Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, names or anything connected to Jean M Auel's Earth's Children series in this story. I'm just having some fun.
Chapter One
The Stranger
A young woman shivered in the freezing cold of a frigid snow storm. Denim jeans stained dark with the arctic slush, she trudged on pulling her heavy suit case behind her. Her excitement at seeing snow for the first time, fluttering down to earth has quickly disappeared as the icy wind brew up a steadily worsening storm. She had no idea how she had gone from her sunny Gold Coast home in Australia, to a land of snow, huge canyons of grey rock and tall trees stripped of nearly all leaves. Those that still clung to the claw like branches were gold and orange. The last thing she remembered was watching the heavy electrical storm from her balcony in the early afternoon, waiting for her taxi to take her to the airport.
Am I dead? I don't feel dead, this snow is so cold that I can hardly feel my feet. The woman began to worry about frostbite and considered stopping to rub some feeling back into her icy toes, but kept walking leaning forward into the heavy snow and wind. Her teeth started to chatter and tears slipped down her face, unnoticed. If I'm not dead yet, I surely will be soon, she thought. She had been wandering this strange land for almost six days with no food and little water, desperate for shelter and exhaustion and starvation were starting to play tricks on her mind. She could almost feel her sanity slipping away. She wrapped her woolen coat closer to her body and kept walking, not watching where she was going. Where am I? How will I get home? That thought swirled around in her head relentlessly. She stumbled suddenly and feel face first into the snow, not as heavily collected, cutting her cheek on a hidden rock. She snapped back to reality looking at the dark blood from her cheek drip onto the snow. She reached down to her feet and pulled off her boots to rub some feeling back into her feet. Standing up slowly, she emptied the slush out of her boots, pulled them back on and bore on trying to peer her way through the heavy storm.
"Hurry Ayla, if we don't leave soon that storm will catch us" the tall blond man yelled over the wind as a young woman hurried to pack up the heavy leather hide tent. Attaching the tent securely to the dun yellow mare, Ayla jumped onto Whinney's back with practiced grace. Jondalar hoisted her traveling pack onto his back and climbed up onto Racer, with ease but not the same effortlessness as the woman beside him. They started out at a gallop. They had decided to take a small last minute journey to Dalandar's Camp to collect some freshly mined Lanzadonii flint and had left later than they had planned; the icy grip of winter was close on their heels. Though they were close to the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii neither the man nor woman had any desire to be caught in the brewing blizzard. Whinney and Racer sped across the familiar territory of the Zelandonii, slowing as the splashed over The Crossing, of which the edges where incrusted with ice. They kept the sturdy horses at a fast pace, stopping only after they past Big Rock to give the horses a break. Snow had started to fall but Ayla insisted on stopping for the horses sake knowing full well that if the stormed worsened Whinney would get them home instinctively. As the man and woman prepared to mount the again to continue north to the Ninth Cave, they were halted by a human scream to the west.
"Jondalar, did you hear that?" Ayla asked, the medicine woman in her coming out wanting to help someone in need.
"It sounds like someone my have fallen down that cliff that the floods created last spring, it would barley be noticeable in this heavy snow," Jondalar assessed "We can reach it, but we'll have to be quick this storm is getting worse by the second".
Ayla and Jondalar guided the horses into a fast gallop towards the cliff. They thundered around the eastern corner into the newly created blind cliff face. The cliff had given away with a spectacular crash early last spring in the height of the floods, unable to hold itself to the edge any longer. The whole southern end of the Zelandonii territory had felt the ground shudder. Ayla dismounted off Whinney before the horse had stopped and ran towards a limp body of a woman lying face down in the snow. She turned her over and immediately took in her injuries. The woman's leg was clearly broken but not seriously enough to have to be straightened there. Scraps and bruises covered her body including a large cut on her cheek. Most alarming to the medicine woman was the swelling and the dark stain of blood underneath the unconscious woman's head.
"She needs help," Ayla said to Jondalar, wrapping a piece of soft leather from her pack basket tightly around the woman's head to put some pressure on the wound. The ice had helped slow it, but blood was still flowing quite freely "Help me get her into the pole drag, I can treat her at the cave but we need to hurry"
"Look at her clothes," Jondalar said "They are foreign that's for sure, they aren't even made of an animal hide. Its similar to the woven threads Marthona has been making with plants".
Ayla didn't hear him. Her eyes didn't take in her clothes or the unusual symbols on them, she saw only a person in need.
Jondalar walked over to the strange black contraption that must belong to the stranger. Stooping down he examined it. It was perfectly rectangular and made of an unusual fabric. On the sides were little shiny round tags. Unsure of him self, he pulled on toward him, but nothing happened. He shrugged tom himself and dragged it onto the pole drag, unsure of its use but sure the woman would want it, and then helped Ayla load the wounded female on as well. The tied the woman and her belongings securely to the harness and mounted the patiently waiting horses.
They raced back to the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii.