Chapter 25
Esteban saw the second moon rising and thought, ‘The night is more than half over.’
He was having insomnia for the second evening in a row.
His wife, however, was sleeping more soundly than he ever remembered before.
‘How is she able to sleep like that?’ Esteban wondered. ‘Look at how deep her breaths are! And look at her eyes rushing back and forth. Deep into a dream.’
The woman lying next to him let out a soft, guttural moan.
This made Esteban break into a sly smile.
‘I can’t recall her being so relaxed,’ he thought. ‘Or so horny.’
Even though he was thirty-one years of age, he still felt like a teenager at times. And this was one of them.
Thinking back to their arrival on the planet, Esteban recalled how Isabella went loco about the place they had landed.
“This so much reminds me of Baja California Sur!” she told him after they had been off the ship for an hour.
She had gone on a walk with some of the other women they had become friends with prior to their departure, while the men had stayed behind, examining the local area for shelter, water and food. When she returned, she described to her husband the white-sand beach not more than a ten minute walk from their drop-off spot, and the warm, soft breeze blowing in from the ocean.
Later that first day, Isabella was able to pull Esteban away from the crowd at ‘base camp’ as it began to be called. She took him back to the beach and after a brief walk, to an inlet. There, she led him through some thick growth to a small clearing with a water hole in the middle of a grassy clearing.
“Here is where I want us to start our new life,” she said, and kissed him passionately.
He returned the kiss, but it didn’t take much convincing, as she was already pulling his tunic over his head.
They stayed in the spot for hours, making love, napping, waking up to make love again, talking about their future.
Esteban had difficulty remembering a happier time for them together on Earth.
By the time the couple had returned to Base Camp, all of their friends had noted their absence. Some of the women were so worried they talked their husbands and boyfriends into joining them for a walk back to the beach to search for them, but with no luck finding them.
As Esteban and Isabella strolled into Camp, two of the men were returning from a trip to collect fresh water, recognized them and led them back to the group. The way the two of them were holding hands and whispering to each other, it became quickly evident they hadn’t gotten lost by accident, and had had a perfectly enjoyable afternoon.
That night, Isa fell asleep without issue. Normally, she was the worrier, so this surprised Esteban.
He, on the other hand, always thought things through and figured out how to manage the situation. And that made him comfortable and confident in almost every situation. The problem here, however, was that he didn’t know his surroundings well enough. He didn’t remember all of the animals or plants they could eat or those they should avoid. He wasn’t a hunter or a natural leader. And he hadn’t gotten to any of the supplies the aliens had left for them that could be used for building.
What Esteban did find next to the supply pile was a very small pile of four rocks. Looking at them closely, he saw sparkles in two. And the others felt as solid as any material he had worked with on Earth.
He grabbed one of each type of rock.
That evening, as their group sat around and ate the berries and raw fish they had caught that day, Esteban was off to the side, looking at the rocks. ‘Maybe’, he said to himself.
Turning away from the group, so they didn’t think him odd, he knocked the hard rock against the glittery one. After a couple of cracks, he saw a spark fly off the glittery rock. He kept at it, and was able to get a number of sparks in a row.
Isa walked over to where he was huddled. “What are you doing?”, she asked him.
Her husband looked over his shoulder and replied with a silly grin and a grunting voice, “Me Esteban. Me make fire!”
“Something got shaken loose in your brain back on that ship,” she said teasingly, and returned to the group to continue her conversation with the other women.
Esteban knocked the rocks together a few more times, and then returned to the group himself, but not before burying and hiding the rocks in a location he could relocate the next morning.
Even though everyone was very excited about arriving on the planet, once it turned dark, most of the people found a place to shelter and huddle together for the night and fell asleep.
Esteban laid down with Isa curled up next to him. They were in the middle of their group of new friends, which gave Esteban additional comfort.
After a long time lying there, however, Esteban could still not fall asleep.
Isa was taking deep, easy breaths. Not even bothered by some of the soft snoring coming from a few of the others in the group.
‘I shouldn’t be jealous of her, but I am,’ Esteban thought, looking at his wife.
