Worlds Apart. William L Frame

in a fiery rain. He believed the mysterious lights within the heavens to be the firepits of his ancestors, and they were falling down all around him. Normally, he enjoyed gazing at the countless lights shining brightly in the night sky, but tonight the view above his head frightened him like never before. Often when growing up, he’d listen to the elders tell their nighttime stories as the tribe gathered around the fire. When they viewed a falling fire in the night sky, the elders would welcome an ancestor’s rebirth to the land. A child born under such auspicious circumstances was generally believed to inherit an ancestor’s spirit with its first breath of life.

      Quickly relieved of his need, the young hunter settled himself, turned, and raced toward the entrance of his cave. Unexpectedly, a bright blinding light burst high in the distant night sky, stopping him in his tracks, as the burst turned the night into day for a fraction of a second and then back into the night, leaving him in total darkness. His night vision slowly returned as his eyes adjusted to the darkness once more, and he looked upward at multiple streaks of fire falling from the sky as one fire high above the land exploded, flaring brightly in the heavens, and then disappeared. Never had he seen fires in the sky fall to the land in mass. Then below the fiery burst, he spotted something different falling from the heavens in the opposite direction of the streaking fires and it appeared to be coming right at his valley, at him, as if to avenge a wrong.

      Its approach was swift and horrifying. In utter fear and panic, he dived for the safety of his cave hitting the ground just as the fiery ball violently impacted with the land. Creating in his ears what he could only imagine as the roaring of a thousand beasts calling out in unison. He lay terrified in the dim glow of the fires, paralyzed and in total fear of his life as it churned up the land outside the entrance of his cave. He felt the heat of its passing through the thickness of his clothes as it drove itself deeper into the land until its momentum stopped, and only an utter horrifying silence remained within the eerie darkness of night.

      Slowly the incessant chirping and clicking of the night’s insects inhabiting the tall grass began to fill the silence with familiar sounds, calming the stricken hunter’s nerves. Warily he rose to his feet choking and coughing on the smoke from inside the cave as well as from the outside. The bushes in front of the cave’s entrance were burning, so he ran quickly around them in search of fresh air to breathe. Able to get clear of the choking smoke, he stopped with his chest heaving in pain. He fell to his knees, bracing his torso with shaking hands, sucking in lungfuls of clean air as quickly as he could to clear his lungs of the foul smoke. As he was finally able to breathe without pain, his eyes were drawn to the fiery destruction outside his cave.

      Moving closer to stand on the crest of a trench made by the objects passing, he turned his head in the direction of the objects fall in time to witness what his mind could only accept. An ancestor had returned in a fiery stone intent on living another life on land. Fear gripped the young hunter as he watched the ancestor stumble from the stone and move slowly away before falling awkwardly to the ground as if wounded.

      However, frightening the night had become, compassion for an injured person compelled him into action. He ran toward the figure and knelt beside it but was taken aback by the ancestor’s strange garments. Aware of his presence, the ancestor mumbled some incoherent sounds, waved an arm toward the stone it had climbed out, and slipped into darkness. A clear shield covered the head and face, but moisture from its breathing fogged the inner surface. Cautiously, he slapped the side of the strange shield with his fingers, hoping to revive the ancestor. By doing so, he accidentally hit a button, which unlocked a shaped ring of shiny stone around the neck that split into two pieces, separating the head shield from its clothing. He gently slipped it over the prone figures head and set the shield aside, laying the ancestor’s head softly in the grass.

      Concerned by the ancestor’s erratic arm gesture, he stood and looked toward the trench. He walked over to the crest and began climbing down a wall of charred soil. Cautiously approaching the burning wreckage to peer inside the opening, he became aware for the first time that he held no weapon within his grasp. The charred surface covered the entire length of the oblong object, but upon reaching the opening, he realized the object was a made thing. Made by the ancestors of a strange substance that was as hard as the hardest stone. He peered inside and gasped in wonder at the interior of the eerie structure, filled with tiny multicolored lights flashing rapidly in the darkness, making his eyes blink. The brightest of all, a slow pulsing blue orb just bright enough in the gloom to illuminate another ancestor slumped over in an awkward position secured to a strange device. He didn’t notice the pebble-sized puncture wound in the shell or through the ancestor’s clothing concealing blood still seeping from the fatal wound. It was apparent the land had denied this ancestor another chance at life. Nothing could be done, so he left the body inside the strange shell and returned to the one, which survived its fiery flight down to the land.

      As he looked down upon the ancestor, he was surprised to see a young woman’s face. She had pale white skin with thin arched eyebrows, slightly slanted eyes, a slender nose, full lips, and a strong chin. Beneath a yellow tight-fitting hood covering her head, he saw a few fiery strands of red hair sticking out in disarray. “She’s beautiful,” he heard himself say as he stared at her in wonder before picking her up and carrying her to his cave.

      He laid her down on his sleeping furs behind the drying racks and began tending to her needs. His first assumption of her being wounded in the fall was correct; her leg was broken. However, her garments trapped her body inside, and he could see no obvious way to remove them. Gently he rolled her onto her side and saw just beneath the shaped ring, a seam running from the ring to the base of her spine with a small tab partially covered by the garment’s material. He gave a gentle tug on the tab and let go in shock as he watched the tab slide down the length of the seam separating the material without assistance. Beneath the ring, the material stretched, allowing the ring to be removed from around her neck by slipping it over her head. He rolled her over once more on her back and proceeded to remove the bulky garment as best he could without adding further injury. Not knowing if the garment was needed, he set it aside.

      With a clear view of her, he noticed the strange tight-fitting material covering her head also covered her entire body except for her feet and arms. Taking care not to cut her with his bone knife, he pried his fingers between the material and her skin just above the ankle and cut a slit up to her knee, exposing the broken bone jutting up under her skin.

      The hunter was relieved the broken bone had not punctured her skin. He carefully examined her wound with his fingers, letting his soft touch guide their way along the length of her broken bone until he knew where to align the break. He couldn’t help but notice her thighs and calves were slender, strong, and used to hard work. He then wondered if life was as hard in the heavens as it was on the land?

      The hunter shook his head to quell his questioning mind and concentrated on the girl’s wound. It would have been easier with another pair of hands to hold her down while he reset the bone, but no one was around to lend him any assistance. So in order to set her leg properly, he’d have to do it the hard way and hope for the best. He then stood to straddle her pelvis and sat down, pinning her to the ground with his weight. He then grabbed her ankle with both hands and slowly pushed his body forward keeping his arms extended, twisting and stretching her leg until he felt the bone snap back into place. He then eased his hold on her leg, letting her stretched-out muscles relax and hold the bone in place. The hunter then went over to the colt’s hide in the back of the cave and cut off a sizable portion of the fresh hide. He returned to her side, and keeping the fur next to her skin, he wrapped the broken leg with the moist hide, tying it with multiple strands of leather above and below the break. He knew with the aid of the fire’s heat, the wrap would become a hard, stiff splint by morning and would prevent the bone from moving, so it could heal over time. Exhausted by the day’s startling events and exertions, the hunter laid himself down onto his fur next to the girl and fell fast asleep.

      As was his habit at first light of morning, the hunter awoke from a restless and disturbing night’s sleep. He remained motionless, acutely aware of the girl’s close proximity, feeling her body heat through his soft-skinned tunic and trousers. During his sleep and throughout the night, he heard her soft moans of discomfort as she slept through the pain her body was feeling. He continued to lie beside her between the sleeping