orange sky.

Celia

Later.

Soon.

That shadow finds an echo. Celia gives it back. She nods, and puts the palm he just kissed to his face, against his cheek, still cold to the touch. She's naked then, and he can see every carefully sculpted, cared-for part of her. Even her body is defined, day to day, by what she does. Her body is a weapon, just as much as his is. And just as when he frenzies, sometimes it seems that it doesn't even belong to her. It's just something that is made to hurt people.

Erich lets go of her hand, and she washes her feet until the cut on her foot opens and bleeds again, clear and free of dirt, of tiny rocks. She bandages it quickly and simply in gauze and tape, then slipes into the tent. She leaves the zipper half undone, knowing he's coming back.

The sun rises, and he greets it. She hides from it. It glitters off of the water he uses to wash himself, illuminates the smoke from the dying, dwindling fire. It will eventually warm the wine in the last, untouched bottle. It will warm the water in the jug and the stones around the firepit and the sides of Celia's tent. But right now, it's still cold. Dew speckles the ground.

She's asleep when he enters the tiny two-person tent. There's just enough room for the two bedrolls. Hers has that nice thick pad under it. Hers is rated to temperatures that will see her through some winters and all other seasons without fail. She is naked inside of it, the hood pulled up over her wet hair, completely cocooned in red. Celia does not wake when he comes in, or when he rolls out his bag, or when he lies down and sighs, or when he shifts closer to be nearer to her. She sleeps so heavily it's as though she's a different woman entirely than the one he was with tonight in the woods, the mad one, screaming and killing and running and weeping. She dreamt that woman into being;

but this is the dreamer.

Mid-morning, Celia wakes. She finds the bladder of water she set near her sleeping bag and bites down on the tube, sucking water into her body without even opening her eyes. She drinks greedily but slowly. She fumblingly unwraps a snack bar that smells of bananas and peanut butter and devours it in a few bites, drinks more and more water. Unzips her sleeping back halfway to let in some air, to let out some heat. Rolls over, sleeps again, just as heavily.

Hours and hours go by. She sleeps off the wine and the wound, the kill and the scream, the joy and the sorrow both. She sleeps off the fighting with Erich, the tension, the tightness in her left shoulder that flares up with anxiety or anger. She sleeps off Jack and the name Celia, the name Derek, the Hay-Adams, the high heels, the bikini waxes, the giggles, the lip gloss. She sleeps until even her dreams no longer take place in cities. She sleeps

until she is awoken by a powerful, painful need to first urinate and then eat something. Something substantial. Something hearty and preferably greasy that will stick to her ribs and weigh her down.

The tent does not dip or spin when she opens her eyes, sometime in the mid-afternoon. She still moves very, very slowly when she pushes herself up. The side of the sleeping bag slips down her arm and she blinks blearily. Her hair looks like -- well, like she drank herself stupid, ran through the woods like a banshee, and splashed around in a lake for a while. She has dark circles under her eyes, puffy and hungover. Her lips are dry and cracked. She's shaking a little bit, though not from cold. She doesn't whine or groan. She just sits up, very slowly, then closes her eyes.

Celia lays back down. She looks at Erich, in his own sleeping bag. And if he lets her,

her hand slips out and finds his, holding hands just at the fingers.

Erich

Erich is not an inert lump in sleep. He moves around, he turns in that rumpled old sleeping bag that's been used and washed and used again so many times that it's surely not even half as warm as it once was. Even so, at some point his arm finds its way out of the bedroll as the sun warms the tent. At some point both his arms, and his shoulders, and his torso down to the bottom of his breastbone finds its way out of the sleeping bag.

Which is why Celia is able to find his hand, come morning. Afternoon. Whichever. He's on his stomach by then, his face turned toward her, lips slightly parted. Snoring a bit. Might be drooling. His sleeping bag is rumpling a bit at the bottom. His shoulderblades are outside. His hand twitches in a dream when she touches it, and then abruptly his eyes open. He looks at her with that dream-clarity of someone who's really not very awake yet. He blinks a few times.

Then his hand turns over under hers. He links their fingertips and closes his eyes again. "Dreamt I was at the circus," he murmurs. "Show was just about to start."

Celia

He closes his eyes again. She closes hers again. When she talks it's muffled, because her breath is not okay and she turns her lips toward the sleeping bag to keep it from hitting him in the face.

"Was there a lion?" she mutters, and then she is yawning, heavily, curling in on herself with a shiver.

Erich

"No..." he's actually quite serious about this, like it was real, like it was happening and might still be happening somewhere in his subconscious. "It wasn't one of those three-ring traditional circuses. It was a cirque show actually. Like... acrobatics on a stage with music and lights?"

He yawns too. It's contagious. He isn't very careful about his breath, which isn't terribly great either.

"I was sitting waaaay up in the nosebleed seats. The lights had just gone down and everyone was all excited for the show to start. I think there was a woman on stage with a chair, like she was about to do one of those chair-dance routines where they flip around and balance the chair on one leg and stuff. It was dark, though. I couldn't see very well. How come dreams are always murky?"

Celia

Celia makes a noise, half ugh and half gag, when he yawns in her face. She turns away, her stomach roiling. She wants to sink down into sleep again, forever, but it's like she has risen up on a lake only to have it freeze to glass underneath her. She's awake now. No going back. Not yet.

Still: she holds Erich's hand, and he talks about his dream sleepily, and truthfully she barely follows it. She turns her head, looks at him through one pale eye. "Because the oneiroi pass through gates of horn and ivory, prophecy and nonsense, and because the gates are in their dark home, even they do not know which they bring you."

Her hand fiddles with his, idly. "Or because during REM sleep, neuron pairs fire at the same rate but without the concerted timing observed in slow-wave sleep, and that may mean that dream-sleep lacks the memory-consolidating neural chatter that might help us remember what we dream." She yawns again, turning her head again, and shrugs one shoulder. "That's just a possibility though. And I think that article was like... four years old."

Erich

So last night Erich discovered there's a part of Celia that is quite literally a lunatic. This morning he discovers there's another part that is, apparently, a Neuron journal-reading academic.

His eyes open blearily. He blinks at her a few sleepy-slow times. "Wait... what?"