Eventually, he stroked her shoulder. Then shook it a bit.
Isabella looked at him with eyes barely open. “Hmmf?” she mumbled.
“I’ll be back,” Esteban whispered. “I need to go to the bathroom.”
Isa half nodded her head and closed her eyes again.
Esteban snuck out of the group circle and made his way back to the area where the few basic supplies had been found earlier that day. He returned to the tree where he found his rocks, saw the other two still there, looked around to see if anyone was watching, and then quickly bent down and grabbed his not-so-hidden prize.
‘There is no way I can fall asleep now,’ he said to himself, feeling both guilty and excited about his acquisition.
‘Nobody else took them, so why should I care about not leaving them’, he said to himself. ‘Obviously, they don’t know what these are.’
‘But I don’t know what these are either,’ he replied internally. ‘These could be just a couple of rocks that chip off like any other rock.’
‘And yet they could be a way to security for me and for Isa’, he continued.
Without realizing it, Esteban had wandered down the path back to the beach. He walked along it for a long time, knocking the rocks against each other on occasion to see the sparks.
And then the second moon rose.
It was larger than the first moon high in the sky, which he hadn’t really noticed before. This moon was much brighter than the first, and it seemed larger than the one back on Earth. He was mesmerized watching it rise from the water on the horizon.
The two moons together were enough to make it much easier to see. Nothing like daylight, but definitely brighter than a clear, full moon evening back in Mexico City.
After staring at the moons for a while, Esteban went inland a bit to find some grass. He felt for anything dry, pulled some together into a pile, and knocked the rocks to generate a spark over top of the grass.
‘This is ridiculous’, he told himself quickly. ‘This is live grass. It’s dark. I can’t truly see. Go back and get some sleep.’
So Esteban listened to his inner voice and decided to go back to the others. On the way, he found where he had buried the first two rocks and placed the two he had acquired on his night walk in the same hiding place. When he returned to the group, a few bodies had shifted around, but Isa was still in the same place. He lay down next to her, but still failed to fall asleep. It was just before sunrise that his mind slowed enough and the exhaustion from the day and night finally got to him and he dozed off.
“Esteban! Time to wake up!” was the alarm that brought Esteban out of his sleep the next morning.
Isabella was kneeling next to him with a smile on her face, the sun shining brightly over her shoulder.
“Come on, there’s a big meeting of the colonists at The Temple,” she said, tugging at her husband’s hand.
“What?” Esteban asked blearily, wiping the sandy soil from his face with his free hand.
“Let’s go!” Isabella said, pulling on her husband’s arm while she stood up.
Esteban looked around and saw everyone walking out of the clearing in the opposite direction of the beach. He rolled over, slowly stood up, and let his wife take his hand again and lead him forward.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“We’re headed to a big group meeting,” Isabella explained. “Apparently there are some of the people that are anxious about organizing things or deciding what’s going to happen. Personally, I’m happy to roam around a bit before settling down, but we’ll see what they have to say. No matter what, we’ve decided to stick together as a group, since all of us feel we can trust each other.”
“Who is ‘us’?” Esteban asked. “I’m still waking up, not sure I follow everything you’re talking about.”
“Our group!” Isabella said, looking at her husband with a ‘what don’t you understand’ look.
Esteban gave her an empty stare.
“The people we’ve spent the last three days, well, yesterday and the last two days on Earth with,” she explained. “Are you feeling OK? You just seem to be different since we arrived.”
“I’m fine, Isa,” he replied. “I’m just not as linked in as tight to these people as you are.”
” ‘These people’?” she questioned. “These are our friends! Our new family!”
“I agree they are friendly people, Isa, but …” Esteban started.
Isabella interrupted, pointing up the terraced hill ahead of them. “There’s Carmen and Eduardo, see?” She gave a big wave to the couple she referenced and they waved back.
“Come on!” she said, tugging on her husband’s hand and walking faster.
They walked up to the spot where there were now six other people with the initial couple Isabella had pointed out.
“Ah, it’s Sleeping Beauty!” said one of the men.
