SHORT SUMMARY: You're stuck with him for a whole day (night), and you still haven't SEEN him. Would you manage to fall in love with him?

FROM AUTHOR: I don't want to spoil the effect, so my note is at the bottom! -May K. Lunnaya :)

DEDICATION: To those who get stuck in elevators with lights switched off.

The Caveman and Woman - The Beginning®  

14 HOURS 7 MINUTES AFTER OBSTRUCTION
Something touched my chin. 

A mosquito??

I opened my eyes.

Wait - why my bed's so rough? And why is it so dark? And what's that soft thing my head is on?

I heard the tapping sound of water's drop…

With a start I realized where I was. In that damn cavern. And the soft thing I was lying on was… Usagi's lap. And her light and delicate fingers were traveling over my face's features.

Good thing that she couldn't see my expression… 

She traced my brows and the in-time-closed lids of my eyes… Then she glided over my forehead and my cheeks… I was turning hot and cold by turns with her gentle touch. I felt something blooming inside me… growing and turning into a glittering and warm feeling… When her cold fingers drew the lines of my lips, I pressed them to her tips tenderly.

Her hands stopped dead in their tracks. In a matter of seconds she jerked them off. "You weren't sleeping!!!?.." she cried in fear hoarsely.

She's afraid of what she was doing… I was glad that she is… that she wanted to… but I also wanted to calm her down.

Clenching my teeth together of the racking pain in my right foot, I moved over to sit beside her. "Look," I said and glanced at the darkness of her direction. "It's absolutely all right that you wanted to know how I look. It's totally natural and logical…" She sensed the motion of the air when, gulping, I reached for her.

She held her breath. "What're you doing?" she whispered, frightened. 

I bit into the inside of my cheek. "May I…" I stammered. "May I… inspect your face… in return?"

I took the tomb silence as yes and placed my palm at her cheek… up her a bit tinted upwards little nose, and stroking along her thin eyebrows, lightly caressing her smooth skin.

"You have such long lashes," I commented quietly. "What color are your eyes?.."

"Blue," her lips uttered. She wasn't breathing. At all.

Down her temple and cheekbone, I could feel her heart's mad beat at her tender neck… When I uncertainly touched her lips, she parted them slightly and shakily and convulsively let out the air she was holding. Her heated breath hit my cold hand… I couldn't control myself anymore; I leaned over and kissed her trembling lips, hoping that I'd kissed what I was supposed to…

14 HOURS 13 MINUTES AFTER OBSTRUCTION
…His fingers tantalizingly slowly caressed my lips… My God, I was all shaking and rumbling inside, like there was an earthquake. Is this how HE had felt?!.. Oh, his silky fingers… They came to stroke my cheek… All of a sudden, something warm and soft pressed gently against my lips… like a pair of fingers… But he has already… and it was too soft to be -

HIS LIPS!!!!!!!

Frantically, I pulled back - banging my head at the stone wall.

Moaning, I rubbed my poor skull.

"What? Did I - did I hurt you?" Mamoru asked me, his voice full of worry.

"No, I… um…" My already dried-up throat got even sourer, because when I cast my eyelids apart, I saw his face mere inches from mine. His huge blue eyes were wide-opened. His black, like a raven's wing, hair was messy and sticking up in strange and funny angles. Overall, he looked exactly like a puppy that was just about to sniff at some grass and was mercilessly yanked back by his collar. But God, isn't he handsome?.. Those dark eyelashes, straight nose, the line of his masculine chin… well defined, strong, and slightly opened lips… engulfed in a reddish glow… er.

REDDISH GLOW?!!!!!!!

We both whipped our heads in the direction where the strange light was streaming from…

Not a foot from my right hand, where the floor and the wall met, was… a small puddle of…

"AAAAAAUUUUGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!.."

…steaming lava.

15 HOURS 00 MINUTES AFTER OBSTRUCTION.
No matter how many stones we'd piled up in that crack in the wall, the lava is still sipping through.

"Why, oh, why!.. What did I ever do!?.." Usagi wailed, wringing her hands hysterically. "We'll all die here!!.."

I smiled sadly. "'All'?.. There's just the two of us."

In reply, tears spilled out her beautiful bloodshot eyes…

Okay, man, it's all right. She's in a panic. Women always panic… And I'll start panicking pretty soon, too.

"Usagi." I put my hand at her small, quaking shoulder. "Let's try to get more stones to block the crack, okay?"

She sniffed, sucked in a big portion of oxygen, hiccuped shakily, and headed to the opposite wall to a large heap of boulders, weeping silently. I limped unsteadily after her.

She raised her watery gaze at me. "Stay where you are," she told me. "I'll manage by myself."

I started to protest, but she went on in a softened voice, "Your foot is sprained. Get some rest." She turned away so I couldn't see her tear-streaked face and demonstratively lifted an exceptionally big rock.