He starts to stir: lethargic, glacial, like some frost giant out of norse myth waking from long slumber. First an abortive flex. Then a slow, slow roll, stepwise, shoulders first, then hips, finally a rearrangement of the legs. He's on his back down, and he's holding her hand with his arm stretched across his chest. Which is uncomfortable, so he slings it up over his head instead, scooting down a little. The sleeping back is deliciously warm against his chilled back.

"What's a oneiroi? Where'd you read that article?"

Celia

"N'mind," Celia mumbles sleepily, as he wait-whats. He moves, rolling and stretching and not letting go of her hand. She watches him, and for a brief moment her eyes track along his chest, up his arm, back to his face.

"Dream-daemons," she answers. "And the internet." There's a pause. Her fingers wriggle and begin to slip away. "I'm going to go pee."

Erich

[sleeping BAG. ffs.]

Erich

"I need to pee too," he says, and unzips his sleeping bag and throws it open. He's wearing boxers that look only slightly younger than his car. "You go right and I'll go left. It's not false modesty. I just don't want to end up downstream of you."

It's afternoon outside. The shadows are pointing west-to-east. Erich's stomach rumbles; other than an obscene amount of wine that his physiology nevertheless rapidly churned through, he's had nothing to eat. There's a rabbit corpse in front of the burnt-out fire, but at this point, twelve hours post-mortem with no refrigeration, even Erich realizes it's probably better off stewed with plenty of salt and pepper and onion than eaten hot off a spit.

Shoving his feet into his shoes, his heels crushing the backs of them, he trudges off to the left. There is, he supposes, a sort of primitive satisfaction in pissing on tree trunks.

Celia

"I already dug my latrine," Celia says bluntly enough, telling him exactly where he can't go. She emerges from her sleeping bag, as naked as she was last night, but illuminated now. She stretches, groaning at the aches in her joints, in her back, in the tight feeling of her skin around the loose feeling of her insides. She moves more slowly than Erich does. She slips her feet into her hiking boots without lacing them, grabs some of that miraculous biodegrading paper, and walks off into the woods, herself. It's warm enough now. The world around them is alive,

except for the two animals in the fire and beside the fire.

Later on she comes back, using the clean water in the jug to wash up quickly. She is quite brisk and no-nonsense about this, as she is with so many things. Naked, shameless, physical, carnal. Animal, in her way, now that the madness has passed. She returns to the tent and, sitting on her sleeping bag, pulls clean clothes from her pack and dresses in a t-shirt, a pair of panties, a pair of shorts she finds rolled-up inside, a flannel over it all, a new pair of socks to cradle her injured foot. She slowly, gingerly combs through her long hair and ties it back in a ponytail. She looks longingly at her bedroll, then peers out to Erich. She looks a little less insane, but her eyes are still puffy;

and she is still hungover,

and now she is starving. "Can you build up the fire? I've got some instant coffee and oatmeal packets, but I need hot water." There's a pause. "I suppose you don't need to cook any meat you catch unless you want to."

Erich

"I helped!" Erich calls over his shoulder, re: latrine. Maybe that means he thinks he should get a squat on it too.

Somewhat later they convene at the campsite. Erich gets there first, and he's pulling on his t-shirt and his jeans when Celia comes back. She's still naked. His eyes are on her as she crosses the camp; on the lift of her breasts and their movement over her ribs as she puts on her shirt. When she asks him to build the fire his mouth quirks.

"Normally, yeah," he acknowledges, "but that rabbit's been dead half a day and baking under the sun for the last six hours. I was going to stew it with some potatoes and onions, if you want to wait for that. You might wanna eat something else first, though."

Celia

"Oatmeal," she repeats, and glances at the rabbit. "The rabbit's all yours. So are you building the fire or am I?"

Erich

His mouth carries a wry cant. "Probably wise." And, picking up tinder, "I will."

So Erich builds a fire. And they boil water in two pots: one for her oatmeal and coffee, one for his stew. He peels an onion and chops it into quarters, salts the water, drops in some washed but unpeeled potato chunks. Then comes the messy, stinking business of skinning a rabbit carcass. The animal is lean with winter; hardly any spare there at all. Erich is quick and efficient about it, though. He doesn't seem to pity the prey very much. The spirit has been thanked. All that remains now is nourishment.

The rabbit goes into the stew in quarters. More salt, some pepper, and as the pot begins to boil Erich covers it, moves it out to the edge of the fire, and settles down to wait.

He shares a little coffee. And he rearranges his duffle bag and his bedroll, makes a 'couch' again, stretches his legs out and crosses his bare feet atop his shed shoes. After a while Celia comes to sit beside him. The stew is beginning to smell good. He asks her again if she wants some, but she's still so hungover, and he doesn't push.

They're both lazy and worn from the exertions of the previous night. Erich gorges himself on rabbit stew. He picks out the bones carefully and buries them; there's a sense this isn't just bear awareness. They stay around camp, and anyway there's not much left of day before evening comes. At one point Celia peels her sock and shoe off to look at her cut heel, and Erich is watching her with this look on his face, and he wants to go over there and slap a healing talen on her but --

he remembers what she said. About help; about knowing her own strength; about asking if she needs. He stays where he is.

In the dusk, he wants to hunt again. He asks her if she wants to help; he doesn't ask her if her foot is okay. She'll be the judge of that. In the end she comes with him, and they walk into the woods together as wolf and woman, her fingers loose in the fur of his ruff. As the shadows grow long they part, and she has the task of beating a stick against tree-trunks, leaves, flushing the prey. All at once there's a brown blur, a wild hare bolting; a grey blur behind it, intent, chasing, disappearing into the trees with a crash.

Some time later they're back at camp. And there's a spit over the fire, and a freshkilled rabbit on the spit. Erich turns it occasionally. Mostly, he lounges, lazy-eyed, feeling the fire's warmth on his bare feet.

"Thanks," he says quietly, and quite without preamble. "For letting me ... be a part, last night."

Celia

So: Erich builds a fire.

Celia, Kassandra, whatever her name is: she gets out two pots and fills them both with water. He peels and chops an onion while the water heats. Celia scrubs potatoes. He prepares the rabbit and she mixes boiling water into instant coffee powder and a bowl with two, three packets of oatmeal in it. They take their coffee black, and they have a quiet afternoon for some time while the stew cooks. When Celia walks, she limps slightly. She looks sleepy, even after the coffee. Especially after the large bowl of oatmeal and the apple she eats with it.