“I’d rather be sleeping, Ricardo, than hiking up here first thing in the morning,” Esteban replied. “Are we gathering for the Sermon on The Mount?”
“We are going to hear what some of the self-proclaimed leaders want to organize. That’s one of them down there,” said a woman not with their group, but seated a few spots away, pointing back down the hill.
Esteban turned around to see dozens of people still walking towards the hill or gathering at the bottom, not sure of who she was referring to. He then scanned the hill to see who else was present.
“This isn’t everyone,” Esteban noted. “Is this only for selected people?”
“We estimate about a third of the colonists have already left,” Oscar, another man in their group, shared. “They must have decided they’d prefer to be on their own.”
“And Pearla said she saw robots carrying fifty bodies out of the spaceship yesterday afternoon,” Isabella added.
“Clearing out the dead so they didn’t have to carry them back to Earth,” Pearla explained.
“How do you know that?” Esteban asked. “Did you talk to the robots?”
“Esteban!” Isabella scolded, punching her husband in the arm.
Pearla waved off his comment. “You need to pay attention to what’s going on around you, Esteban, and not just stare at your belly.”
Someone at the base of the hill was now trying to get the attention of the crowd. People started quieting, but it wasn’t until another person finger-whistled that the speaker’s voice could be heard up the hill.
“Gracias, Martin,” said the woman, nodding to the whistler. “My name is Susie. Welcome to Neuvo Mundo!”
Some of the hillside listeners clapped and whooped.
Esteban leaned over and whispered to Isabella, “She sounds like a real-estate agent about to sell us a condominium.”
Isa punched him in the arm again.
“Thank you for joining us this morning,” Susie continued. “I’m amazed at where we are and thankful to have arrived. I’m sure many of you saw those that did not survive the trip. Before continuing, let us have a moment of silence in their honor.”
Everyone lowered their heads.
After a few seconds, Susie spoke again. “Some of us were talking last night and thought it would be helpful to have a discussion like this and organize activities for those wanting to remain together.”
Many heads of the listeners were nodding in agreement.
“As you can see, some people have already left to go out on their own. And others wanted to explore. We wish them well and welcome them back if they ever return. Here, we seem to have a good set of natural resources around us, just based on walking around yesterday. And I would expect that to be the case, if the aliens chose the spot to drop us off with the best chance of a successful start.”
“Between people we talked with last night, and a quick visual estimate this morning, we think there are between five- and six-hundred people still here. A small enough community to get to know everyone in time, but large enough that we can work together and be more successful than working individually.”
“The basic needs seem to be food, shelter and clothing. The aliens were gracious enough to give us our first set of clothing, so that may not be on the top of the list.”
Esteban leaned over and motioned to a group of naturists, “It’s not on some people’s list at all.”
“Shut up!” Isa whispered harshly, pushing Esteban away.
“So that leaves food and shelter,” Susie continued. “We were thinking that perhaps we could establish some building crews for different needs and then some people that could help with gathering food for us.”
Isabella turned and looked at Esteban with an excited expression.
“Do we have anyone that did construction in the past?” Susie asked the crowd.
Esteban started shaking his head, but Isabella quickly jumped up and raised her hand. “We did!” she said loudly enough for the group to hear.
Some other hands had also gone up from those sitting on the hillside.
“This is great!”, Susie said, looking around. Then pointing up at Isabella, “What is your name and tell us what your experiences are.”
Isabella stood tall. “I’m Isabella Torres and this is my husband, Esteban. We ran a sustainable construction company in San Miguel Ajusco. We mostly focused on homes.”
“Wow!” exclaimed Susie. “We couldn’t have asked for a better match! Do you mind organizing that work?”
“We would love to!” Isabella answered.
“Great!” Susie said. “So after we’re done, all those interested in building can meet up with Isabella and Esteban.”
Isabella waved to the crowd and sat back down with a self-satisfied smile on her face.
Esteban was not smiling, however. “Why did you do that?” he asked harshly. “I have no desire to bring the stresses of a construction company from Earth to here.”
