock recovered enough to take over some of the nursing duties, she collapsed into her own bout of sickness and lay in a burning stupor as the fever ran its course.

There was no medicine to fight it. What little she'd had was gone, used in the first two days of Spock's illness. All she could do was bathe her children's flushed, burning bodies, try to get liquids down them, and treat the symptoms as best she could.

Somehow she managed to keep the fire going and a pot of soup simmering, but as she felt her own fever advancing, she was unable to do even this. The fire died to embers, the soup went cold and untended. All four lay in sweat-drenched delirium for a full day, shivering and huddling together, none of them able to assist any of the others.

Then Spock managed to drag himself out of his own sickbed and get the hearth blazing again. Slowly the cave warmed. He threw out the days-old broth, fetched water and set a new batch of stew cooking. Still weak but over the worst of it, Spock tended to his wife and children the best way he could, sponging them down, feeding them sips of broth with trembling hands, frequently collapsing as his limited energy gave out.

It was nearly two weeks before the fever had totally gone, leaving all four of them slow to recover from its effects. Spring was in full bloom now and the family was enjoying their first day of really warm weather, soaking up the sun and its rejuvenating heat. All were wan and thin from their ordeal, but the children were recovering fast. Today Sapel and T'Jenn were fishing in the pond, hoping to catch enough to add some much needed fresh protein to their limited diets. Food stocks were running low and it was still too early in the year to offer much in the way of plants or returning animals.

As Spock and Christine sat reclining in the sun, leaning back against the side of the cave wall, she looked speculatively at him and asked, "Feel like talking?"

"Yes."

"What happened a couple of weeks ago?" she inquired. "With that weird dream, I mean."

He was silent for quite some time, considering his answer. When he spoke, it was in the form of a question for her. "Christine, were you ovulating when that happened?"

Surprised, she answered, "No, I don't think so. Maybe. I'm not sure. Why?"

"I believe you were ... and it triggered that response in me," he responded, his gaze faraway.

"You've never had a reaction like that before," she protested. "Why now?"

"It must have been the fever. I was becoming ill but didn't know it," he said. "Somehow, your pheromones combined with that condition to generate a sort of pseudo-pon farr."

"But where in the world did that dream come from?" she demanded. "You can't possibly have ever been to such a place!"

He was silent again, then answered ruefully, "In fact, I have, Christine."

"What?!"

"Jim and I were on a secret assignment for the Federation Council. We were gathering information on the Orion slave trade and we were sent in as a couple of outlaw traders interested in getting involved and opening new markets. There were others there, too, bidding for the ... um ... franchise. That club was part of the entertainment our host furnished for his ... investors."

"Was it really that bad?" Christine asked, wide-eyed with horror.

Spock looked away. "Worse. Be thankful that my dream did not include the part when they brought the children in."

Christine felt sick at her stomach and knew the color had drained from her face. "Oh, my God..." she whispered. "Spock, you didn't--"

"Of course not! But I had to watch and be sure I remembered so that I could give a full report when I returned." His face had hardened into a mask of stone. "I hope never to witness again anything that vile as long as I live."

They did not speak for a few minutes, then she asked, "Did you ... did you really go ... go up on the stage?"

"No, that was merely part of the dream. But others did ... and I had to watch that as well." His brows furrowed in supreme disgust.

"Jim?"

Spock shook his head. 'No. He played at being far too drunk, but he did have sex during the ensuing orgy."

Christine's blue eyes were misted with tears as she asked softly, "Did you?"

Her husband turned to gaze at her and the mahogany of his eyes were rich and sad and filled with pain. Taking her hand, he answered, "Yes. The slave attendant you saw in my dream. She was real. I had no choice but to play my role to the fullest. To refuse to join in would have caused too much suspicion and blown our cover. We would not have been allowed to escape alive."

A tear rolled down her cheek but she nodded. "I understand. I know you did what your duty required." Then her eyebrows lowered. "I hope you nailed that sorry bastard running the place. The slave trader."

"No. Ours was simply part of an ongoing investigation. It is still going on, as far as I know. The slave trade goes far beyond a few buyers and sellers on non-Federation worlds. It will be years yet before the Federation is ready to shut it down. They are working to find the kingpins, the financiers who profit. The ones supplying the ships and the safe ports." He shook his head. "We will not see its end in our lifetimes."

Christine had a sudden revelation. "That's why you were so anxious to get us away from the crashed Romulan ship and why you destroyed it. You were afraid we'd been found by slavers."

He gazed at her solemnly. "I would kill all of us before I would see our children made into sex slaves on some perverted stage. I will never allow us to be taken. Never."

* * *

Spock and Sapel stepped in out of the rain and doffed their sopping elk-hide ponchos, hanging them on pegs hammered into the wall of the cave.

"Any luck?" asked Christine from the hearth, where she was baking flatbread on the cooking stone.

Spock wrung water out of his hair and shook his head. "No. It is raining too hard to hunt today. The plains are very nearly flooded."

"Yeah, and we saw a tree get hit by lightning!" Sapel added, squeezing water from his braids.

"That is the main reason I gave up on a hunt today," his father confirmed. "This storm was developing into quite a dangerous one."

"I've never seen such weather," Christine commented, flipping a tortilla over to bake on its other side. "Every day -- thunderstorms and rain!"

"I suspect this planet's jet stream has shifted from its usual path," Spock answered from the bedding area, peeling off his wet clothing and snatching up a chamois towel to dry himself. "That would account for the instability in the atmosphere."

"Sapel, get out of those clothes and into some dry ones!" Christine ordered. "You're dripping all over my floor."