On the 'couch', she leans against his side. She closes her eyes and dozes, shakes her head when he asks if she wants some. She lazes, listening to the wind in the branches and the lake in the distance and the sound of Erich devouring his stew. Reclining on her side, she watches him bury the bones. The sun is already dipping low in the sky, the light golden and searing at the edges.

She inspects her heel. It's scabbing over, cleanly this time, and she takes some ibuprofen. Her eyes meet his for a moment when he's looking at her like that, but neither of them say anything.

The sky turns orange, for a few moments only. Shapes on the horizon turn black, like a shadow-play in the distance. Celia's jeans are dry and she's changed back into them, and she's buttoned up most of her flannel. He asks her if she wants to hunt with him. She looks up and nods; they rise and she ties her hair back. She goes alongside him for a while until he finds a scent, a track, then she goes ahead of him. His tongue laps once against her fingertips when she drifts past him. She moves quietly at first, then sudden and quick and loud, and something darks in a panic out of its burrow.

She feels a pang of sorrow for it, pity. A flash of memory from last night: the last beating of a gopher's heart, against her hands. The way it clenched around a makeshift knife. The way it died, terrified. The way she cradled it afterward, overcome, as though the intimation of a small creature's fear and pain and death unlocked the fear, pain, and death of an entire world inside of her own spirit.

They meet back at the camp. Erich has blood on his jaws even when he shifts back to the form she knows him best in; he washes and this time, Celia is the one who skins and prepares the rabbit. It's less practiced, but no less efficient in the end. He builds a spit; the share the blood between his teeth and her fingers until they wash themselves clean. She leans against him again as he turns the meat over the fire, drowsy, eating a banana. The puffiness around her eyes has faded over the hours; she has been drinking water. She mentioned, after her last cupful, that they would need to hike to get more. Water pumps are marked on the map; shouldn't be more than a fifteen, twenty minute walk. They can go after dark and it will be cooler. They can trade off carrying.

That was a while ago, though, that she said all that. Now she just curls against him, both of them barefoot again, but for the fresh bandage on her own, and watch their dinner cook.

He thanks her. Celia doesn't say anything for a few moments, then admits quietly: "I don't remember much after the gopher. I mean, I obviously know I ended up in the lake. And I think we fought. But everything is hazy." She turns her head a bit to look up at him. Her hair is down again, wavy but untended. "I...don't know if I did or said anything to hurt you or frighten you. I know I might have."

Erich

It's getting dark. That orange light is gone now. The west bears the last lingering glow of day: pale, then blue, then violet, then gone. They rest together, Erich and Celia. Fresh meat roasts over the fire. It smells good, good and hot and nourishing. Now and then juices drip. Hiss as they hit the glowing heart of the fire.

"We didn't fight." That's the first thing he says, quiet but certain. Then he's silent a bit, thinking. "I was a little unsure of what to do, or how to do it. I ... didn't really expect any of that. And sometimes I felt like I'd put my foot in it, messed something up, did something wrong. So at one point I got frustrated. But we didn't fight.

"You told me," and he tips his head against hers at this, a gentle rub, a small nuzzling, "that everything is okay and permitted and good. Even walking away or sitting down. And after that I was okay.

"We didn't spend the whole time together. You spent some time in the woods by yourself. Praying, I think. And I spent some time up on a tree, greeting the sun. After the gopher ... I left you alone for a while, too. Because you were so sad, and sometimes when I come down from a... a frenzy, I'm sad and worn out and need to be left alone. Later on you called me back, though.

"Everything was all right," he finishes. "It was good. Strange and not what I expected, but good."

Celia

She exhales softly when he tips his head to hers, nuzzles her like that. Her eyes are closed then. For a moment she nuzzles him back, her brow to his jaw, but he goes on. He tells her about her prayer at the end, which she does remember more clearly, but then he talks about how he left her alone because she was so sad, and how he thought of his own frenzies. Celia opens her eyes slowly, thoughtful. She looks a thim.

"I won't try to explain it," she says. "It... isn't to be explained. But I didn't need to be left alone then." There's a slight pause, and she gives him a small shrug. It rubs against his side. "I didn't want you to leave."

Her hand moves into his, not for the first time, not for the dozenth time, in the last twenty-four hours. Or more. Palm to palm, this time her hands meet his warmth with her own. She looks at their hands, hers so much smaller and that warm golden color, his more ruddy, thicker, rougher. She lays their fingers against one another, looks at the way they weave.

She is quiet a moment, then inhales, and sighs the words:

"We could share everything."

Erich

To her touch, his hand opens. His fingers spread to allow hers between, and then fold around hers. He is quiet, because he wants what she says to be true, but he isn't sure if it is. I don't know, he thinks. I don't know, I don't know.

So he says nothing at all. He takes a breath and he lets it out, and he squeezes her hand.

They share the rabbit. Erich takes it off the spit and splits it lengthwise; then he puts the pot of stew from the afternoon back over the fire because there's still broth in there. Plus potatoes and onions, which were there for her or for flavor, but not for him to eat. He leans against his 'couch' as he eats rabbit meat off the bone, looking beatific, transported by the taste of meat as fresh as can be. When he's done he stretches out, yawning, and they tell each other a few times that they really should go get more water, they should. Neither of them move.

The night is clear. The stars are out, and as the fire dies down those stars burn bright and clear. After a while, he talks again, he tells her -- quietly, a little hesitatingly -- that the two or three times he's died and come back again, there was no fear, no pain, no terror, no agony at the end. Only sudden and absolute peace.

And then rage, of course. But most creatures didn't have that luxury.

"So maybe," he adds, quiet and musing, "it's like that for prey, too. For your gopher and my rabbits. I don't think their last instants are terrible. I don't think they carry pain with them when their spirits cross over."

A small pause --

"I like to believe that."

Celia

Celia takes his silence in stride. Maybe it's the fire or the growing night or the smell of food, the closeness and the warmth: it is okay. He squeezes her hand; she holds his more firmly even though they don't talk for a while after that.

