wait til dark.

Erich

She sleeps. Her consciousness seems to dissolve like sugar in the rain. He wraps his arm around her to keep her warm, or perhaps just to keep her close. Exhaustion is on him suddenly, a grey undertow seizing him and pulling him under without a struggle.

He wakes briefly to the rustling of sleeping bags. He's bleary already, though it's only been a handful of minutes. He helps her, tugging, shifting, pulling their bags together and covering their bodies the best he can. She thanks him. He doesn't think it was for what they managed with the sleeping bags, but

he doesn't have the strength to think anymore.

He likes the way she wraps her hand around his side. That's his last thought, descending into sleep. He doesn't know why, and it doesn't seem to matter. But he likes it.

At some point in the night, they stir, they slide apart. He comes awake when it happens, but he's disoriented and dazed. They shift; rearrange. They're tangled and the sleeping bags are rumpled and some parts of their bodies are too warm, others too cold. Half-asleep, they move around and wiggle and tug and pull and

eventually get their bedding into some semblance of order. Settle again, his arms coming around her. He's slept like this once before. Wrapped around her, close against her, whuffing in his sleep, growling sometimes at some imagined enemy threatening to take her from him.

He doesn't growl tonight. He whuffs; he wraps. But his dreams are languid and heavy and he doesn't remember them. They're full of fleeting shapes and green shadows. Sometime before the dawn he wakes, he pulls her a little closer to his body. He thinks:

Melantha,

and then he's warm and still and breathing against her back again, the heavy muscles of his body loose and supple with unconsciousness.

Celia

Someone visits him in one of his dreams. He will forget, at least anything but the impression. Female, and very -- not old. Antiquated. Bygone. From a time long, long before his own. Her hands on his shoulders are heavy, but not weighing down. There is the sense of being explored, of being examined, of being studied. Learned. He is embraced, for a very long time, and she is dark and warm and fragrant; night-blooming. His dreams change. She leaves. He chases a rabbit through the undergrowth and eats it til his belly is full of hot blood and lean meat and he sleeps in sunlight, unafraid, a luxury wolves have only in their dreams or certain spirit-worlds.

He does not growl in his sleep. Their naked bodies are pressed together -- naked, of course, after he shoves his boxers down the rest of the way and kicks them to the bottom of the sleeping bag. Nocturnal birds chortle and cry to each other outside. Animals creep from burrows and nests and dens, inspecting unfamiliar scents, avoiding the frightening, confusing ones. Celia -- Melantha -- sleeps on her back, Erich wrapped as much around her as he can get, her chest rising and falling underneath the banner of his arm.

Hours go by. The sun rises and climbs. Cool air touches his chest and his side because she's moving, the sleeping bags are shifting, and she is slipping away from him. But when he stirs she puts her thumb gently on his lips. Her knuckles brush over his cheek. It is somehow communicative: coming back. shh.

And come back she does. A few minutes later, at least, after she's relieved herself and washed herself a bit and returned to him. She carries what's left in the water jug. She has an apple. She brings him jerky, sliding back down into their nest of sleeping bags and tucking cool feet against his. He can feel the bandage wrapped around her heel. Melantha's eyes are somehow shadowed even in the morning, all the light diffused by the roof of her tent. She says nothing. As though they are primitive, as though they do not need to; she bites hard into her apple, juice on her lower lip, munching it as she watches him.

Looks at him. For no reason but to look at him.

Erich

Consciousness returns to his lazily the next morning, much as it had that morning in her hotel room. The first time he wakes it's only barely, and when she touches him, quells him, his eyes slip gratefully shut again.

The second time is only minutes later. It feels like an eyeblink to his dream-distorted timesense. He opens his eyes as she comes back into the tent. The sun is up, filtering through the nylon, casting color into the air. He's so fair that it colors him as well, and so he turns red or blue or green or grey, whatever color it is her tent is.

She's eating an apple. He could make a joke about that, but then they might have another heated debate about Eve and Lilith and apples and serpents and...

...and he wouldn't really mind. But he doesn't start the debate. There's silence, and it's primitive and comforting, and he doesn't feel the need to talk. She is looking at him. He is looking at her, forgetful in the moment of why they are here and where they need to go and the city, the people, Jack, Mom and Dad, where she might go, how she might leave. All of it. His eyes blink slowly. Irises blue. That doesn't change, even in this light.

And after a while he pushes himself up on his elbows. He smells like sweat. He smells like sex. He smells like her. It's a good way to smell. The inside of the tent is well and truly primordial now: a polyester cave. He yawns, and then rolls onto his side, one elbow -- stretches to grab one of the sticks of jerky. Slumps back down on his back with a groan, like even this was just so much effort.