“That’s what we talked about,” Isa said. “Our skills could be put to use here and we could live what we’ve been talking about for the past five years.”
“We talked about using those skills to build our own house,” Esteban responded, “not to build an entire village.”
“It’s the right thing to do, Te,” Isa replied. “We can talk about this more later. Let’s listen to what Susie is saying.” and she returned her attention to the bottom of the hill.
Esteban was staring a hole in the side of Isa’s head. By the time his attention returned to the conversation, Susie was in the middle of another topic.
“… and of those standing, did any of you prepare food for large group consumption?”
No one raised their hand.
“Just as well,” Susie said with a tinge of disappointment. “We won’t have industrial production here. But we’ll need to scale our food processing to support our community. I guess we’ll just figure that out.”
“So is there anyone that would like to organize the food collection?” Sue asked the group.
“You mean the hunting?” one man near the top of the hill asked.
Someone from the other side of the group about half way down the hill turned back and shouted, “We can’t just come here as guests and start slaughtering every living creature we see!”
“Who said anything about slaughtering?” the man at the top of the hill retorted. “I use every part of any animal I hunt. You want to starve and freeze? That’s your choice.”
“Didn’t anyone screen these people?” the first person said, turning to Susie. “Why even let them stay…”
Martin whistled loudly and for a long time. When he stopped, the crowd was quiet. Both men stared at each other from opposite sides of those assembled.
“Gracias, Martin,” Sally quickly interjected into the quiet. “We all came here of our own free will. No contract, no common agreement. We have to recognize there are different approaches each of us has to life, be respectful of the beliefs of others, and strive to live together and work together.”
“Sir,” Susie said to the man at the top of the hill, “what is your name?”
“Miguel,” he said.
“I wasn’t specifically talking about hunting, Miguel,” Susie said. “But if that is what you feel compelled to do, would you mind leading the people helping in that endeavor.”
“I wouldn’t mind at all,” Miguel said. “Those who want to eat, join me after this meeting is over. We’ll meet where the ship dropped us off.”
And with that, he sat back down.
“Sir,” Susie said, turning to the other man. “Your name is?”
“Alejandro Pena,” said the man.
“Would you join Martin after the meeting to help establish a plan for gathering and storing other healthy foods?” Susie asked cheerfully.
“Why not throw an animal in everyone’s lap and be done with it,” he said.
Susie did not take the bait, nor did she look away from him.
“Fine,” Alejandro finally said. “At least this way we’ll have something to eat when we come back with the food people need now.”
“Excellent!” Susie said, exhaling so forcefully that Esteban could see her shoulders relax.
“How else can we prepare our camp?” she asked the assembly.
A person towards the front asked a question, but Esteban didn’t hear what she said. He turned to look at Isabella, who shrugged her shoulders and in turn asked Oscar “What did that lady say?”
Oscar shook his head sideways, then shouted towards Susie. “We didn’t hear the question!”
“Oh, OK. She asked where the camp would be built,” Susie said. “Those of us that were talking this morning thought this place would be good here. It seems to have easy access to clean water, some relatively flat and open area to build, likely some good wood for building, and we know there are a lot of those yummy berries around.”
A voice from the hill shouted out. “Why does our camp have to be here?”
“Well,” Susie looked at Martin and a few of the others that were gathered at the bottom of the hill. “I guess it doesn’t have to be. What did you have in mind? Oh, and what is your name, please?”
The woman replied, “Why do we have to blindly go with what the aliens tell us to do? We made the choice to come here, so shouldn’t we decide where to settle? I’m all for coming together as a group and creating a settlement. I just think we should look around to see if there is a better option. Maybe the aliens dropped us here because it’s easier here than some other place. Or maybe they are saving the better places for themselves or for other groups.”
“Um, thank you for that thought,” Susie replied uncertainly. “And, uh, I didn’t hear your name?”
“I didn’t say it,” the woman said, putting her hands on her hips.
“Ok,” Susie said, trying to sound cheerful. “Did you have a different place in mind?” she asked the anonymous speaker.