Rabbit is a light meat. It does not stick to one's ribs. Celia didn't eat the broth and potatoes earlier, but she does now, filling her stomach while they share his kill. When they finish, licking grease off their fingers, he stretches out and she lies down next to him, close as lovers. Her body is sore; his arm is comforting. So is his voice, even when he tells her about dying. Her eyes open then, listening to him, but she doesn't tense. She doesn't clutch at him: no, no, stop telling me this.

Peace.

She muses on his musing for a little while. Her tongue slips out, moistens her lips. "I have heard and read that there are five terrible passions. Rage, fear, grief, desire." Her eyes slowly blink. "And wonder. Joy. Love, maybe. They all have many names.

"All of them are sacred. Some nights you find all of them, or a few, or only one. They are all wild and of the Wyld, in their ways."

Her hand moves idly on his arm. Why? Why would she do that?

"Fire and wine and water are just... ways to unlock them in ourselves. To forgive ourselves for our passions and let them just be, without justification or judgement or restraint or regret." She's silent a moment, sighing: "People forget that about our tribe. That we're the guardians of the Wyld, and not just of women. How do you think such things are kept alive in a world covered in concrete and ones and zeroes and laws and litanies?"

Her head turns, rubbing her face against his side sleepily. She yawns, and sighs the exhale of the air she takes in. "I love you."

Erich

I won't try to explain it, she'd said: It isn't to be explained.

And so she doesn't. But they speak. He speaks, muses on the nature of death and peace and what the soul does or doesn't take away from a life so recently left behind. She speaks: muses about something so tenuously connected that if they had not shared the previous night,

almost everything,

he wouldn't see that frail, shining thread at all.

They are both talking about gophers. And grief. And why he walked away, and why she called him back. And why she drank so much, screamed like that, ran like that, kissed him like that, laughed like that. She does not explain it. It is not to be explained. But he understands a little better.

Gooseflesh breaks across his arms at her touch. He doesn't know why she does these things, and sometimes he rails at her quietly in the silence of his own mind. Tonight he just closes his eyes.

Which open again, there at the end. When she nuzzles him, rubbing her face against the side of his chest. When she says something that has been true in his secret heart for some time now, plainly and simply, without extraneous weight or connotation. He looks at the stars for a while. Why, he thinks: why, why, why would she say that. What does she mean; what.

He decides to let it go. Let it be. Let it move over him, through him: simple, plain, without extraneous weight or connotation. His arm tightens in a little squeeze.

"I love you."

Celia

And that's that.

It isn't to be explained, either, not by Erich or by Celia. No description of what it means, what responsibilities or obligations it implies, where it comes from, how long it will last, what is to be expected or discussed at a later time. She loves him. He loves her. It is as simple and as tender as that, with no hooks on the edges to catch and tear as it moves through them both.

The fire begins to die down. They really should go get water. Instead they brush their teeth, and stir the fire til it is glowing embers and little more. Celia listens to the air and determines that the wind will not be high tonight; they sprinkle earth on the fire to dampen it but not destroy all hope of lighting it again tomorrow. Despite their heavy sleep through the morning, they are both still tired. Something about being in nature is simultaneously energizing and relaxing; they find another rhythm, and it follows the sun.

Trash bag and foodstuffs are hoisted high again over the boughs where they hang. Visits to latrines are made. Celia, once again, strips down to bare skin and a bandage before she gets into her sleeping bag. It's gotten colder again. She curls up, looking at him when he joins her in the tent, talking in the darkness quietly:

"We have to go back tomorrow," she whispers to him. She sounds sad.

Erich

He is nearly crawling on all fours to get into the tent, which is what he needs to do to get in through the small, low doorway. Celia's tent is only barely large enough for two. It's really made for one. And it's made tough, made weatherproof, made as windproof as a breathable structure can be. It's a little like a cave, Erich thinks, and likes it in his mind. Caves are safe places.

His eyes glimmer through the darkness when she whispers. He is colorless: the hues of his skin and his eyes and his hair lost, the shadows on his body defining his motion and musculature in greytone. He unzips his sleeping bag and gets in, zipping it back up. His hand he leaves outside, open for hers.

"It's okay," he whispers back. "We can come again," but he doesn't know that for sure. He's a hunter. There's something about the light in Celia's eyes, the tone of her voice when she talks about Jack these days. Erich recognizes it. He knows the end can't be very far. He doesn't know what happens after that.

"Hey," he adds -- whispering still, something gentle and sad and joking in his voice. "Don't forget to call me to be your getaway driver, right? After you take Jack down."

Celia

His hand is left out there for hers. Celia sees that, and understands it, sensing the proximity of his hand even in the dark. Her sleeping bag rustles as she reaches out, taking his hand. He knows that her hunt is coming to a close just as surely as she did when he tore off after tonight's rabbit. Soon enough she will come back to the fire,

his broken neck in her jaws,

his blood on her chin.

She smiles sadly, but it's invisible in the dark. "I have a getaway driver," she whispers. "His name is Richard. Everyone calls him Duck. He's 'Dad' in my phone; if anything bad happens I can call him.

"And there's Damaris. She's raised me since I was a kid. She taught me how to do this. She's 'Mom' in my phone." Celia's thumb moves over his knuckles. "I don't know what happens after this, though," she goes on. "I mean, I know I have options. I could live in the commune, travel with some sisters. I could teach other girls, live like Damaris did."

There's a long pause. "I went to college for a while," she tells him. "There was a professor --"

No need to finish that story.

"I liked that. I thought maybe I could be a lawyer."

Erich

It's unlike Celia to leave a sentence half-completed. Erich wonders; he doesn't push. His hand squeezes hers for a moment: a tactile morse code, a substitution for the expressions they could otherwise read off each other's faces.

"I could see that," he agrees, smiling. "Getting that conviction is a kind of hunting, too. But you should do what you want. And take your time figuring out what that is."

Neither of them talk about where he fits into all of this. Neither of them talk about how he doesn't really fit into all of this at all. She has a getaway driver; she has Damaris. Mom and Dad in her phone. She has the sisters, the communes; she could pass her strange and bloody art on. She could go to college. Become a lawyer. Fight a different way. Fight the same way again, maybe, if after all her searching and thinking she finds her way back to this after all.