Still they haven't broken the silence. The wrapping crinkles: he rips the packet open and fishes a slab of dried beef out, gnawing.

Celia

The tent is shades of grey. There are lines of green identifying where poles slide in and create the curving frame. She's returned and there is a trace of sunlight coming through the tent-flap; the outer shell is halway unzipped, leaving only the netting. Fresh air comes in, mixing with the scent of the two of them, waking them up a little but not too much. Not a lot at once.

She eats her apple, and yes, they would have a debate about Genesis and where myths about women and snakes really come from and what they symbolize and how Eve and Lilith are just the virgin/whore dichotomy all over again, the idea that women are dualistic and can be defined by and understood according to their sexual availabilty and, and, and

he doesn't start the discussion, and Melantha doesn't speak at all. She eats, crunching. He eats, gnawing. Staring at each other, cuddled together, eating their strange little breakfast. She yawns after awhile, too lazy to eat after the first half of the apple. So she lets one hand loll, holding it, and scoots a little closer to him, resting her head on his chest and closing her eyes as though she's quite content to go back to sleep. Sleep all day, perhaps. Go back to town later.

Go back to

work.

Erich

And for his part, Erich is quite content to lounge about himself. To gnaw his beef jerky. To have Celia -- Melantha -- resting her head on his chest the way she's done before so many times,

though not quite after a night like that,

and to loll half-tangled in their mussed sleeping bags. Sometime during the night or the morning both bags came unzipped. They're more like a sandwich now, a top bag and a bottom both spread open. His is completely flat, just a glorified comforter with a zipper. Hers is fancier, contoured, an open clamshell under them.

He combs his fingers through her hair as she rests against him. It's a gentle, absentminded sort of caress: his nails scritching against her scalp, his first knuckles deep in the mass of it. After a while he just wraps his arm loosely, comfortably over her shoulders. As if they could stay here forever,

when he knows they can't.

She has to go back to town. Go back to work. Go back to Jack. Strange; but the thought doesn't eat at him quite the way he thought it would. It doesn't bother him very much at all. Maybe because that would be Celia, not Melantha. Maybe because all that is false, but this is true. You're my real friend.

Or maybe because there are other things to be tormented about. His mind brushes against it; shies from it. Some part of him, some lovestruck mooncalf part of him, wants to make promises now. If she has to leave, if she has to become someone else -- he'll find her! He will! He'll follow her to the ends of the earth! And then perhaps he could jump through a waterfall. He laughs to himself: she might not get that reference. If she did, they'd have another heated debate about that movie.

And anyway, he knows better than to make or extract stupid promises. Just be, she said to him, not so long ago. He decides, at least for today, this morning, he'll do just that. Just be.

They might drowse. They might sleep again. Nap a while. Or they might not. At some point, though, they're both awake. His bag of beef jerky is half-devoured. Her apple ... is either a core or tossed aside somewhere to be cleaned up later. His chest expands under her with a deeper breath, the sort that signifies some impending action. He kisses her hair, the hand of that arm still slung across her shoulders curling into a loose fist, rubbing his knuckles against the outside of her arm.

"We still need to get water," he murmurs.

Celia

They touch each other more easily than they have. It isn't as though they were afraid to go near one another before; it's that even when they lingered, they were careful. They held back. They lied to themselves about why they hugged, why they held hands. He touches her hair now and she nuzzles his chest and there is no deception in it, of themselves or the other.

She does have to go back to the city, and go back to Jack, and destroy him. She has to eviscerate the motherfucker. He'll get her a phone and they'll take pictures on it, video. She'll save texts on it. He'll pay for more and more things. She'll save copies of receipts for lingerie, for jewelry, for gifts no man should be giving anyone but his wife, gifts his wife never saw. Even if he keeps power, he'll never be taken seriously again. He'll never be trusted again. His wife may leave him.

Melantha isn't thinking about this right now, but she knows that when she goes back, one possible end result of her hunt is that Jack will take his own life. He's already unstable, pulled at by forces outside of his understanding or control. She doesn't want him to kill himself, though. If he's murdered, if he commits suicide, he gets pity. His memory is polished a bit by his victimization. She wants him to live.

She wants him to suffer.

And she wants to never, ever go back. She wants to let it go. Let him do his evil work. Leave him alone, and leave the sisters, and leave everything, and make love to Erich in the woods again. And again.

But that's no different from having no identity of her own as it is.