"Ah, I'm not so wet, Ma," the boy complained.

"Scoot!"

Sapel disappeared through the doorway to the other room and his mother turned back to her cooking, gingerly removing the now done flatbread from the griddle to a plate, then pouring more batter out to cook.

Spock came up behind her, dressed in dry leggings and loin cloth, and bent to snatch the newly cooked bread before Christine could swat his hand. He mollified her with a quick peck on the cheek, then straightened, tearing the hot bread apart and popping pieces of it into his mouth. T'Jenn came and clung to his leg, reaching up and begging for a piece. Spock obligingly gave her one that had cooled a bit and smiled as his little daughter stuffed it in her mouth.

"Are you feeling any better?" Spock asked his wife, tearing off another piece of bread for Jenny.

Christine flipped the tortilla on the griddle. "Yes. Breakfast just didn't sit well, that's all. I feel fine."

Spock eyed her surreptitiously but didn't pursue the subject. Sapel reappeared in dry clothing and appropriated a hot cake, too.

"Sapel and I must hunt tomorrow, regardless of the weather," Spock commented, still standing.

"Oh, sit down! I'm getting a crick in my neck looking up at you," Christine said. "All of you. We might as well eat. It's ready."

Her tall husband folded his long legs into lotus position and the children plopped down as well. For the next few minutes, the woman dished up stew and bread and the family dug in.

"As I was saying," Spock continued between bites, "our larder is quite low. We have no choice, rain or shine, but to bag some sort of game tomorrow."

"'S okay with me," Sapel replied, sopping up stew with a piece of bread. "I don't care if I get wet."

"Obviously," his father answered. "But I believe we can accomplish our task before the afternoon rain, if the weather holds to this pattern."

Ever since spring had begun turning to summer, a rhythm had developed in the daily weather. High humidity combined with already oppressive heat to make for muggy, uncomfortable days. As the afternoon wore on and the temperature rose, tall cumulus began to build, the towers soaring up where thermals pushed the hot moist air into the colder upper atmosphere. By late afternoon, these combined into towering thunderheads that punched their way up into the supercooled air of the stratosphere, where high level winds blew their tops into fast streaming anvils, gradually dissipating as their water droplets glaciated into ice crystals. But behind and blow the leading edges of the storms, the towers continued to build, adding stored energy and moisture to the mountainous clouds. Eventually, the saturation level was reached and, with a rumble of thunder and cold downdraft, the thunderheads would release their load in torrential rains. Lightning and hail often accompanied the downpours and the storm poured out its stored energy.

Most frightening of all was when the thunderstorms melded into supercells and began to rotate slowly, driven by fierce upper level winds. The mesocyclones this created often produced funnel clouds and actual tornados, most small and short-lived, but at other times giving birth to real monsters. The family had twice taken shelter when these lethal horrors had come too close for comfort. Fortunately, the twisters had by-passed them, but Spock and Christine always kept a watchful eye and attentive ear during the storms that daily ravaged the high plains.

This afternoon's storm, however, was not so severe. Besides the rain, lightning and accompanying thunder, it showed no sign of dropping a tornado. Snug inside their cave home, the family enjoyed their evening meal.

There was a scramble and Scruffy hurtled through the doorway, soaked. She paused and gave a pathetic meow, then shook herself furiously, sending water flying in all directions.

"Hey!" exclaimed Sapel, who was sitting closest to the door.

"I thought you didn't mind getting wet," Christine smiled, her blue eyes crinkled in mirth.

"But I just got dried off!"

Finished shaking herself, the hunting cat did indeed resemble her name, her fur tufted and sticking out in all directions. She moved closer to the fire and set about giving herself a good grooming with her rasping tongue.

"When's her kittens due, huh, Mama?" Sapel asked, noting Scruffy's swollen belly.

"Any time now I should think." Christine's practiced eye roved over the mother cat, nothing the swollen mammaries that made her pouch protrude. Like many of the animals on this planet, Scruffy was a marsupial, although she carried her young internally to a more advanced state than did Earth marsupials. And she was the farthest thing from a possum or kangaroo anyone would imagine. She more resembled a beautiful serval cat with golden fur liberally spotted with black and tufts of black fur on her large ears.

This would be Scruffy's third litter. Early each spring, her previous year's brood, now grown, was driven away to fend for themselves and Scruffy would search out her mate. About two months later, two or three tiny spotted kittens would appear and the cycle would begin again.

"Do you think she'll go off again to have em?" Sapel questioned as he watched his pet lick her gleaming fur back into place.

"Probably," Christine responded. "But it would be nice if she decided to give birth here so you kids could see what a miracle it is." The woman smiled dreamily and said, almost to herself, "Gee, it will be nice to have babies around the place again."

Spock let an eyebrow rise just a bit as he watched his wife appraisingly, but he said nothing except, "Is there any more stew?"

* * *

As she began to gut the bush pig that Spock and Sapel had bagged, the smell of blood abruptly made Christine's stomach lurch and rebel. She barely made it away from the butchering block before she doubled over and retched violently. It kept up until there was nothing left to heave and by then Spock was there, supporting her.

When she had gained control of herself once more, he wiped her face with a wet cloth and had her rinse her mouth with a cup of water that Sapel had fetched. The boy and his little sister stood some distance away, both worried and silent. T'Jenn especially had never seen her mother in this condition and she tugged at her brother's long, fringed loin cloth. "Mama sick?" she asked in concern.

"Yes. Shhhh..." Sapel answered, his dark eyes locked on his parents.

