ed tree
trunks, the dense greenery, the lianas, creepers and vines of a
tropical rain forest--but dimly. Green murk swirled in like thick
smoke with every gust of wind, with the rain obscuring vision almost
completely.

Temple ran until his lungs burned and he thought he must exhale fire.
His leaden feet fought the mud with growing difficulty for every
stride he took. He ran wildly and in no set direction, convinced only
that he must find shelter or perish. Twice he crashed bodily into
trees, twice stumbled to his knees only to pull himself upright again,
sucking air painfully into his lungs and cutting out in a fresh
direction.

He ran until his legs balked. He fell, collapsing first at the knees,
then the waist, then flopping face down in the mud. Something prodded
his back as he fell and reaching behind him weakly Temple was aware
for the first time that a bow and a quiver of arrows hung suspended
from his shoulders by a strong leather thong. He wore nothing but a
loin cloth of some nameless animal skin and he wondered idly if he had
slain the animal with the weapon he carried. Yet when he tried to
recollect he found he could not. He remembered nothing but his frantic
flight through the rain forest, as if all his life he had run in a
futile attempt to leave the rain behind him.

Now as he lay there, the mud sucking at his legs, his chest, his
armpits, he could not even remember his name. Did he have one? Did he
have a life before the rain forest? Then why did he forget?

A sense not fully developed in man and called intuition by those who
fail to understand it made him prop his head up on his hands and
squint through the downpour. There was something off there in the
foliage ... someone....

A woman.

Temple's breath caught in his throat sharply. The woman stood half a
dozen paces off, observing him coolly with hands on flanks. She stood
tall and straight despite the storm and from trim ankles to long,
lithe legs to flaring loin-clothed hips, to supple waist and tawny
skin of fine bare breasts and shoulders, to proud, haughty face and
long dark hair loose in the storm and glistening with rain, she was
magnificent. Her long, bronzed body gleamed with wetness and Temple
realized she was tall as he, a wild beautiful goddess of the jungle.
She was part of the storm and he accepted her--but strangely, with the
same fear the storm evoked. She would make a lover the whole world
might relish (what world, Temple thou