Not here, though. Not as Celia. A sudden, overwhelming sort of sadness seizes him, unexpected as a sneaker wave. He does understand mourning after all.

"Well," he whispers, "come say goodbye, at least."

Celia

Suddenly, she is so very sad. It crept up on her in pieces, not quite as unexpected as it is for Erich, but she those pieces were mysteries until this moment, until he says the word goodbye and fits them together. It's sadness. That's what they all meant.

"No," she says, the word a pang, a twist in the air between them.

No, she isn't going to come say goodbye when she's finished destroying this man, laying him to waste and ruin, when she's fulfilled the earthly part of the curse she called down last night and every night before this. Or:

No, she just isn't going to say goodbye.

"But you're my friend," she says, plaintive as he's ever heard her. "You're my real friend."

Erich

And of course, once the pieces fit, her protest flies right to the heart of it. My real friend, she calls him. Because her name is false, her history is false, her Dad is false and her Mom is false and the hotel room and the short skirts and the high boots and the little jackets are false, but

this is real.

Erich's sleeping bag rustles. He moves suddenly, quickly, reaching across to put his arm around her, his arms around her, hugging her fiercely and tightly against him.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry, I just don't know -- I don't know where you're going, or who you'll be, or what you'll be doing, or how I can still be in contact with you, or where I could possibly fit with all that. I don't even know where I'm going to be six months from now.

"I am your friend, though. This is real."

Celia

Everything about her is false. Except the parts that he has seen, the parts that she can show to people like Charlotte. The parts that are real and inexplicable and wild and confusing. And also like this: tender and warm and terrified and pleading.

His bag rustles and he moves, putting his arm around her. She feels the weight of it through the down, the way her entire bag shifts on her pad toward him. He's sorry, he's sorry, and she just doesn't want him to suddenly be gone, out of her life, like everyone else.

It's always sudden.

She unzips her sleeping bag, far. Her arm slips out and wraps around his body, skin to skin, pushing down the zipper of his bag, too, if that's what it takes. He's somewhere around how I can still be when she kisses him. It's unexpected but not impulsive; she has been thinking about this for weeks. Her hand is on the side of his neck, the tip of her thumb just behind his earlobe, and

it's not one of those rushed, inept kisses they've had three, four times now, barely qualifying. This time she doesn't go wide-eyed and apologize, or punch him in the thigh for interrupting her, or pull back just as he's leaning into her. She kisses him, catching his lips on her own soft ones, parting, searching,

heated.

Erich

Erich is not so insensate, or so blunderheaded, that his words don't begin to trail off when she opens her sleeping bag like that. By the time her arm has wrapped around him, by the time her body presses to his, he's somewhere around how I can still be and rapidly disintegrating.

Her hand finds his neck warm to the touch; the short-cropped tips of his hair stiff, but the tapering fuzz at the back of his skull soft. There's a pulse behind his ear, which trips as she leans in.

His mouth doesn't resist hers. He is not stiff, or startled. The words die a natural death even if the sentence doesn't; when her lips part so do his, and he breathes a breath from the quivering nothing between their mouths. This time he doesn't push her away. She doesn't stop. They don't start talking, talking, talking whatever beats fragile in the air between them to death.

His zipper hisses as he whips it down further, climbing out of his sleeping bag, thinking briefly and drunkenly of butterflies unzipping from their cocoons in the spring. It's spring, now, isn't it? Close enough, and the same instinct drives them: to be close, to find each other, before their short days are over. He rises on his elbow, leans over her where she lies. His hand is gentle on her cheek, and then light as it draws down her sleeping bag, flicks the flap open.

Heavier, then, on her body. Splaying over her side, the friction of fingertips and thumb against skin, feeling the sheath of muscle over her ribs, the small but solid shapes of those bones beneath. The flat of his palm slides upwards. He pants a soft sound into her mouth when he finds her breast, and then he's moving out of his bedroll, climbing into hers, their legs brush together, their torsos press together. He wraps his arm around her, hot and hard as living iron. He's cotton boxers and bare skin, a loose chaos of strength shifting her atop, urging her over him.

Their mouths part. Her hair falls across his face. He kisses her chin, lowers his head to her pillow. His thumbs are sweeping arcs across her lower back, and his eyes are on her face. Gradually he lifts his head again; finds her mouth there in the dimness and the shadows.

Celia

In her hotel room, reaching for him and touching him, she confessed that she's never been with a man she wasn't trying to destroy. Last night, she confessed that though she wants him she's scared of it: scared of wanting this, scared of what it will feel like. In some ways she's as nervous as any virgin, at least most of the time.

Right now she's not nervous at all. Not after last night. Not out here, where she is herself and things are as simple and intense as rage, fear, grief, desire, and joy. She kisses him and he can feel the experience of that kiss, the confidence in it, but not the seduction. Not the deception. She kisses him because she wants to kiss him.

And when he opens their bags further, climbs onto her bedroll with her, Celia welcomes him. She arches her back as his hand finds her side, runs up to cup her breast. Her torso presses against his own, her leg rising over his own to get him closer. She's naked; he's nearly there himself. Still her hand is running behind his neck, arm wrapping around him for no reason but to hold him. She imagines she can feel his heartbeat everywhere their skin touches: feel it pounding, and racing, and hitching.

They twist, half in the sleeping bag and half out of it, the cold air rising around their skins but being quickly burnt away by their own rising heat. Celia straddles him when he moves onto his back; she lays on top of him, sliding up his chest to keep kissing him. One of her hands is on his side, holding herself up. She seeks his mouth even after they part; she can't look him in the eye right now. She can't give herself a moment of doubt. She is so tired of doubt, and of thought, and of questions she can't answer.

Only one matters right now, and the answer is yes, and

I want this.

Erich

Erich has the sort of build that Jack might have had ten, twenty, thirty years ago; Erich, however, has an entirely different sort of heart. His ribs bear her weight where her hand rests on him. That torso beneath her palm feels like a side of beef; feels like a block of wood. Thick and solid and dependable. Not something that would disappear suddenly and without warning, gone in an instant, but then

one can never really know.

