Jarn’s Journal is the fictional journal of an alien stranded in Africa 125,000 years ago. He is being hailed as a god by the human ancestors he has discovered. His story is the remote background of the Jarnian Confederacy, the setting of my science fiction novels. The Journal to date is on my author website.

Day 672

The equinox is close, if not here. The grass is shriveling, though not yet as brown as when I arrived – that must have been a drier than normal year. Plant food is harder to find, and some of the animals are leaving. Already the shaman has asked me if I will go with them to the Gather. I wasn’t trying to read her mind, but I couldn’t help picking up what a coup it would be for her group to be accompanied by a god.

I am not a god! Why can’t I get that across?

Besides, I don’t think I can keep up with them.

They will be walking. The longest distance I’ve walked, since that first disastrous day, is from here to the camp. It takes the shaman a little over an hour. I takes me two, and I’m pretty well worn out when I get there. In fact I’ve done it only once, the time I took Songbird home. No doubt they’d carry me, but I don’t want to slow them down.

And to be very honest ….

I’m not sure I can stand the stench. They do the best they can, but water is carried from the stream, sanitation is non-existent, butchering is done in the camp … well, let us just say that any group of people that large, carrying out their life without benefit of the amenities I have in my shelter, stinks.

It wasn’t bad at first, when they had only been at the camp site a day or so. But odorous materials pile up with time.

Admit it, I’m spoiled. I like my shelter, which now has running water, modern sanitation, a comfortable bed, and smells faintly of whatever flowers or grasses I’ve brought in. I don’t want to leave it.

Now I just have to figure out how to tell the shaman no, politely. Perhaps this journal, which requires the computer in my shelter, could serve as an excuse? But I will miss having someone intelligent to talk with.