The List:
1) Jak and eisa
2) stone age
3) europe
4) a lock of hair he gave her
*Image Prompt Included
*Image Prompt Included
The Result:
"Undying Love"
Stone Age
Eisa crouched low in the bushes, where she wouldn't be seen. Her eyes scanned the foliage to make sure no one had followed her. The deerskin shift brushed against her skin, making her itch as if a hundred ants crawled over her, but she dare not move a muscle.
A hand
clamped on her shoulder and she whirled around as another hand muffled
her startled cry. Tender eyes stared into her own, and she melted into
his embrace.
"Oh Jak," she whispered. "They will find us; the elders will know."
"Have
courage, Eisa," he murmured to her, stroking the top of her head. "They
cannot destroy the love we have for each other. Even if they did find
out, we would never be apart for long. We could find a way."
Eisa
bit her lip as terrifying visions of everything that could go wrong
danced through her mind. She buried her face in Jak's chest and let the
scent of him, the feel of his arms around her, carry those awful
predictions away.
"I am afraid, Jak," she murmured. "Mother
said that the gods brook no disobedience of any kind. Oh Jak! What if
our love brings judgment on the whole camp?"
Jak gripped her
hands and pulled her close. "Eisa, look into my eyes," he said. She did,
and he told her, "Your love for me gives me life. My love for you makes
me stronger and better each day than I was before. There can be nothing
disobedient or rebellious about a love like that."
Eisa's eyes shone with gratefulness. "If only our families could understand that."
Jak
nodded. "Our only hope is that they will see the goodness that our love
brings, and it will aid our tribes in coming together as one tribe."
Eisa nodded. "Oh yes! If such a thing could happen, we would not have to live in such fear and secrecy any longer!"
Jak glanced over his shoulder, as if the mere mention of
secrecy would bring the angry tribesmen upon them. Looking back at Eisa, seeing
the trust in her eyes as she returned his gaze, the idea formed in his mind,
and he resolved to act upon it.
“Eisa,” he said, “there is a way for us to be together, even
when we are in separate places.” He pulled out his knife, a thin onyx blade
that sparkled in the setting sun.
Eisa shrank back as he raised it. “What will you do?” she
asked fearfully.
Jak smiled at her as he brought the knife close to his own
head. Gripping a lock of hair between his fingers, he sliced through it,
showing the shorn piece to his friend. “Now give me your hand,” he instructed.
Eisa obeyed, and Jak wrapped the lock around her finger,
tying it in an impossible knot. He offered her the knife by its handle. “Now
your turn.”
Eisa reached up as he had done and sliced of a lock of her
hair. Jak took the long piece and wound it around his wrist. Sheathing his
knife, he held his hand against hers. “There,” he announced. “Now I have some
of you with me, and you have some of me. We are together as one—even though our
eyes do not meet.”
Eisa felt a wholesome warmth creep over her body. “I will
think of you whenever I see this ring,” she promised.
Jak nodded. “And no one will ever need to know whence came
these things. We can say we made it out of the hairs of a horse’s tail, and
people will believe it.”
Eisa smiled and buried her nose against the ring. “It even
has a little of your scent with it,” she mused.
Jak heard the twilight horns of his village sound low and
heavy across the forest. He sighed. “Eisa, we must go. Remember,” he held the
hand that bore the ring. “I am always with you. This ring is round without end,
so my love will always stay with you and surround you.”
“And you only will be my life-bringer,” Eisa replied. “I
will pledge myself to no one else, because I have already given myself to you.”
They drew apart.
“I will come here in the morning, my love,” Jak called
softly.
“I will wait for the sun to rise, and then I will come!”
Eisa promised.
Such were the plans of the two lovers; but the best-laid
plans go oft awry—and little did they suspect that the dawn they awaited would
never come.
Eisa had just lain down upon the thick sleeping pelt when a
dreadful tremor began shaking the very earth like a great big gourd. Fear
gripped her as she jumped to her feet, running outside to see what the
villagers were screaming about. The sky was dark, save for a thin line of
sunrise at the very horizon. A billowing black cloud covered the rest of the
sky, and the mountain that had overshadowed their village for as long as she
could remember spewed a column of liquid fire toward the sky, higher than the
height of the very tallest tree Eisa could think of. The red, burning substance
seeped down the side of the mountain, destroying everything it touched—and
heading right for her village.
Desperation gave Eisa’s feet wings, and she flew away from
her village, out to the patch of forest that stood between her village and
Jak’s village. She nearly collided with him in the dark.
“Eisa,” there was no missing the terror in his voice. “Eisa
what is it?”
Eisa could not speak for the tears. “Oh Jak,” she wept, “Oh
Jak! It is the gods! They are angry at us! They send fire out of the mountain,
and it will drown the village and kill everyone. It is all our fault!”
Jak shook his head firmly. “Eisa, look at me,” he cradled
her chin in his hand so she would hold still. “I am here, I am with you. I will
protect you.”
“But the earth will surely open up and swallow us!”
Jak reached out and wrapped his arms around her. “Then it
will swallow us together. We will never part again, no matter what the elders
might say.”
Eisa trembled, even as the moving, cracking earth made it
hard for her to stand. “I can’t, Jak!” She whimpered. “I cannot stand. I must fall.”
“Let us lay down,” Jak told her. “We will wait until it
passes. It will not reach us.”
Eisa lay down on her side. Jak reached out and stroked her face, soothing her; both refused to let the other go.
Jak smiled at Eisa, even as she tried to make herself smile
back.
“I love you, Eisa.”
“I love you, Jak.”
“It will be over soon,” he said, as the thick
blackness descended upon them, and the liquid fire swallowed them whole….
Present Day
"Now," the tour guide's voice interrupted the reverent hush, cutting in rudely with far too much volume through tinny, reverberating speakers, "the story we have just witnessed is creative interpretation, but the catastrophe was very much real." He flipped through the digital images of an archaeological dig. "Evidence of a layer of ash and volcanic rock about a mile thick, below layers of dirt, have proven that, some time during the Stone Age, a volcanic eruption just like the one in Pompeii buried the city and its inhabitants where they stood." He clicked through more images. "Or, as in the case of this couple, discovered by a college student from a prominent university in Europe," he clicked again, "where they lay."
The audience stared at the two skeletons, facing each other, limbs intertwined. One last, eternal embrace for Jak and Eisa.
Millennia later, and they
still remained deeply in each others' arms.
"Nations rise and empires fall," the tour guide murmured. "But real love will last forever, even beyond death."
Previously In This Series:
Continuous Stories:
Crossover Parts: (Soul Mates Part 6/Serenity's Light Part 2)
Single Posts:
#26 "The Tides of Battle"
#1 "Red of Morning"
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