"Take another sip," Spock was softly directing his wife. "Slowly. Just a little."

Christine nodded and complied, then wiped her face and streaming eyes again. "I'm okay," she murmured. "Must've been the heat."

"You will go and lie down immediately," Spock ordered, his arm around her shoulders, steering her toward a grassy area beneath one of the big trees, where the day's heat was abated somewhat by the shade and a cool breeze.

"Really, I'm okay," she protested.

"Rest. Now." There was no leeway in Spock's voice. He did not pause until she was stretched out in the sweet grass with a rolled blanket underneath her head as a pillow.

Christine sighed. "This is silly. I'm perfectly fine! It was the heat and the smell, that's all."

Spock sat back on his heels and gazed down at her. "T'hy'la, you know what it is," he said quietly. "You know as well as I do."

Christine's chin suddenly quivered a bit and she looked away from him as tears filled her eyes. "I was trying to make myself believe it wasn't," she answered finally. "I don't want another baby, Spock. I'm 44 now. At least I think I am. How am I going to care for another baby when it's so hard just to keep one ... alive--" Her voice broke as the memories of her lost children flooded back.

Spock pulled her up into his arms and she clung to him and cried. Stroking her hair, he told her softly, "We will manage as we have always managed ... one day at a time. That is all we can do. And you know you are not alone, beloved. I will be with you until my dying breath."

Christine shook her head, her wet face nestled against his warm, bare chest. That didn't necessarily make her feel any better.

* * *

Taking a rest and their mid-day meal in the shade of a scrubby tree, Spock and Sapel gazed out over the plains at the herds dozing in the afternoon heat. Thermal shimmer and dust made them indistinct, hazy black dots and smudges in the distance. Other predators would be lying up at this time of day and the grazers were relaxed, knowing they were safe until later in the day. Hardly anything moved during the highest temperatures of the afternoon. They would not be expecting the two-legged predators that would soon begin stalking them.

For the moment, however, those predators were taking their ease as well. The pair were silent as they ate their meal of jerky and journey bread, a mixture of fruit and grain pounded into cakes. It was Sapel who broke the quiet.

"Papa?" he asked. "What's wrong with Mama?"

"Your mother is expecting a baby," Spock answered. "Women are often ill during the first part of their pregnancy."

Sapel contemplated this for a moment then commented, "Animals aren't sick when they're carrying. Why's Mama?"

"We don't know that animals aren't. We do not see them all the time," his father pointed out. "However, to answer your question, there are two reasons Mama is experiencing illness now. In human gestation, there is a period while the placenta is forming that the female's body perceives the fetus as an alien, invading body and attempts to reject it. This is because the fetus contains the father's DNA which is, of course, different from the mother's. In Mama's case, it is complicated by the fact that I am half-Vulcan and it truly is alien DNA that her body is encountering in the fetus. Only the fact that my own DNA was genetically engineered to be compatible with humans allows a viable fetus at all."

Sapel sat without speaking for some time, chewing on both a hunk of jerky and this long, confusing speech. He didn't know what DNA was nor did he really understand all that his father had said. At length, though, he ventured, "You mean, it's like if a horse tried to mate with a plains-deer?"

"No, more like if a plains-deer attempted to mate with a forest deer. If your mother and I were too different, we could not produce a child. It is very complicated, Sapel. I don't expect you to comprehend it." Spock glanced at his son, smiling slightly. "Just accept the fact that Mama and I are compatible and able to have children together."

There was another long period of silence then, his gaze not wavering from the far plains, Sapel said, "Papa? Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"When you and Mama ... when you're in bed ... what's it like?"

Spock nearly choked on the food he was swallowing and had to take a drink from the water bag to get it down. Then he turned a long, appraising look on his son and felt a lump in his stomach that had nothing to do with the half-chewed food. It was time, he realized, for The Talk with Sapel. Gathering his thoughts, he took another swig of water, then began:

"You are growing up, Sapel. You have already gone through your kahs'wan and it will not be long before you will experience your Awakening ... puberty, as humans call it. Do you know what that is?" Sapel shrugged, indicating an uncertain negative. "It is when your body becomes capable of sexual activity and your reproductive organs mature enough that you are physically capable of intercourse and even siring a child."

Sapel didn't answer, but his dark, upswept brows began to come together in a frown as he digested this.

Spock went on, "You have probably already begun to notice changes in your body. Your penis and testicles are getting bigger and you are getting hair that hasn't been there before ... in your groin area, your chest, under your arms. You have not yet begun to grow facial hair, but that will come as well. Your voice will deepen and you will grow taller and more broad in the chest and shoulders."

Sapel nodded. "Yeah ... some of that is happening," he said.

Spock nodded as well. "You will also begin to experience erections of your penis."

The boy looked uncomfortable. "Yeah. I am already. Like ... like when I hear you and Mama ... you know ... at night sometimes."

Spock felt the lump in his stomach harden. "I should have guessed that you could hear us," he admitted faintly. "I am sorry, Sapel."

"It's all right," his son said hurriedly. "I know not to listen."

Spock sighed. "But you cannot help but hear. There is so little privacy the way we are forced to live." He took a deep breath and let it out. "Well, there is little we can do about privacy except close our eyes and ears and imagine a wall that blocks out such things."

"I know. I do. But now and then ... it's hard not to..."

Father and son sat without speaking for a few minutes then Spock went on, "When you have an erection, what is your response?"

Sapel looked away. "I touch it sometimes. It feels good when I do."

"And do you ejaculate?"

"Huh?" The boy didn't understand the word.