I start liking this girl more and more… Too bad if everything will turn out as I think it will…

15 HOURS 55 MINUTES AFTER OBSTRUCTION
It's useless! Nothing and no one will help us! We'll die here of lack of air or boil up alive in the lava… It's… it's all not fair!! Why does Mamoru have to be so… so… gorgeous, so gentle, so… okay, so irresistible?! I've never met any boys like him, and now…WHY!!!..

16 HOURS 28 MINUTES AFTER OBSTRUCTION
We blocked every existing hole and crack in the chamber. Not a single stone was left… Well, of course we could use the stalactites from the faraway ceiling, but… However, the lava was seething through. The air turned heavy and burning our breathing. The eerie reddish glow was playing in Usagi's tangled hair…

God, I don't want to lose this girl after everything that has occurred here! No, I'm not selfish! It's just that… dying like this… and she's too beautiful, too small and helpless…

I looked at her, and tears glistened in my eyes… Darn. After all, am I a man or a boy?!

Cringing and grimacing of pain in my foot, I lowered myself down before Usagi. She sat with her back against the wall, knees bent underneath her, staring into space. I gazed into her blue… glassy eyes. They instantly warmed up and melted into two large teardrops that streaked down her dirty cheeks. I reached out and brushed them off gently with the back of my hand, leaving an even dirtier trace.

"You do know what awaits us here," I said quietly. "Do you?"

She nodded mournfully. "I'm not a kid, you know."

My eyes sunk. I couldn't make myself meet her gaze. I almost missed her whispering, "I wish this wouldn't have to end that way…"

I sucked in the stuffy air. "What do you mean… 'this'?" I queried fearfully.

She shrugged her shoulders and hastily glanced away. "Well… this…" Her voice rang like shattered glass, and unshed tears could be heard in those two words.

Only an idiot wouldn't understand.

Silence hung between us. I mean, what do you reply to such an obvious thing?!

Nothing.

I swallowed and took her hands, which lay weakly in her lap, and they scared me. Scared me because they were cold as ice although it was intensely hot in our prison. I lowered my head and, feeling my eyes swelling with tears, buried my face into the cool cup of her palms…

Her breathing ceased. I could feel her heart leaping in her small hands…

Realization dawned on me, striking like clap of thunder. This is her… her, my part, the piece of my soul that I've been looking for my entire life, never realizing I have… The girl that I needed, the girl I wanted… The girl that I want to touch and hold forever, knowing that I could always gaze into those enormously beautiful cerulean eyes, knowing that those innocently sweet lips would always tremble at my touch because she belonged to me…

I desperately pressed my lips to her tiny palms again and again, pain sweeping over me…

Her quaking velvety lips buried softly into the hair at the nape of my neck…

…and I belonged to her.

Electricity shot through my veins, and suddenly I sensed her icy hands flaring with warmth. Even with closed eyelids, piercing light that emitted from her palms… blinded me.

And I remembered…

She and I… hundreds of years ago… 

She, so utterly distant and beyond the reach of the mortals…

Became so unbelievably near, so unimaginably close…

The night we had spent in that small house, surrounded by cherry gardens…

Our death on the debris of Silver Millennium…

Princess of the Moon Kingdom, Serenity…

And I, Endymion…

The light disappeared.

I idly opened my eyes and saw… hers, wide, amazed, and… recognizing…

"Serenity," I whispered.

Her lips parted, but never said anything. She raised a faint hand to touch my cheek…

Something fell from her palms, landing with a short tinkle on the stony floor.

Her hand froze in the stifling air, her frail fingers shaking.

I clasped my own hand about the item. It was a golden locket created as a five-pointed star with a tiny lid in the centre. Slowly I opened it. Ivory-yellow light streamed out; a crescent moon began swirling around in the starlit sky; a soft and gentle melody chimed, the melody that I've heard a thousand times… thousands of years ago…

I remembered the thing. The locket that she had given me… right before we died…

Tears were clinging to Serenity's half-closed eyes. She closed my fingers over the golden medallion and whispered in a pained and hoarse voice, "Put it away."

I slipped the gold star into my jeans' pocket as my fingers enclosed her small hand and leaned over to kiss her wrist. And I understood… She's the one. I found her. The princess that has possessed my dreams since I recall myself… If I'd just… Oh, if I'd just knew who she was, and who was I… Then I'd have found her so much sooner… And now… 

Pain threatened my throat.

I couldn't force myself to witness her eyes after I ripped my lips away from her soft skin. And then she surrounded my neck with her thin arms, and, letting out a faltering sigh, she hid her face in my chest. 

I entwined my fingers into her shaggy and dirty blonde strands, pulling her to see her face… wet and not that beautiful. And I leaned in, taking her closer to kiss all those tears, all that pain she had suffered… away. I carefully caressed her satiny long lashes, tasting the slipping tear. Then she moved in, offering me her lips, dry and asking. I couldn't resist. And I knew that she was mine. Forever. Because we can't die. We won't die. For I'm… Endymion. And because I love her.