She doesn't meet his eyes. It's not possible in this light, anyway. She meets his mouth, though, and there's no room for doubt there. They are both experienced, and they are both nearly virgins. Ahrouns don't exactly have booming social lives, he told someone somewhere along the way; her or Charlotte or someone, it doesn't matter. He shudders into this kiss and very nearly bites her lip. When her mouth opens this time his tongue flicks inside, traces the ridge at the roof of her mouth, traces the corner of her lips.

He wants to lick her, bite her, take her in his teeth like an animal. Her breasts are flush to his chest, and this is maddening. Her stomach is flush to his, and this is maddening. There is a layer of cotton between her pelvis and his, between her cunt and his cock, and this, this in particular, is maddening. His hips flex against hers; his hands follow her back all the way down, past the waist; he palms her ass, grips her in his hands, pulls her tight against him, grinds her against his erection.

It's not the first time they've touched like this, so boldly and so intimately through a single layer of cloth. It still spears through him, electrifies him. His head thumps down. He makes a short, roughedged noise, some sort of grunt or groan, some sort of encouragement or entreaty.

Celia

If he were Jack, or another man, she'd be talking to him right now like no woman has ever dared, like his wife never would. She'd be gasping about how wet he makes her like it shocks her, like no one has ever made her feel like this, no man's ever managed to make her come, like his hands on her make her transcendant, like his dick makes her see god. She would perform, watching him at every second, figuring out where to hook him, tug on him, to pull him down ever deeper.

Erich isn't Jack. And the comparison between his body and what Jack's body might have been like never crosses her mind. Their relative inexperience with anything like this doesn't spring unbidden into her thoughts. She feels him shudder and kisses him harder, slower, moaning softly against his tongue as he touches her body, tastes her mouth. Just before his hands smooth down her back to her ass, her hips begin to wind on him, rubbing herself against him through that thin layer of cotton. Erich pulls at her then, grinds himself to her body, and Celia loses track of what her mouth is doing. She gasps, shivering, her hips bucking slightly with mindless want.

Last time, there were three, four layers between them. At least two. Not that she's counting now. But it's different. She can feel him so perfectly, right down to the ridge beneath his head, and it's dizzying to her. "Oh," she sighs, and is reaching down between them, to his side and his groin, tugging at the elastic of his boxers, pulling them away and down only just far enough that the next touch he feels is her hand wrapping around him, stroking him

once, twice,

before she guides him into her. His cock presses to the slick heat of her opening right as she's leaning over him again, kissing him again, groaning into his mouth.

Erich

Four layers last time, then. Three. At least two. Not that she's counting now. Not that he can remember now, or even think very clearly. He can be forgiven for that: she's reaching between them and there's scarcely any room; he's pressed them so tightly together. Her hand slips down between her abdomen and his, and she's all lean strength and he's all muscle mass. When she tugs his boxers down he lifts his hips to help her, but a shudder runs through him, right down to his thighs, right down to his knees. Her knuckles brush the thin line of hair running down from his navel; apart from that, his torso is largely smooth, and what body hair he does have is fair, white-gold, visible only in the sunlight.

Of which there is none right now. He's only seen her in daylight a handful of times, and each one of those times she was, at least to some degree, acting. She's not acting now. She's not saying the words that she knows will hook into him somewhere so deep he won't even feel it; won't ever escape it. She's not pressing those buttons she knows so coldly and so intimately and so well. She's just

stroking him,

making his head arch back, making the pulse in his throat beat to match the one in his cock. He groans, and it's louder this time, it's outright loud; she's kissing him again and the sound he makes then, when she shows him where to find her, is as raw and rough and vulnerable as she's ever heard him. His eyes are closed. His brow is knit. His hands are at her hips, his palms to her skin, but his fingers have lifted, suspended a few quivering centimeters over her as though in the clamoring of his nerves he's forgotten how to make them do what he wants.

He has forgotten. He forgets how to move his fingers, how to kiss her mouth, how to speak, how to think. One of his hands drops to the half-asunder sleeping bag beneath them. He grasps a fistful. He tries to be still, tries to let her go as slow or as fast as she wants, tries to give her time and space and patience while she takes him into her body, adjusts to him, stretches to him, but

he's shuddering again as he presses past that first tightness, he's rubbing his face against hers and pressing his mouth to hers in loose, panting, primitive approximations of kisses; he's opening that one hand over her lower back and guiding her down, deeper, uttering some half-formed prayer to god. His flanks and his thighs flex; he meets her halfway, thrusting up from beneath her, groaning again, reaching back over his head with his free hand to grasp some surer anchor than a fistful of down: the edge of her pillow, the edge of her sleeping pad -- whichever, both.

She's thought about this for weeks. He's wanted this -- consciously, subconsciously, unconsciously -- for longer than that. It's not worth counting the days. It's enough that he wanted this; it's enough that she's here,

not his, not for forever, no promises, no vows,

but here. A moment; an answer: yes.

Celia

It might have been months, if she hadn't realized how badly she doesn't want to lose him. They might have gone on like this for a long time, holding hands whenever they could, kissing each other's cheeks or shoulders or hands loosely, curling up on makeshift couches, hugging for lingering minutes. But it might only be a matter of weeks before she is shuffled into a car, dark sunglasses covering her face, head down, slipping into the back seat with Duck in one of his brown suits in the front to take her away again. Back to Damaris, to change her name and erase her identity again. And he said the word goodbye.

The truth is that she's been drawn to him for a long time now. The truth is that she doesn't want to abandon this friendship like she has so many others. The truth is that she wants him, terribly and almost painfully, and has been thinking about doing this, just like this, ever since they found this campsite. If he had kissed her when she was drunk, wild, biting his chest hungrily, she would have taken him then. On the ground, if that's all they had.

But she takes him now. Not because she's high on ritual and wine, and not because he was telling her how bad he wants to fuck her, and not because she's afraid of losing herself again and again, losing everything again and again. She just wants him, in a way she can't remember wanting anything for a very long time.

She is working herself down on him, slowly, and his hands do not know how to touch her. She can feel him shuddering with desire and restraint both, so she takes him slowly, easing him inside of her as though if she goes too fast she might kill him. The feel of him makes her body clench with longing and hunger; she turns her face, gasping along his jaw, the sound hitching in her throat with a half-voiced whimper. Erich's hand manages to find her lower back, pushing her onto him, closer, lifting his hips to fill her more solidly, and again she tightens around him inside, responding to that flex, and then it's only a moment before she's starting to

ride him.