"Does fluid come out of your penis? Other than urine, I mean."

"Not really. Sometimes a little but usually I just feel like I've got to pee real bad and, after it's not so hard anymore, the feeling sort of goes away."

Spock nodded once again and pulled up a blade of grass, methodically shredding it with his thumb nails. "When your Awakening occurs, you will experience ejaculation. It will feel somewhat like you are urinating after holding it a long time -- it will be a release of tension -- but what will come is semen, not urine. It will be white and thick and may spurt out rather forcefully. Do not be alarmed, however. This is normal."

"Is that what happens to you?"

"Yes. Semen is a special fluid that contains sperm, the cells that are the male's half of the reproduction process. If ejaculation occurs within a female's body, she may become pregnant as a result."

Sapel thought about that. "But you and Mama ... do it a lot," he said. "Why don't you have more kids than Jenn and me? And the baby?"

"Conception does not occur every time," his father replied. "The female must have produced an egg cell deep within her body and the sperm must reach and join with it. Even then, most of the time, a baby does not result."

"I don't understand..."

"Again, it is quite complicated, cha'i. It would take longer to explain than we have today." Spock looked out onto the plains and then to the sky, where the day's cumulus were building and thickening. "We need to resume our hunt."

"Papa? Can I ask you one more question?"

"Yes."

Sapel swallowed hard. "Mama is your mate, isn't she?"

"Yes."

The boy turned anguished eyes on his father. "Papa, who's gonna be my mate?!" he burst out. "There aren't any females of our kind except Mama and Jenn! Is Jenny my mate?"

It was the question Spock had been dreading and he knew of no way to soften his reply. "I don't know, Sapel," he answered with a tight throat. "I do not have any answers to that. In the vast majority of cultures in this galaxy, a man is absolutely forbidden to engage in a sexual relationship with a close blood relative -- his sister or daughter or mother, for example. It is called incest and has been forbidden since recorded history began on my world and your mother's. However, there have been instances of brother-sister marriage, but they are very rare and generally considered an abomination." He sighed heavily. "I cannot foresee our future, Sapel. Just know that until there is absolutely no other choice -- none whatsoever -- your sister is forbidden to you. She is taboo. Untouchable. Do not even entertain the vaguest thought of her as a possible mate. Is that clear?"

Sapel's face was burning and he looked at the ground, ashamed. "I wouldn't, Papa. I don't! I just didn't know."

"I understand, cha'i." Spock laid a hand on his son's shoulder and squeezed. "Come. We need to hunt and get home before it rains. You may have first shot honors today."

Sapel brightened a little and got to his feet, gathering his bow and quiver and slinging his back pouch over his shoulders. His tall father beside him, the young hunter set off at a jog toward the distant herds.

* * *

Summer heat had become the dominant factor in the family's life. It was early July now, as they reckoned the seasons, and, although the clouds still built daily into towering cumulus, rain rarely fell anymore. Brief, late afternoon downbursts might darken the plains for a short time, but it was generally short-lived and very localized. The lush grasses of the rolling plains were still green, but hints of yellow were beginning to appear as the ground dried and spring's rains were forgotten.

Christine paused in her work beneath the big trees that sheltered her tanning frames and wiped the sweat from her face. Even in the shade, the heat was oppressive. It added to the general discomfort she felt constantly, for her nausea had not gone away as she entered the fourth month of her pregnancy. Instead, it had subsided to a dull companion that sapped her strength and diminished her ability to do the work that was essential to their survival. She was forced to move carefully and with deliberation, lest the nausea rear up and send her stomach lurching into a spasm of illness.

Thankfully, today, her body was relatively subdued, a fact that allowed her to sit cross-legged before the hide stretched across the frame and methodically run the knob end of an elk femur over its surface, gently breaking down the sinews and turning the pelt into soft, pliable leather. It had come from a delicately marked antelope, its red coat overlain with muted gold stripes. Christine had in mind a tunic for herself, a little reward for getting through the hardships of the previous year. At the moment she was dressed in her usual summer attire of halter and breechclout, but this fall the beautiful hide would be perfect.

Spock and Sapel had been away the entire day, hunting. While game was still plentiful, the herds had begun to drift to the south where the big river promised more certain water than the creeks and ponds that had begun to dry as the summer progressed. Even the creek that flowed through their valley was low, although they'd never known it to run dry, being spring-fed above the little waterfall. Still, Christine could tell that the water level in the pond had fallen by several inches.

Beside her, T'Jenn murmured and turned over in her asleep, napping on a ground blanket, clad only in a little loin cloth. At three years old, the child was growing up so fast, Christine reflected, that she could scarcely remember the baby she had been. It brought a pang to her heart. Sapel was approaching adolescence and would soon be a man in his own right. How had the years flown so fast?

Closing her eyes, Christine savored the quiet of the summer afternoon. In the trees all around the homesite, inch long insects that resembled cicadas were rhythmically buzzing out their mating calls. It reminded her of home on Earth when she was a child, chasing fireflies and watching tadpoles in the stream behind her grandparents' barn. Looking down at Jenny, she wondered what memories her own children would take with them when they were grown ... what memories this new baby would keep in his or her old age.

Reflectively, Christine rubbed her hand over her abdomen, only showing the faintest roundness at this stage, and her thoughts turned to darker avenues. This pregnancy drained her more than her previous ones had done. She hadn't been able to decide if it was because of her age -- she calculated she was now 44 or 45 -- or if there was truly something wrong tthat had not yet manifested itself. As a nurse, Christine was well aware of how many things could go awry in a pregnancy and she could not forget that she and Spock had both come down with a virulent fever immediately after this baby's conception. Had it harmed the child? her mind demanded of her. What if the fetus within her was abnormal, deformed by some awful consequence of the fever, developing life threatening birth defects? How could she survive the heartbreak if it were?

