It was a slight exaggeration. The aliens had clearly advanced a good ways from ‘cave’ people. True, the village they had been brought to bore strong evidence that the people lived at least a semi-nomadic lifestyle—either that or they were in the process of building new huts because there were a number of bare ‘skeletal’ frames sprinkled about the village—including the one she and Noelle currently occupied. But there was also a large, cultivated field just on the edge of the village, signs of advanced growing techniques like irrigation, and fairly sophisticated tools for cultivation among other things.

They didn’t just cook on spits over open flame. They had mud ovens and, in fact, the huts they lived in, from what she and Noelle could see, were evidence of advanced knowledge of engineering. These were carefully crafted structures that would be excellent protection against the elements.

There was also evidence of higher level craftsmanship in weapons and household implements and textiles.

Noelle felt her face heat. “Ok, so it’s farfetched, but I still think it’s a bad idea to talk about nobody coming to rescue us. In the first place, there’s the morale issue.”

“There’s nobody here but me and you and I’m pretty fucking demoralized already!”

Noelle glared at Monica. “Does using the f word every five seconds make you feel better?” she demanded testily.

Monica thought it over for all of five seconds. “Actually, yes, it does! I’m using it to expel my frustrations so I can restrain myself and not choke you for moralizing over one fucking word when we are in such deep shit it doesn’t even bear thinking on!”

Dismay flickered through Noelle. She’d been working hard to convince herself that this wasn’t nearly as bad a situation as it seemed on the surface. True, they were being held against their will, and these alien females appeared, on the surface, to live a rather primitive life. But they couldn’t possibly be as savage as they’d seemed when they’d attacked the colony and captured them. They didn’t look or behave like animals in their everyday life. In fact, except for the clothing and the huts, they seemed perfectly civilized, going about many of the same chores the colonists did—except the scientific research, or course.

Which Noelle had considered the bright side to their situation—the chance to study the natives up close and in their natural environment. “How do you figure that?” she asked uneasily.

“Well my god, Noelle!” Monica snapped. “They’re aliens and they’re primitive as hell besides!”

Noelle had been trying hard not to remember her history where it pertained to primitives on Earth. “You think they might … they might have evil intentions toward us?”

“I don’t know enough about these people and their customs to even begin to guess, but I’m thinking they might not be friendly,” Monica responded tartly. “They could have anything in mind for us and I don’t fucking want to wait around and find out if their customs are anything like the customs I read about that primitives on Earth practiced!”

“Like … what sort of customs?” Noelle asked uneasily.

“Sacrifices.”

Noelle felt her bowls turn to water. She thought for several moments she would pass out—or lose her grip on her sphincter. “I think, maybe, if you wiggle around with your back to me that I might be able to untie your hands and then you can untie mine.”

She’d almost managed to loosen the bindings around Monica’s wrists when the damned guard came back to check them. After checking the binding Noelle had been working at, she tightened it again and left.

“Bitch!” Monica snarled.

Not that Noelle didn’t agree wholeheartedly. Her fingers were bleeding from all the effort she’d wasted trying to untie Monica. But she also didn’t think it was a good idea to antagonize the giant, evil, primitive women. “Will you keep it down!” she hissed.

“You still think they’ve figured out English?”

“I think that didn’t need a fucking translation.”

Monica snickered. “You said fucking.”

“I’m going to choke the life out of you if I manage to get these damned things loose!”

Monica sniffed and then burst into tears.

Noelle felt really low. Shuffling around to face her friend, she moved a little closer. “I’m sorry. Don’t cry. We’ll figure this out, ok?”

“We’ve already spent three horrible nights here, Noelle. I have a bad feeling about these primitives. I really do.”

“Well, let’s don’t talk about it, ok?”

“Like that’ll help.”

“Scaring the shit out of me isn’t going to help either, damn it!” Noelle snapped.

After a brief struggle, Monica managed to get a grip on her emotions. “I don’t think they’re going to even try to rescue us,” she whined after a moment. “They could’ve come after us right away—should have! My god! It isn’t as if we don’t have superior weapons!”

Noelle sighed. “Yeah. I thought about that, but we’re building here. I guess they’re trying to decide what to do about the natives.”

“Well, I think they’ve made it pretty fuc … f’ing clear already that they aren’t interested in a peace treaty!” Monica snapped, recovering enough from her tears to get angry all over again.

That seemed inarguable. Noelle didn’t like to think that they were on their own, but she realized that they were going to have to proceed as if they were. They couldn’t just wait to see if the other colonists mounted a rescue mission or even tried, again, to negotiate a peace treaty and get them back. It wasn’t at all beyond the realms of possibility, unfortunately, that the women that had captured them intended to sacrifice them to their gods.

She had been heartened that they hadn’t been killed outright or executed immediately after they’d reached the village, but she was afraid, now, to allow herself to think they could count on that as proof that the aliens didn’t have something horrible in mind. Clearly the aliens had had something in mind when they’d captured them instead of killing them outright or they wouldn’t have captured them at all. They would’ve let them scamper inside the colony walls like the others.

And she didn’t especially want to hang around long enough to find out what the plan was.

“I guess it’s probably not likely that we could convince them, now, that we’re resigned to our fate and lull them into a false sense of security.”

“After the attempt to escape? And catching you trying to untie me? Probably not. I’d like to think they’re stupid, but ignorance and stupidity aren’t the same thing.”

“Ok, so …. We’ve lost the element of surprise. We’ll just have to think of something else.”

She couldn’t think of anything else, though, and finally decided to try to sleep on it.

She shifted restlessly for a while and finally managed to find a relatively comfortable position where her face wasn’t burrowed into the stinky fur they’d been given as a bed by wiggling to the edge. The dirt actually wasn’t nearly as offense as the smell of the hide. And once she’d gotten a little more comfortable, she dozed off, exhausted from her fears even more than she was physically drained from their attempt to fight their way to freedom.

The village woke before daylight. It was the sounds of activity that drew Noelle from her uneasy rest. She discovered that Monica had burrowed tightly against her and was still asleep. She stilled for a few moments, uncomfortable with the thought of rudely waking her friend, but she was more physically uncomfortable the longer she lay still and she finally nudged Monica with her elbow.

Monica lifted her head and stared at her blurry eyed. “We’re still here,” she muttered. “It wasn’t a nightmare.”

“Actually it is. Unfortunately, it’s also real.”

The old woman they’d jumped the night before came in with some more of the same nasty food she’d brought the night before, grinned at them, displaying more gum than rotting teeth and then left without untying them.