Celia reaches for his chest, his shoulder, runs her hand to his bicep and gasps: "Put your hands on me." Not one. Not grabbing the bedroll or the ground. She kisses him, hands on his flesh, roaming up to his jaw while her hips roll. Her back should feel cold but she's hot, hot everywhere, sweating already, pushing down on him with a slow, deep counter-thrust that makes her loose a soft, ragged noise from her throat. Almost another oh, not quite that coherent. She does it again, working at him harder now, putting her palms on the ground to either side of his chest to lift herself up. She doesn't rise over him, not yet, but holds herself straight-armed over him, circling her hips on his lap, moving him inside of her the way she's wanted to, was afraid to, thought she might not know how to without breaking his heart.

Erich

She only has to ask once. He lets go of the padding under them so fast she might think he was just waiting for permission, waiting to hear he can do this without frightening her or hurting her or -- something absurd like that. It's not that at all. It's been a long time since the night at the gas station, the second one, the one in Browntown, when she told him she was going camping and he looked worriedly into the woods because what might be lurking there.

There's no reason to worry about that now. The answer was always: her. She was there in the woods, in the wild. She was the predator in the dark, the hunter under the moon. Her.

So -- his hand unclenches from the pad. Dives into her hair. He rolls up to her, his shoulders lifting from the bedding, her forearm caught between his bicep and the side of his chest. He kisses her. Tonight's not the first time they've kissed, but tonight's the first time they've gotten it right. Worked out whatever issues and hang-ups they had, put it all aside, stop thinking just for a moment about the whys and the why nots and how this is a Bad Idea and, and, and --

"God," he says again, moaning it, and they both know there is no God, not the way the mortals understand it; they both know there is a Gaia and there is a Luna and there is a whole menagerie of spirits out there, but right now that's the only word that comes to mind. She's riding him, her hands on the ground, and something about that seems right. Of course she would be the one with her palms to the earth. Of course he would be the one lifting against gravity, fighting it, forgetting it as he answers the wind of her body,

faster now,

his palms rubbing over her shoulders, skimming down her sides, coming up to weigh her breasts against his cupped hands. He can't seem to stop kissing her. Even when her mouth leaves his, goes wandering over all those tender shivering spots behind his ear, under his jaw, at the hollow of his throat, he's kissing her, some part of her, her cheek, her temple, her hairline.

Celia

God, he says, moaning as she moves on him, as he runs his hands all over her, kisses her everywhere his lips can fall to her skin. She shivers when he rubs her breasts. She kisses him drenchingly, pressing his head back to the bedroll with the demand in it, pressing her body to his just like it was at the start. His arms go around her; his hands touch her sides, her hips, lift her thighs higher to either side of his body.

"Melantha," she breathes, suddenly, even as she is grinding her cunt down on him, sending a hard shiver of pleasure up her torso. She gasps it, gasps for air, repeats: "My name is Melantha."

Erich

[fml, 2 whole dice.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (6, 6) ( success x 2 )

Celia

[me too!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 5, 5) ( botch x 1 )

Erich

Melantha.

It doesn't even register as a name at first. He doesn't know what it means. It could be an oath, a command, a curse, the sort of thing that slips unbidden from loose tongue caught in the midst of --

this.

He looks at her, uncertain. Half-lost. His eyes fall shut when she shivers; he feels it all the way through her, under his hands and against his arms, in her thighs, inside. She gasps like she's drowning, like she's drowned and just now returned to daylight. She gives him that word again, and something else. It's not just a word. It's a secret, her secret name, he thinks: she has a secret name just the way all witches and goddesses do.

"Melantha." It's an easy sound to exhale just like that, carried by the rush of his breath. Something in his chest has clenched and won't let go. His eyes glimmer; sting. He takes her face between his hands and slows her for a second, slows her down just for a second so he can lift up to her and kiss that name off her mouth. "Melantha."

Moments later his hands are dropping back to her hips. It's a sort of blessing: free rein to do with him as she pleases. And she starts to move again, and he holds her by the hips and looks down to see the motion of their bodies, that sweet wind of her body, that grind at the end that makes them both shudder and groan.

He looks up on that shared moment. Finds her close, looking at him or not -- he can't be sure. When she kisses him she pushes him down, so he lifts her up, holds her cantilevered on his hands and on the rise of his body beneath her, moves into her with that same hard drive she's ridden him with, meets her stroke for solid stroke. His brow is pressed to hers; his eyes open, breathing harsh. This is a hunt, too. They're chasing down their pleasure, running it to the ground: his hands are urgent and urging now, driving her body down to meet his, filling the small tent with the heat and humidity and sound of their coupling.

He's starting to come apart at the edges. His eyes shut, he groans, he opens them again. His kiss is a messy, inexpert thing. He bites her lip as they part, gasps as she moves, and for an instant she can feel him grasping at her waist, at her hips, trying to contain her or hold her or slow her, slow down, wait --

-- and he can feel the flickering tension in her, the resistance, the sudden edge that wasn't there before. There's a split-second, a fleeting moment where he searches for her in the darkness, kissing her because he can't see her, kissing her and listening to her body, her movement, the sound of her breathing.

The instant passes. His hands rub up her back instead. His hands are all over her: her stomach, her breasts, her shoulders, her hand. He hand has found hers. He laces his fingers through hers, holds tight. Gasps as she slides, groans as she comes back down. He doesn't stop her. He doesn't slow her. He meets her where she meets him; gives what she gives him right back to her, intense, hard, unflinching,

his eyes locked on hers glazing over, going incoherent, squeezing shut as his head snaps back. The tendons in his neck are taut. The look on his face is almost agony, almost rapture. He starts to call to god again but it comes out an unformed shout, primitive, primordial.

Celia

No one has called her by that name in more years than she can count. No one has ever called her by that name when they've been inside of her, under her, wrapped around her and kissing her, looking at her like this. But it's her true name, the one that is forgotten like the most beloved names of some goddesses. She gives it to him because she doesn't know if he's going to cry out her name and she doesn't want him to call her Celia. She doesn't want him to call her Kassandra.