The thought had plagued her for weeks. Sometimes at night, as she lay awake too tense to sleep, medical textbooks babbled endlessly through her head, ticking off complication after complication, each one in graphic, clinical detail, more horrible than the last, until she could barely keep from digging her fingers into her brain and screaming for surcease. Spock seemed to sense her anxiety and often turned in his sleep, gathering her to him, radiating comfort and reassurance. It helped her get through the night and that's all she could ask, she supposed. He didn't seem to share her disquiet, however, and she could not help but wonder at his complacency.

Her thoughts were interrupted as she heard Spock and Sapel come splashing across the creek, returning from their hunt. Each had the gutted body of a mesohippus foal slung across their shoulders and were tired, dirty and streaked with blood.

Dumping the carcasses near the butchering area, the man and boy stretched the kinks out of their backs and came to where Christine was struggling to her feet. Spock reached a hand to help her and asked, "Trouble getting up already?"

"No," his wife answered. "I've just been sitting cross-legged too long. I'm stiff!" She lifted her face up to exchange a light kiss then commented, "I see hunting was good."

"Yes, but we had to go over five miles to find the herd," Spock replied, wiping his hand over his grimy face. "They are usually in this area most of the summer." He swallowed and worked his tongue for a second. "Is there any water drawn? We are rather parched."

"Of course." She surveyed her exhausted, bedraggled men and said, "You two go up to the cave and get out of those filthy clothes and then go take a swim. Jenny and I will bring some lunch down to the pond and join you."

She glanced down at her little daughter who had awoken and was sitting up, looking cranky at having had her nap interrupted. Spock quirked up an eyebrow and replied, "T'Jenn looks as if she would rather sleep."

"Oh, she's been asleep for two hours already. It's time she got up. Go on now."

Obediently, the two foot-sore hunters headed for the cave and Christine finished what she was doing. Jenny took a moment to grump her way out of the dregs of sleep, whimpering a bit, but not really working up to a real crying bout before her mother headed her off.

"Want to get some lunch, sweetie?" Christine asked. "Then you and Bubba can go for a swim after a while. How about that?"

Jenn brightened a bit. "Wanna go swimmin'," she agreed.

"All right. After you eat and then let it settle. Come on."

Mother and daughter followed the boys and soon the whole family was enjoying a picnic on the banks of the pond. The waterfall spilled its little stream over the lip of the rock rim and cascaded into the pool ten feet below, the sound soothing to the ear and the spray cooling to the skin. It was too inviting to ignore for long.

"Mama, can't we swim yet?" Sapel pleaded.

Christine pondered and finally said, "I guess you've waited long enough."

"Yippee!" The boy leaped to his feet and hit the water without further ado.

Jenny made to follow her brother, but Christine reached out and snagged her arm. "Hang on, missy." She stripped her little daughter's loin cloth off so the child could splash unfettered then turned her loose. Jenny squealed and rushed into the water too, as comfortable as a fish.

"Watch your sister!" Christine called to Sapel.

Spock stretched out and closed his eyes, clad only in his leather breechclout. Summer sun had bronzed his lean, solid body with a burnished patina and Christine took a moment to savor how beautiful he was. His muscles were sculpted with hard work, marked here and there with the lighter scars of old injuries, his chest and tight stomach rising and falling as he breathed easily in and out. Spread out on the ground about him, his long black hair formed a leonine mane and his chiseled face sported a slight beard and moustache, just enough to bring out his rugged features. He was so utterly masculine, she found it difficult to breathe.

Sensing her gaze on him, Spock opened his dark eyes and turned to peer at her quizzically. She smiled and lay down beside him. "Are you feeling better?" he asked.

"For the moment," she replied, returning to the here and now. "It comes and goes." Christine was silent then confided, "I'm worried, Spock. I've never been this sick before."

"It may just be your morning sickness hanging on," he answered.

"Maybe..."

"But you don't think so, do you?"

She bit her bottom lip and frowned. "Something doesn't feel right. I don't know what it is. I'm not experiencing any pain or bleeding, but this just doesn't ... feel like it's supposed to. The only other time I've ever felt like this was with T'Larin."

Simultaneously their thoughts flashed back to the child they had lost at birth, snatched from her mother's arms by one of the ravenous creatures they called werewolves. The nightmare had never completely left either one of them and both knew that it had only been for Sapel's sake that either had found the strength to go on. That had been six years ago and the memory was as fresh as if it had happened the day before.

Spock reached to take his wife's hand. "Do you mean ... after...?" he ventured.

"No, no ... not that," she assured him. "During my pregnancy with her. It didn't feel quite right either. Not as bad as this, but sort of the same." She shook her head. "I'm not making any sense."

"Not entirely, no. Beloved, when I touch you, particularly at night when we are closest, I know that you are troubled but I do not sense anything physically amiss. Your body seems perfectly attuned to this pregnancy. If you like, I can do a deep mind meld and search for any problems, but I believe I will find nothing save a normal pregnancy."

Christine thought about it and decided there was no point in it. "No. If there is something wrong, what could we do about it? I don't want to spend the next several months driving myself nuts by agonizing over something I can't do anything about. I'm just going to do what my Granny always said. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst. I mean, I don't have a choice, do I?"