Like a steel crown of darkness and weighing heaviness fell off my head, and the last mists of oblivion dissolved, releasing me. Almost unconsciously, I got up, leaving Usagi there, on the rocky floor. Strange, but I didn't feel pain in my foot. Then I waited. For what? 

I guess for a scarlet rose petal to come fluttering before my nose. In a cave?

And suddenly I grabbed at my chest as something pricked it sharply. I saw beams of red light streaming between my fingers and clenched a fist. The light thickened and formed a stem of a flower, which bloomed at the end with blood-red petals…

I was holding… a rose.

I shifted a numb stare at Usagi. She was sitting there, hopeful and sure of me. My God, she knew what I was going to do, although I hadn't a faintest idea what she was thinking about.

She nodded at me approvingly.

I found myself nodding back. (?)

I took a good look of that flower. Then I swung back my arm for something I absolutely didn't know and thrust the rose into the wall. To my premium surprise, the little red flower PIERCED the wall made of STONE with its STEM.

I couldn't get it. Is it a titan stem or what?? But it's green…

I stepped closer to witness the wonder. Usagi tiptoed up behind me. And then we saw it. And heard it. Cracks, small creaks spiraling away from the hole that the 'titan' stem has created. And creaking, and cracks became larger and faster…

We leaped back just as the entire wall CREAKED and crashed down before us, producing no sound at all. Only piles of dust. 

After the dust bunnies settled down, and Usagi got out of the coughing fit, we observed the… tunnel. A very long, wide, and dark tunnel. A dot of light marked its end. Some bird flew by…

Usagi and I exchanged looks. 

And we ran.

I mean, I limped ahead.

Limped? 

My foot was burning with fresh pain… 

Usagi took hold of me, and, grunting…

"HURRAY!!!! WE'RE OUTTA HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!" I screamed with joy.

The rising sun was peeking over the mountains, submerging the peaks and clouds with peach light. Animals of bird sort were chirping carelessly. Somewhere below people in orange vests and helmets were roaming around. 

Usagi was there. Beside me. Dirty as ever. I mean, pretty as ever. And breathless with awe. She turned to me. Her large heavenly blue eyes were red but happy, yet they carried the look full of eternal innocence and tenderness that has been worn on that beautiful face for the millennia of our love…

I cautiously took her hand, caressing her palm with my fingertips, taking in every single feature of her face… every single line of her messy hair… and I collapsed.

SOMEWHERE, SOMETIME LATER
"Usagi, what do you think you're doing?! Get in bed this instant!"

"MOM!! I feel FINE!!! And I WANT to KNOW!!!!"

"Honey, the doctor had told us that you've suffered a severe mental shock, deprivation of water, both nervous and physical exhaustion, and inner burn of lungs! I'm afraid to think what will happen to you if you remember those terrible memories! What if you'll have a heart attack?! We can only thank Gods that you'd lost your memory… Get in bed."

"I WILL NOT GET IN BED… MOMMY! I've spent the whole past month in it!! And I'll have a heart attack RIGHT NOW if I won't know what had happened while I was in the cave!!!!!!!"

"Oh, dear… Here, have some medicine…"

"MOM!!!!!!!!!!!"

Good God! Why won't Mrs. Tsukino let me talk to her daughter over the phone?! What if I'm the only one who forgot? What if she knows?!! No; she has a 'debilitated mentality' and 'is not to be reminded of those awful events'!.. Duh. And what about ME?! People say that the two of us had spent an entire day in that cave, and I'll have a debilitated mentality (whatever that is) myself if I won't find out what had happened while -

I was snapped out of my unpleasant thoughts when some sort of a flying object got in contact with my head.

I stopped in the middle of walking up the sidewalk, then bent over to pick up the white paper ball that was used as somebody's missile. I uncrumpled the thing. It was a test on English.

I glanced over the paper and saw the back of some girl dressed in one of the many local schools' uniforms with two long blonde ponytails almost sweeping up the pavement behind her as she trotted on.

I frowned, then shifted my stare back to the paper. I couldn't help but howl out in shock as my eyes popped up from behind my sunglasses, "30%!!!!!!?"

The girl wheeled to a halt and whirled around on me. Her large heavenly blue eyes were scared and frightened, yet they carried the look full of eternal innocence and tenderness that has been worn on that beautiful face for the millennia of -

WHAT THE HECK AM I THINKING ABOUT?

I gulped and forced a smirk on to mask my expression. "Hey, are you really that stupid or just pretending?.."

The look of ferocity and mortification appeared on the girl's face. Her azure eyes sending bolts of electricity through me, she snatched her test paper from my numb hand and… stuck her tongue out at me, producing an adorable… wait, NOT exactly adorable teasing sound. Then she spun around on her heels and stomped off, her ponytails swirling in the breeze…

I took off my glasses and stared after the girl, blinking vigorously. Then a grin unconsciously stretched my mouth wide, and I murmured under my breath, "Funny girl…"

I had a feeling that something… sometime… somewhere… had happened… something that I have to remember…

Have to.

THE END!

By May K. Lunnaya