“No, but I think we should at least look. Let’s go up and down the coast a bit,” the woman answered. “If we don’t find anything better, then we can settle here. Let’s send a group north and another group south for two days to scout for land.”
Again, Susie looked at the others gathered in the front. None of them had anything to add, so she turned to the explorer enthusiast. “Would you be willing to lead one of the trips?”
“Absolutely, but I get to pick my travelling team,” the mystery woman answered.
“Um, sure, I suppose that would be OK,” Susie said.
“In the meantime,” she continued with more confidence, “those remaining can build some temporary shelters. Does anyone have any questions?”
No one said anything.
“Great! Let’s get started. Building crew down here, hunting crew at the top of the hill, foraging crew to the right and exploration crew to the left.” Susie directed.
The five couples in Isabella and Esteban’s group looked at each other.
“Do we all need to do the same work?” Pearla asked.
“Probably not,” answered Oscar. “If we join different groups then we can gain different experiences.”
“Is anyone interested in hunting?” asked Carmen, “because I’m not”
It seemed no one from the group was.
“How about exploring?” she then asked.
Maribell and Ricardo looked at each other. “I think we’d like to be on the exploration team,” said Ricardo.
“So that leaves building and gathering,” Oscar said. “Who wants to pick produce?”
A few people in the group gave him a sideways glance, and Pearla glared at him.
“What?” Oscar asked. He thought briefly and then his cheeks reddened. “Oh! Well, I didn’t mean it that way. Um, who wants to gather food? Personally, I’d rather do that than build.”
“I thought I did, but now I’m not so sure,” Pearla said.
“OK,” said Isabella, “Two explorers, two gatherers and six builders. Let’s join up with our groups?”
Others were already congregating around at the base of the hill, looking up to Isabella. She saw the expectant faces, and began downhill. Esteban quickly followed.
“I’m still not happy with this. Maybe I’ll go pick some nuts and berries,” Esteban said.
“Do what you want,” Isabella said, calling his bluff. “You know what you’re good at and you know where your interests are at.”
“Wait,” Esteban said emphatically.
Isa stopped and turned to him.
“I’m about to get something big started,” he said in a hushed voice, leaning in close to Isa. “I need some time this morning. Give me a few hours and I’ll be back.”
“And what do I tell the crowd,” Isabella said. “That you’re picking nuts and berries?”
“Tell them I went looking for good lumber trees,” Esteban said.
Isabella looked her husband in the face, softened her shoulders, and said, “Fine. Just come back, OK? You’re still too tense.”
He leaned in closer and gave his wife a kiss, “Of course! This is where we start our new life, remember?”
And Esteban jogged off.
He found his way back to where he had buried two of the rocks, and went off into the nearby tropical forest. The former construction company owner wasn’t sure where he would find the best wood, but he wasn’t after good building materials at the moment.
‘I’d better not go too far into these trees,’ Esteban thought. ‘I don’t need to get myself lost and have people come look for me a second day in a row. But I’m not finding the wood I want, and this is still too exposed out here.’
He came across what looked like an animal path cutting into the forest, and decided to follow it in. Along the way, he saw something that confirmed the path was used by the local fauna – some fur caught on a shrub along the path.
“This is a lucky find,” Esteban said softly, picking off the small clump of hair from the small branch. “I guess I should be on the lookout for it’s owner, in case he’s not happy to have strangers around.”
After a bit more walking, Esteban finally saw what he was searching for. He stepped over to a fallen tree, and started looking around, gathering small twigs that had broken off from the limbs as well as some broken twigs from a bush the tree had fallen onto and smashed.
He took his collection to a protected area next to the main trunk of the tree, downwind from the small breeze winding through the forest, and crouched down to lay out his goods.
Clearing a small area on the ground, he tore off half the clump of fur, fluffed it up a bit and laid it in the small divot he made. He then pulled out the stones, looked at then and then kissed each one, whispering “Don’t disappoint me, boys.”
Esteban returned to the motions from the previous evening, striking the hard stone on the glittery one. After a number of tries, he knelt on the ground and held the stones close to the animal hair, knocking the rocks to get some small sparks.