Spock stroked her cheek. "There is probably nothing to worry about, t'hy'la. You are simply experiencing the symptoms of pregnancy and the heat is exacerbating it. Come, let's swim and cool off. You will feel better once you do."

She let him pull her to her feet and tried to muster a smile for him, though her stomach tensed for a moment as she did so. For a second, she closed her eyes and concentrated on stilling the queasiness, then resolutely she waded into the water, hand in hand with her husband.

* * *

Thunder rumbled across the sere plains, the cool downdraft off the storm rippling the grasses into waves like a yellow sea. Spock faced into the wind and breathed in the rain-tinged breeze. Alone on the prairie, save for Scruffy and her trio of male cubs, the tall Vulcan watched the isolated thunderstorm gather strength, its base darkening to a deep bruised color. It was south of their valley, too far to generate any rain for them, but the breeze was refreshing after the hot, humid afternoon.

Spock had gone that morning to check traps laid along the river, a good eight mile hike that he accomplished in a long, ground-eating stride he favored when not hampered by the others. Sapel was back in camp, lamed by stepping on an inch-long thorn earlier in the week. He was still recuperating from having it cut out by his mother's practiced surgical skills. It wasn't a major procedure, but had the boy hobbling around with a bandaged foot and grumbling because he wasn't allowed to go swimming until the wound healed properly. Christine was not risking an infection from the pond water.

When Spock had started out that morning, Scruffy had apparently sensed where he was going, for she meowed to her cubs and the quartet bounded after him. Earlier that summer, she had disappeared for two weeks then turned back up with three tiny, fuzzy kittens in her pouch. All were males, visually identical but distinct in their personalities. As they grew, one became dominant, another subservient, and the third slightly daft, always getting into things. Christine named them Moe, Larry and Curly after a classic comedy team of the 20th century, whose ancient slapstick still brought laughter.

The cats had enjoyed the day, hunting bank burrowers along the river, feasting on the offal Spock tossed to them when he cleaned his catches, and the kittens chasing bugs and each other before succumbing to a nap in the shade when Spock rested and took his mid-day meal.

Now the day was wearing on and he was on his way home, his carryall stuffed with three hares and a couple of plump range hens. The thunder had caught him unawares and he turned to view the storm.

Lightning struck from the base several miles away and the rumble reached him a few seconds later. Twice more the brilliant display cracked, but Spock noted with his innate time sense that the thunder was taking a second or two longer each time to reach him. The storm was moving away from him. Unconcerned, he resumed his trudge homeward.

Coming up onto the high bluff above the cave, he cast his gaze back toward the south. The storm was dissipating in the light of the setting sun, a partial rainbow stretched across the dark blue sky, the high clouds painted mauve and purple.

Spock paused to appreciate the sight then noticed something else. Away to the south, there was smoke rising from the prairie, beginning to billow grayly into the evening sky. Lightning must have ignited grass fires, he realized. The fact did not bother him too much. The fire was at least ten miles away and on the far side of the river. It wouldn't reach them here.

The light fading as the sun sank behind the distant western mountains, Spock turned his back on the spectacle and made his way down the slope to the valley, where Christine had the supper fire going.

* * *

"Nothing," Spock sighed as he lay down on the blanket beside his wife. He and Sapel had come in well after dark from their latest hunting trip, begrimed with dust and ash, caked with sweat and exhausted beyond the ability to talk. A quick wash, a meal and as much water as they needed had gotten them to this point and Sapel was already snoring near the outdoor hearth near where T'Jenn was bedded down. The early September weather was still sweltering, far too hot to sleep inside the cave or sod house. For weeks they had made their beds outdoors to take advantage of the slight cooling breezes brought by the night temperatures.

Now, as Spock settled beside Christine, he spoke wearily, in hushed tones. "We found nothing at all," he sighed.

"Not even small game?" Christine could just make out his face in the dim light of the hearth, still glowing red. "No hares or diggers or grouse?"

"Not a thing." Spock ran his hand over his face and drew in a deep breath. "They've all moved south. Between the drought and the grass fires last month, all the herds have left the area. Sapel and I went nearly twenty miles. All we found was burned prairie and shriveled trees. We don't have a choice, Christine. We've got to migrate south as well."

"But..." Christine clamped her teeth against whatever she'd been about to say, but he knew her thoughts anyway. Turning in the dark, he laid his large hand on her bulging abdomen and found her hand already resting there. She was nearly seven months pregnant now and had not had an easy time of it. This pregnancy had made her ill as her previous ones had not. The pervasive queasiness had refused to let up and, as a result, she was gaunt and hollow-cheeked, dark circles underneath her eyes testifying to sleepless nights and uncomfortable days. And the summer had been brutally hot, sapping her strength even more. While Spock did not mind the heat - in fact welcomed it - he knew that his wife and children suffered as day followed scorching day. He sympathized with her discomfort because he felt it through their bond link whenever they touched, but now he had no choice.

"I know you are ill," he said gently, "and I know it is still early in the year, but what else can we do? If we wait much longer, you will be unable to travel at all and I fear that our food will run out long before that. We will go at an easy pace, but go we must, t'hy'la. It is migrate or starve."

"I know," she whispered back unhappily. Beneath their hands, the baby kicked vigorously as if wanting to join in the conversation and Spock moved his fingers to rest over the bumping flesh of her belly.

Concentrating, his mind touched the nebulous, unformed mind beneath his hand. Something about it felt very familiar and he bent his focus deeper for a moment. Withdrawing from the light meld, he again caressed Christine's swollen stomach. "The baby will not suffer," he told her. "She is strong and growing well."

"You believe it is a girl then?" Christine asked him.

