“I guess we’re supposed to make like inch worms and mosey on over there and eat with our faces,” Monica muttered. “Not that I’m hungry enough to eat that … whatever it is. I’m dying of thirst, though.”

“Let’s don’t talk about that. My eyeballs are floating.”

“You just had to bring that up!” Monica snapped irritably.

“I didn’t bring it up! You did!”

Monica fumed for a little while. Fortunately, a guard came as the sun began to rise above the horizon. Opening the door to their cage, she gestured at them to come out.

Monica and Noelle both stared at her uneasily and pretended they had no idea the woman wanted them to leave the cage. After glaring at them for a moment, she lifted her head, turned, and yelled at someone they couldn’t see.

Chapter Three

“That sounded like ‘come help me’ to me,” Monica murmured.

“Yeah. So they have been pretending they don’t understand us. I mean, assuming we’re right and that’s what she meant.”

Apparently that was exactly what she’d yelled because in a few minutes another warrior arrived and the two ducked through the door of the prison/cage. Each of them was grabbed unceremoniously by an alien, hauled up and out of their cage. The binding at their ankles was removed and then they were marched through the village and out the other side.

Noelle, convinced they were on the way to a sacrificial ceremony, began to fight for her freedom the minute that thought occurred to her, fought for all she was worth—which was not much since she was still tied. The warrior woman merely hauled her up and flung her over one shoulder, gripping her thighs hard enough she couldn’t kick and ignoring the blows she rained down on the woman’s back with her bound fists.

She reared up, trying to see where they were going, trying to convince herself they would’ve headed to an altar or maybe the main lodge near the center of the village if they actually were plotting a sacrificial ceremony. She was still struggling to break free when the woman abruptly stopped, dragged her from her shoulder and then half shoved, half pitched her backwards.

Flailing wildly to recover her balance, Noelle caught nothing but a flash of rocks. She screamed at the top of her lungs as she felt herself flying backwards and descending—her first thought that she’d been thrown from a cliff—a scream that ended in a gurgle when she hit water and sank below the surface like a stone. As tired as she was from fighting the warrior, the fear of drowning galvanized her. She began beating at the water around her and trying to push herself upwards with her feet.

That was when she discovered the water she’d been tossed into was only a few feet deep.

Monica was bobbing up and down a few feet away, screaming her head off when Noelle stood up.

“Stand up!” Noelle yelled at her. “Can’t you reach the bottom?”

The question seemed to penetrate Monica’s terror. She stood up shakily. “I was in a hole,” she lied.

The two alien women, they discovered, were laughing at them.

It was the first time in her life that Noelle had actually experienced the urge to kill. She thought, though, that if she’d had a weapon to hand she would have slain both of their tormentors in that moment.

She exchanged a long, speaking look with Monica. “It’s a damn good thing I don’t know their language,” Noelle muttered. “I might be tempted to say something I shouldn’t.”

“Bathe!” the alien that had carried her to the river snapped. “You stink!”

“And you smell like a goat,” Noelle responded in the alien tongue, although, naturally enough the aliens didn’t know what a goat was. “See, Monica! They aren’t nearly as stupid as you said they were.”

Monica gaped at her. “Are you trying to get me killed! That bitch is twice my size!”

“But I have a rock by my foot. When she charges in here to throttle you, I’ll bash her head in.”

Monica’s eyes widened momentarily with a mixture of horror and outrage. After a moment, though, she turned to look at their guards assessingly. “Let’s not try that.”

“But there’s only the two of them and we’re away from the village. We might not get another chance!”

“You think this is a chance? We’re tied up! They’ll just wade in and drown us!”

Noelle frowned. “You think they can swim?”

“I don’t think we can when our hands are tied!”

Noelle released an irritated huff of breath. “Fine! Bathe then. I guess we’ll have to think of something else.”

“Shut up and bathe!” the bitchier guard snapped.

“I hope this is your drinking water I just pissed in,” Noelle said, smiling at the alien woman.

Monica gaped at her. “Tell me you didn’t! I’m downstream, damn it!”

“Sorry. I had to go. Bad! There was no holding it when she threw me in.”

Monica stared at her a long moment and then snickered. “I wet myself, too.” She thought it over. “Oh my god! I swallowed a pint of fucking water! I’m going to choke you, Noelle!”

“Choke the bitch. It was her fault. Better yet, I told you I’d found a rock. I’ll give it to you and you can bash her head in.”

The silent guard waded in and Noelle and Monica immediately retreated, or tried. It didn’t take the damn giant long to corner them against the rock wall that lined the opposite side of the channel of water. Fortunately, her intention didn’t seem to be anything violent in nature. Although she did produce the wickedest looking knife Noelle had ever seen, she merely used it to cut their wrist bindings.

Relieved when she waded out again, Noelle and Monica made a stab at washing. It wasn’t as if they could actually get clean! They had no soap and no wash cloths and they were standing in a natural body of water! True the water didn’t look nasty, but it was out in the open! There was no telling how many things had pissed in it!

Or died in it.

Or what was living in it, for that matter.

Finally, the alien women seemed satisfied they’d bathed long enough and summoned them out of the water. That was when Noelle discovered the ‘silent’ guard had brought a change of clothing for them.

Not that she didn’t appreciate the change of clothes! Hers were wet and didn’t smell that great even after the dunking. But she couldn’t imagine the clothing they were being ‘offered’ was terribly clean, either—probably riddled with alien germs!

It was clear that they could voluntarily change, though, or the guards would ‘help’. Resentfully, Noelle shed her waterlogged clothing, took the shift that seemed to be made from animal skin and pulled it on. Not surprisingly, it dragged the ground.

And that wasn’t even the worst of it! The shift was a simple T design with a seam across the tops of the sleeves and a gap left between for the head. The neckline, very modest on the native women, was too wide for Noelle’s shoulders and kept slipping off first one shoulder and then the other, nearly exposing her boobs.

She surprised a look on the ‘silent’ guard’s face that unnerved her when she looked up from trying to adjust the garment.

She wasn’t actually used to seeing such a blatantly lustful look on a man’s face when they examined her. Sexual harassment wasn’t tolerated among the colonists and however much any of the men might admire any of the women, they were never so blatant in their sexual interest. She certainly wasn’t used to another woman looking at her like that!

She was unequivocally heterosexual for one thing and wouldn’t have noticed if one had, but, more importantly, the colonists chosen for the trip were expected to populate the new colony with new humans and no one who preferred partners of the same sex had been included for the simple reason that they couldn’t offer that particular, all important, service to the colony settlement.

Feeling her face heat with discomfort, she glanced at Monica to see if she’d noticed, wondering if it had been imagination of her part, and discovered Monica was studying the alien female through narrowed, assessing eyes. After a moment, Monica met her gaze.