It took the rest of the morning before Esteban succeeded in having the sparks catch the fur on fire and eventually create a small flame with added sticks. After a much shorter time, he had built that flame into a fire.
Sweating and grimy, he stepped back to admire his creation. ‘Amazingly beautiful,’ he thought. ‘Why did I never notice the intricacy and power of fire back on Earth?’
‘Time to return,’ he decided. ‘But how to take my prize back with me?’
Esteban finally decided to put the ends of two branches, about the width of his arm, into the fire. He gathered some larger logs he could carry as a bundle under one arm, took the two branches that had now caught fire, and began slowly walking back down the path he had come.
By the time he made the relatively short walk back to where he could hear noise coming from the colonists, the fire on one of the branches had extinguished, and the other flame was getting low. Not wanting to risk it any longer, he dropped the logs, used the still burning branch to restart the other, and built up a new fire.
After a bit, he had his second camp fire of the day going. ‘I don’t have much time,’ he said to himself, and ran off towards the sound of the people.
Esteban came across a group of colonists on the building crew, clearing and flattening some space on the ground. “Where is Isabella?” he asked the first person.
“Who?,” the stranger asked.
“Isabella Torres!” Esteban said with a firm sense of urgency.
The stranger looked at his co-workers, who shook their heads. “I don’t know who that is,” he answered.
Esteban ran off towards more voices, didn’t see anyone he recognized, and started jogging back towards the hill they had gathered at that morning.
“Isabella!”, he started shouting.
People turned to look at him.
“Isabella!” Esteban called again.
“Esteban,” a voice called out. “What are you doing?”
Esteban looked over to see Roberto walking towards him.
“Where’s Isabella?” Esteban said, breathing hard.
“Where have you been?” Roberto asked. “Isabella said you were going to look for some good logs, but that was hours ago.”
“Where is she?” Esteban said, grabbing his friend’s arm.
“She’s laying out the building arrangements,” Roberto said, pulling his arm away from Esteban. “Over there.”
Esteban jogged to where Roberto had pointed, towards a group of people talking and gesturing towards the ground.
“Isabella!” Esteban shouted again, finally seeing his wife’s back.
Isabella turned around quickly, and had a look of both anger and relief on her face.
“Where have you been! You didn’t say you’d be gone half the day,” she said tensely.
Esteban didn’t answer, instead taking his wife’s hand. “Come on, I need to show you something.”
She pulled her hand from his grip, “What are you talking about? We’re in the middle of a conversation here.”
“Please,” Esteban said, holding out his hand. “I agreed to go with you yesterday. Can’t you come with me today?”
Isabella looked at her husband. “I can tell you won’t stop. This better be important.” and started walking.
Esteban grabbed her hand again.
After a few minutes, Esteban pointed ahead. “See?”
“See what?” Isabella said.
“The smoke!”, Esteban said.
They got close enough that Isabella could see the small flames. She paused and looked at her husband.
Esteban smiled widely, said “Me make fire!” and laughed at his own joke.
Some of the others they had jogged past had followed behind and now caught up. They saw the fire and walked up to the burning logs.
“Where did you find this?,” asked one lady.
“I didn’t find it. I made it,” answered Esteban.
“With what?” asked another person.
“Skill,” Esteban said with a grin.
Others came up and were excited to see the fire. Soon a small crowd had gathered, with people talking about the new discovery.
Esteban turned from the crowd to notice the flames were getting low.
“We need more wood,” he said with a concerned voice.
He turned to his friend that had arrived with the group, “Roberto, keep it going til I get back.” And with that, Esteban ran back to the forest to collect some more fuel for the flame.
When he had returned, even more people had gathered around the fire. People were asking Roberto about how he got it going while he was pushing the remaining logs together.
Looking up from the smoky pile, he saw Esteban approaching and said, “It wasn’t me. Ask him. He’s the fire-maker.”
Esteban laid the logs on a pile, and laid a few on top of the embers and small bit of still burning wood. He wasn’t paying attention to the other colonists.