They are rolling, thrusting together, and he can feel her slick and tight around him, meeting him, turning him molten as she is. He lifts his shoulderblades from the bedroll in an arch when they kiss like that, hard like that, and the arch of his body up to hers makes her put her hands on his face, holding him there for a moment like she is

just as afraid as he is that he might stop, that he might go away, and be gone, and she won't be able to find him.

They are going harder now, faster. He bites her lip; she gives a shudder and a cry that's almost a shriek. Her back is warm and damp with sweat, just as the air around them is warm and damp from their breathing, from their moving,

and loving.

His hands go firm on her hips, trying to hold her, he can't, please -- and she shivers, rears slightly, in a way wholly different. Fearful, almost. Tension that goes through her like an arrow, startling her as much as anyone, pleading that never finds voice. She trembles, just for a moment, when he looks for her in the dark. His hands run up her back; she eases into his arms again, melts against his chest, grateful and sweet when she kisses him back.

Their hands pass over one another's wrists, tracing pulses. When they are palm to palm again, their hands lace, and she holds him there, raining kisses on his face, on his jaw, on his neck, moving her face to the side of his throat. All this time she could have risen up, ridden him, really given it to him, but she stays close. She never goes so far that he cannot kiss her, that she could not kiss him back.

That relenting unlocks her. That relief from her own unexpected ripple of unease washes through her, flows alongside her rising need for him, makes her cry out gaspingly as she starts moving herself faster on him. She holds herself up again then, one hand on the bedroll's mat, one hand locked in his, unable to kiss him because she's unable to breathe normally. Her back is bowed, arched, her hips pounding herself on him maddeningly, wantonly.

When she comes it is set off like a line of gunpowder, a sudden spark that burns upward explosively, gripping her in the midst of it. Every thrust down onto him brings another eruption of pleasure, pouring through her in wave after wave of liquid flame that laps at her insides, licks her inner thighs and illuminates her flesh. The sounds she's making almost sound like struggle, like pain, noises from her throat that are torn between pleading and demanding. Moments roll by like this, coil after coil of ecstasy unwinding through her core and her limbs until she gasps, heavy and full.

She slows by degrees, still riding him, but easing downward. It only makes each thrust harder, more transformative. In seconds she's just grinding on him, as deeply as she can get him, lowering her mouth to kiss him wetly, eagerly, hungrily though she's panting, swirling her hips in torturous circles around him. Her skin is electricied. Her mind is transported, and her eyes -- when they open to his -- glazed with gratification. She looks drowsy, almost, unfocused,

and still her body pulls at him, in lazy undulation, and all she can do is quiver every time her cunt and his cock slide and pulse together.

Erich

There's something heartbreaking about her relief. That after all this, there's still that moment when she doubts. That after all this, there's still that moment when he gives her cause to doubt. That in the darkness she's trembling, poised on the brink of some irrevocable retreat; that he relents and she's grateful for it.

It's a second twist in him. A sharp pang that plucks the same chord her name given from her lips plucked; harder this time. His brow is furrowed when she starts to move again. Their hands twine. She raises up finally. He runs his free hand up her body, skimming sweat from her breasts. She starts to move, wanting, wanton, and he's losing his grasp on reason, his head is arching back and he's starting to make that sound and --

she goes off, flame to gunpowder, spark to gasoline. She goes up in flames and on that first reckless slide he loses himself. She lights him up. He comes: so hard that the space between his eyelids goes white-hot; so hard that he lifts her on his thrust as though gravity has simply ceased to matter.

She doesn't hold. She doesn't stop. She's slamming down on him, riding him, pounding herself down, over and over and over. And his orgasm tips over a cliff; turns into something obliterating. He's coming into her, meeting her, filling her, fucking her on every relentless thrust. It's like they've forgotten they're merely mortal; that these shells have limits. He's shouting through clenched teeth, and then bellowing, and then simply calling out, crying out, groaning, shuddering, jolting under her, jumping inches off the ground when her cunt squeezes or slides or rubs or clenches in some way that fries every last nerve-ending in his body. It sounds like surrender, then. It sounds like surrender and exhaustion and need and ecstasy in its purest, most wracking form.

And she

is

slowing at last, easing now, still going, riding it out. Making it last. He didn't have to ask her after all. He couldn't now if he tried. Somewhere along the way he's reached back with his free hand again. He's grasping the edge of the sleeping pad again, clenching it so hard she'll find a fissure in it when she rolls it up in the morning; holding on like it could tether him to earth while she threatens to pull his mind, his sanity, and his very spirit out of his body with every slow grind of her cunt. His temples are wet with sweat; the back of his neck, his sternum, his back. He's shuddering under her, looking at her like he'd be lost if she left him now. Like he might just die if she slid herself off him and got up and walked away now.

Don't leave me, he thinks. It breaks his heart again. He untangles his hand from hers and touches her face, touches her mouth, lifts his head with great heavy effort to find her kiss.

Celia

Her mind is blown. That isn't flattery, and wouldn't be if she said it aloud. It isn't praise, just... simple fact. She moves on him until she can't anymore, until her elbows buckle and she shivers, curling to his chest and rubbing her face against his jaw for a moment or two before she just... goes still. Just lies there atop him, drained of motion, heat rising off of her back and her flank where they're exposed to the air. She is grateful for that; she feels feverish. Mad.

Don't leave me, he thinks, but she is not thinking at all. He's touching her face, his hand heavy, and she makes a low answering noise, exhausted beyond the physical, shifting herself between his side and his arm. Her eyes are closed.

It's as though, now that the final moment of transcendance has passed, she ceases to exist. Or: just goes back to dreaming. He can feel her breathing, her chest moving against his chest, her legs and arms wrapped around him.

After a little while, she shivers again. It's a different kind. She doesn't wait to be comforted or covered; Celia twists slightly, grabbing the edge of his sleeping bag and pulling it over them, around them. The bags don't exactly match, and could not be unzipped and formed into a double bag. But the weight of it and their conjoined bodies will keep them well warmed for some time. She is semi-conscious again, and her eyes have drifted open into slits. Her hand moves on his side, stills, and her palm simply cups around his ribcage.

"Thank you," she whispers, their feet tucked together, their bodies angled so he can stay inside of her. For now.