"Very much so," he answered. "I cannot define it, but the ... feel of the infant's mind is female and I sense that her development is normal and healthy."

"Then why do I still feel so bad? This pregnancy has never felt quite right to me."

"I believe because this child is following the development of a Vulcan infant instead of a human," Spock answered. "Your body is fighting it, but all seems normal to me. There is no cause to worry."

"No, no cause at all," Christine answered in an ironic tone. "Just walking two hundred and fifty miles in the hottest, driest part of the year, hoping we find enough food and water along the way, and me expecting to give birth in about two months!" She smiled despite herself. "Spock, you are an optimist."

"I have been addressed by many titles and epithets in my life, but never that one," he smiled back.

"Enjoy it while you can," she retorted. "I have a feeling that in about a month's time, I'm going to be calling you names a lot stronger than that one!"

* * *

Autumn caught up with them midway through their journey, something over a hundred miles and a month south of the burned plains around the valley. Over-arched by a cloudless sky of spectacular blue, they had reached the first foothills of the rolling country that stood between the high prairie and the coastal plains that flowed down to the sea. It was an area wooded and lush, clad in a mixed forest of conifers and deciduous trees. The approaching autumn weather was beginning to tinge the woods in shades of gold, rust and orange, peeking from the dominant stands of tall pines.

The trek across the plains had been arduous for Christine, who could not travel far before her strength began to wane. Spock was sympathetic and had rigged a small travois to haul her pack. Christine carried only what she could easily manage, while Spock and Sapel took turns with the travois. They took turns carrying T'Jenn, too, when the little girl became too tired to talk, or they pulled her on the travois if they themselves were too tired to hike with her extra weight on their shoulders.

The family had crossed the river at the ford, now nearly dry, to the west bank, knowing that soon the waterway would grow too wide to allow easy or safe passage. They followed its path south but approached the river itself only to replenish their water bags. There were predators lurking in the river, ten foot reptiles, that were lightning fast, and lions that often lay in wait at the water holes. Every venture to water was fraught with danger and the carefully hoarded phasers they'd taken from the Cardassian slavers years before came into use more than once. Unfortunately, the power packs were all but dead and would generate nothing more than a short, stinging burst. It was enough to discourage attackers, but Spock knew the weapons were all but useless now.

Christine had walked dutifully as far as she could every day, all the while fighting nausea and dizziness and a slowly building but constant pain that enveloped her burgeoning abdomen. The weather had been hot and dry the entire way until the heat broke with a wild and storm-torn night as a cold front plowed past their small camp, pushing the wilting heat away and leaving in its wake refreshing coolness and crystalline skies.

On this morning, the woman rose from her bedding and stretched luxuriantly. For once, the nausea didn't come and her aches and pains seemed to have vanished with the storm front. Spock was already up, searching out firewood, and he came back with an armload of small branches and brush.

"Good morning," he said and leaned to kiss his wife lightly. "You look as if you slept well."

"I did!" Christine spun slowly around, breathing in the freshness. "I feel marvelous! I feel like I could go twenty miles today!"

Her husband lifted one eyebrow appraisingly. "I would not become over-enthusiastic, t'hy'la. I doubt this burst of energy will last."

"Probably not, but I feel great right now!" She laughed from the pure joy of it.

The stirring around the camp woke the children, although Sapel pulled his bedding over his head and pointedly turned his back on his parents, unwilling yet to get up. Jenny, though, sat up and blinked crankily. "Mama?" she whined. "I needa go pee-pee."

"Okay, sleepy head," Christine smiled, reaching for her little daughter's hand. "Come on. Mama needs to go, too." She got her child on her feet and the two of them disappeared into the woods just outside of camp.

By this time, Spock had replenished their campfire and he gave his son a poke with his foot. "It is well past dawn, Sapel. Get up."

The lump in the furs stirred. "Ah, Pa, Jenn kept me awake all night. I couldn't sleep a wink."

"Indeed. You have perfected snoring while wide awake then," Spock responded. "Get up! As soon as we have breakfast, we will be breaking camp and getting on our way. It is a beautiful morning. Good traveling weather."

Grumbling, the boy flung back the bed furs and rose with exaggerated yawns. Stretching and scratching, he wandered out of camp to relieve himself among the trees. His father shook his head and skewered some leftover rabbit from the night before, hanging it near the fire to warm. As he was getting their breakfast ready, Christine and T'Jenn came back to the fire and Christine poured water from the water bag over their hands to cleanse them. Spock noticed that his wife was quieter than when she had left, but decided that her short-lived euphoria had been damped by the ever-present nausea she'd had during this entire pregnancy.

Sapel returned, washed his hands, and the family settled down to breakfast. It didn't take long and, within the hour, they had broken camp, snuffed out their fire, and set out into the hills on their southward journey.

Christine walked behind Spock with Jenny at her side while Sapel brought up the rear, dragging the travois. There was not a lot of undergrowth beneath the trees and, despite their path leading them steadily uphill, the march was not hard. Still Christine concentrated on keeping pace and not forcing them to go more slowly than they already did. But she wondered how far they would get today, after all. Once back on the move, her body began to manifest the growing pains that had become usual. As her belly expanded into the eighth month of gestation, tendons stretched and muscles complained at the increasing weight of the baby in her womb. Her back ached terribly sometimes and her breath was short as the infant crowded up against her lungs.