When he stood up and stepped back to gaze at his creation again, he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see Isabella smiling at him.
“I guess you’ve got a few skills I wasn’t aware of, Mr. Torres,” she said.
“You wouldn’t want a one-dimensional person on this trip with you, would you, Mrs. Torres,” Esteban replied with his own smile.
The group spent the next hour collecting more wood, and created a handful of fires around the sites they had slept at the night before.
With some effort, Isabella was finally able to pull her husband away from the flames.
“OK, you’ve had your fun,” she said, “Now it’s time to apply your other skills.”
They went back to the area where people were clearing places for future buildings and Esteban got involved in the discussions about what types of structures would go where. They eventually settled upon three long-houses that would be living quarters for twenty people in each, another six houses that could hold eight to twelve people each, a cooking hut that would have an enclosed fireplace for cooking, and ten community latrines. The goal would be to have all the latrines and half of the other structures built in a week.
As they were talking about how long it would take to put up the second half of the housing and whether or not they would have group housing or individual family homes for their permanent structures, another commotion was taking place at the edge of the new village.
Walking over, Esteban, Isabella and the rest of the planning committee found some hunters had returned, carrying some of the prey they had caught.
Miguel, the person who had volunteered to lead one of the hunting groups from this morning, was standing by one of the fires.
“This is fantastic!,” he said when he saw the planning committee approach. “I thought we’d have to figure out how to eat this stuff without it spoiling, and I guess you’ve solved that issue.”
Miguel went over and gave Esteban a big slap on the back. “You get to join us in the first animal, once we’ve skinned and cooked it, my friend. What is your name?”
“Esteban,” he replied.
“I just might call you Firestarter,” Miguel said with a big laugh.
Miguel and the other hunters got to work cleaning the animals. Miguel had Esteban help with the preparation, asking him questions about what other skills he had and learning a bit about his background.
“So you’ve not hunted anything back on Earth?” Miguel asked.
“No, sorry. Nothing but the next job for my company,” Esteban answered.
“Well, we’ll take care of that here,” Miguel bellowed. “You’ll go out with us tomorrow!”
Esteban looked up with an uncertain expression on his face. “I think I need to get some more logs. The fire is looking a bit low.”
“As you wish, Firestarter,” Miguel said with another big laugh.
The afternoon led into early evening, and everyone returned to the new village area. While not a feast, there was enough food to go around for all the people gathered. The hunters said the animals were relatively easy to catch, as they didn’t recognize the humans as predators. And a plentiful supply of fruits and nuts had been found.
Isabella was able to pull Esteban away from the gathering while it was still in full swing. They had gotten some of the first food cooked, due to Esteban’s new fame as the ‘Firestarter’, so they had finished eating well before most of the others.
Isabella led them back to their private pond down along the beach path. Their lovemaking was more intense this time, compared to the day before. While still passionate, she was focused less on being playful and more on the actual intercourse, ensuring her husband climaxed deep within her.
Afterwards, lying next to each other on the smooth grass, she stroked Esteban’s hair. “I want to start our family here,” she said.
Esteban rolled on his side to look at his wife, face to face.
“Isa,” he said softly, “this is a new planet, but we’re the same people. If we weren’t able to have children on Earth, what makes you think it’s going to change here?”
“I don’t know, Te,” she answered. “Maybe we are new people here. Life feels so vibrant these past two days. Who can say that won’t impact us as well?”
By the time the two of them returned to camp, the meal was complete for everyone, the sun had set, and people were settling down.
Esteban was one of the people that stayed awake tending the fires. He noticed, however, that after a few hours, only one other person was awake. And that person was walking around, slapping himself on the arms and legs so as not to fall asleep.
Esteban, however, was just the opposite. He was wide awake, staring at the fire and adding logs to make sure the embers didn’t disappear.
And that’s when he noticed the second moon rising.
After gazing at Isabella for a long time, and placing some final wood on the fire, Esteban finally laid next to his wife, wrapped his arm around her, and hugged her close to his body.
‘Maybe we can become new people here,’ he thought as he closed his eyes and finally was able to fall asleep.