Aura by M.A. Abraham Read Free Book Online Page B

smoke, she had found a way.   Then again, maybe nobody had noticed, or even cared that she was there. 
Aura devised a system to keep track of the days, marking them off on the cave wall, just as her caveman ancestors had done at one time.   She also used the surface to write on, as a form of journal.  In her imagination she could see some future archeologist studying her writings.  They would never accept the truth of them.  The memories she wrote on the wall would make no sense, not to a mind unable to deal with the reality she was living.  She could barely believe it herself. 
No one, in the era that Aura had come from, would believe the stories she wrote.  She told how she had woken one morning soon after she arrived to find a rat in the cave.  She had screamed and screamed.  The rat had run for the exit, but it had not been fast enough to evade the coils of the snake its movement had attracted.   Aura had declared her undying gratitude to Roger. 
A whole new world opened up for Aura as she worked to fit into her new world.  She had never had much to do with nature before, and it was an alien country outside.  Chipmunks might be cute, she thought, but they were destructive.  The light of her fires at night kept most of the predators at bay, but she could feel them watching her as she sat and shook by the flames.  She had to work to get past her fears and prejudices, as there was no room for them.  It was time to toughen up or she would never survive.  A rabbit was food, sometimes, even squirrels.  It no longer mattered if they were cute.  She also needed to find things to keep her warm during the winter.  She only had herself to depend on, and in this world it was the survival of the fittest.
The winter of the first year had been spent making new clothing and bedding from the furs she had accumulated from animals she had killed for food.  She made weapons for hunting and protection.  The items she created looked crude, but they improved with practice, and they were functional.  Roger continued to plague Wolf, but that didn’t last long for as the snake slept, the wolf grew.  He lost his puppy fur, and gained a full healthy coat for the winter.  This he shed as spring approached, and the warmer weather returned.
 
Aura had to admit, by spring, she was very lonely.  Even if she had never been the social type she had never been totally on her own as she had been during the past year.  She needed the company of other people.  She needed the sound of voices and movement about her, and needed to escape the cave, which had become as much of a prison to her as it had been a home.  She decided, she would leave for a time, to check out the land about her more thoroughly.

During her travels Aura discovered a way she could make money and to keep her makeshift family fed.  She had taken skills she had learned in the kitchens, the classrooms, and the hospital, and found a use for them as she practiced a form of medicine.  It seemed that everyone was in need of some form of treatment.

Those who had not been able to pay her in coin did so by giving her a meal, or something to travel with before she moved on.  She understood, they gave no money because they had none.  Some she had insisted she treat for free, although she had found it harder to refuse payment from them, for they often were the ones most insistent on giving what they could not afford to part with.  It was their way of salvaging what they considered their most valuable asset, their pride.  She had found, in her new world, that those about her who had nothing of value, valued their pride above all else.

It did not take much imagination for Aura to understand these people for there had been times in her own past that she had felt that she had nothing beyond her pride to hold her together.  She had given the matter some thought and had offered them a face saving option.  If they could not pay, she would accept something