All of that she could take in stride, knowing it was normal and expected at this stage in her pregnancy. What worried her though ... and what she had not mentioned to Spock ... was the fact that this morning, as she'd wiped herself with a handful of leaves after relieving herself, she'd found blood on the makeshift toilet tissue. Not a lot, just a hint of it, hardly noticeable. But it shouldn't have been there and, as she walked along, her brain was beginning to tick over every complication of pregnancy she could think of ... and not liking the results she was getting. Not liking them at all...

* * *

Christine felt the next one coming and knew it was going to be a bad one. She was right. It was.

Her abdomen constricted as if a steel belt was around her belly and being pulled tighter than she thought possible. Unable to walk, barely able to stand, she flung her arms around a tree and hung on until it passed. Faint from the pain, it took her a moment to realize that something warm and wet was sliding down her inner thighs. Looking down, she was unsurprised to find a mixture of blood and thin greenish liquid dripping onto the ground between her feet.

A combination of fear and despair filled her and she cried out, "Spock!"

He was some way ahead, dragging the travois with T'Jenn asleep on it, Sapel walking along behind. Neither had noticed that Christine was slowly falling behind.

Now Spock whipped around in alarm and immediately slipped out of the travois harness, lowered the poles to the ground, and was at his wife's side within a minute.

"The baby--" he stated.

She nodded. "It's coming, Spock. You better set up camp right now!" Another contraction gripped her and she couldn't help moaning.

He had her in his arms and was lowering her to the grass even as her legs were buckling. "Sapel! Bring me the ground sheet!" he shouted over his shoulder and went down onto his knees with Christine in his embrace. "How long have you been in labor?"

"Since about mid-morning," she answered.

"And you didn't say anything?!" Spock was caught between anger and horror.

"The pains weren't bad and I wanted us to get as far as we -- oohh!" Her face screwed up with pain.

Sapel came running with the elk-hide blanket, stripped and tanned into smooth, soft leather.

"Spread it out on that level ground beneath that tree," Spock directed then helped Christine over to lie on the covering. The boy stood by, shock covering his face. Spock looked up at him and sent a thought of reassurance his way. "Go bring the travois over here so we can keep an eye on T'Jenn, then I need for you to find a clear stream," Spock directed him quickly. "We need fresh water. Then get firewood and make a fire. Hurry!"

Sapel sprang away to do as he was told and Spock turned back to his laboring wife. "How far apart are the pains?" he asked.

"I don't know," she panted. "They suddenly got a lot ... oohh ... closer and ... ahhh! ... harder."

"Has the sac ruptured?"

"Yes, just a few minutes ago." Christine panted again as yet another hard contraction hit her and Spock gripped her hand until it eased up. Sapel had pulled the travois close, then gone in search of water. The commotion had awoken T'Jenn, but the child seemed to know instinctively that she must not fuss now, for she sat silently, her blue eyes huge in her smudged face.

On her side, Christine rested between the increasingly frequent contractions, the pains getting sharper and longer. "Go ahead and set up camp," she urged her husband, but he shook his head and diligently moved his hands over her abdomen.

"I do not think there will be time," he said and an especially hard constriction clamped down on his wife's belly. It was accompanied by a fresh gout of blood from between her legs.

Christine cried out and clutched at her abdomen. "Oh, God, it's coming too fast! I feel like I need to push!"

"Try to resist the urge," Spock told her.

"I can't help it!" She rolled onto her back, grimacing. "Get this loin cloth off me! Quick! Oh, God, it's coming!!"

Rapidly Spock stripped her from the waist down, tossing aside the bloody, fluid-soaked length of leather. Immediately, Christine clasped her knees and pulled her legs back and apart, then curled her chin onto her chest and strained with all her might.

A tiny, dark-haired crown bulged from her vagina -- too tiny to be full term -- and Christine paused to gulp in a swift breath and bore down again. Spock hesitated. His hands were dirty, his instincts shouting that he must not touch the baby, but he was out of time -- the baby's head burst into the air and diminutive shoulders followed immediately. Without further thought, Spock reached to deliver his squirming, newborn daughter.

The baby came free with a gush of blood and amniotic fluid, her little body perfect but too petite. She must only weigh about five pounds, he decided as he turned her face down and thumped her back, getting her lungs to drain and fill with air.

The baby choked, sputtered, then screamed lustily. As she sucked air into her lungs, her skin, covered with blue-white mucous, began to show color as her blood oxygenated for the first time. Spock barely registered that the infant was turning a delicate green instead of pink, and then he caught sight of her miniature pointed ears and sharply slanted brows. He'd been right -- his new daughter was Vulcan!

But he had no time to wonder at the fairy-like being. Christine was delivering the placenta, the cord still attached to the baby. Quickly, he placed the child on his wife's stomach and bent to receive the bloody mass of flesh squeezing from her body. Blood continued to dribble from her, more than he thought was normal, and he searched for something to pack her vagina with.

There was nothing, at least nothing that was clean. Anything she'd prepared for the birth was packed deeply away and not to hand. They hadn't expected this. She wasn't due for another month and they'd planned on her giving birth at Sea Home.

As he frantically searched his mind for a solution, Christine clutched her baby to her chest and closed her eyes. Her teeth were beginning to chatter with shock and the child had stopped crying, lying cold and limp against her mother's belly.

Sensing disaster in the air, T'Jenn began to whimper with distress, then to wail openly, not understanding what was wrong but picking up her father's fear. Spock ignored her. He didn't know what to do to stop the bleeding or halt the rapid decline of his wife and child.

And where was Sapel? He should have been back by now!

As if conjured by the very thought, there was a crunch of leaves behind him and Sapel's voice said eagerly, "Papa! Papa, look who I found!"

END OF PART TEN