She breathes in deeply, exhales slowly, and lifts her mouth to kiss his. Softly. Lightly. Not tastingly, as last night. Neither of them are eager to discuss What It All Means, or what it meant, or why she kissed him like that, why they... did that. They both know. And they don't know what it means. And they don't need to.

"Yes," she answers, just as quiet. Her hand is cradling his jaw, thumb on his cheek. They are hardly perfect. She has been brutal with him. He has been foolish with her. They have pushed each other to stomping, to yelling, to utter exasperation and frustration. Still: in their odd, almost innocent way, they do have love for each other. And friendship.

"We should head back in a few hours," she tells him, her hand turning to drag her knuckles down the bristle of hair on his chin. "He'll ask them what I got up to all weekend. They'll tell him I went camping with my stepbrother and came back looking... happy."

Melantha exhales, and leans forward, kissing his neck, flicking her tongue over his skin there. "And that he went up to my room with me. And stayed for a while. And left looking... very happy."

Erich

If Melantha could see Erich now -- and she can: she can flick her eyes up from where they watch her knuckles grazing his jawline, she can look at the distinct and distinctly nordic bones of his face -- she'd see that he does, in fact, look happy. Even when she talks about going back. Even when she talks about Jack, and how Jack would want to know what she was up to.

Especially when she talks about what he'd be told. That she went camping with her "stepbrother". That they left in the middle of the night; who does that. That she came back looking,

dot dot dot,

HAPPY. And he went up to her room. And stayed for hours, hours, and came down looking,

dot. dot. dot,

VERY HAPPY.

Erich outright bursts into laughter at that. He turns his head and presses his laughing mouth to her forehead; kisses the tip of her nose. And then her mouth, that laugh dying a natural death, bleeding out into the warmth of that kiss, which goes on and on until he's laughing again, softly, his shoulders shaking with it.

"I'd be very happy even if all we did was watch cartoons in our pajamas," he says. "I'm happy right now."

He's looking at her again. His eyes are moving over her face in slow sweeps, from the corner of her eye to the corner of her mouth, the span of her forehead to the delicate indent below her nose. She is beautiful; there's no shying from that. But it's the little things he's trying to remember. The tiny imperfections and subtleties, the faintest hints that will one day be frown lines or laugh lines; the way her eyes are not huge and doelike and innocent after all but cunning, resonant, deadly intelligent.

"It's not going to be goodbye," he says quietly. "Even if you take Jack down and then have to get out of town fast, and far, and for a very long time. We'll figure something out.

"You told me your name," he whispers, "and I told you mine. There's still magic in that. We can't ever lose each other forever."

Celia

She sees him. Maybe clearer than she did before this weekend, or even before this day. The look she sees in his eyes then is mirrored in her own: simply happy. Comfortable. Pleased. Instead of making him frown or making him sad or angry, the mention of using their own happiness -- this effervescent, innocent, silly, bright thing between them right now -- to drive that motherfucker a little more crazy, make him a little more stupid, wreck his life a little bit more,

it just makes Erich laugh. Which is good. It makes a smile break out over her face, big and glowing, laughing with him. He kisses her forehead, her nose. She is lifting her face to his to kiss his mouth instead when he reaches for her there; they collide a bit, and she laughs into his mouth. Her hand turns on his jaw and cups his face again, slides to the side of his neck as it did last night. This kiss, once the laughter begins to taper off, lasts for a long time. Til Erich laughs, perhaps just because they started kissing playfully and then it turned into something else and he's just happy and his laughter makes Melantha grin again, laughing a quiet what? against his lips even as she's joining him right there.

Cartoons in pajamas. Happy now.

"Me, too," she murmurs, and she means it, and she means both. She keeps touching him, as idle and as searching as his eyes' journey over her features. She plays with the bottom edge of his lower lip, and strokes his earlobe, and brushes her fingertips across his forehead just above his eyebrow. Sometimes she kisses him, delicately, where her touch has passed.

He says goodbye again, and her brows tug together suddenly, like an involuntary reaction to a wound. She looks hurt by the word itself, but that's childish, that's ludicrous, but she doesn't wrap herself around him and pull him into her bed as a way to cope with it this time. For one thing: she's already wrapped around him a bit. For another: they made one bed out of their two, and he's already there.

"I'd call you," she tells him, practical to the bitter end. He says magic. She says cell phone. Her arms have slipped around his middle again, bringing their bodies ever closer together. It's warm in here, under the sleeping back. She touches his back, quiet a moment, feeling the slabs of muscle to either side of the dip of his spine. Her head lowers, her mouth going not to his neck but his clavicle, kissing thin skin stretched over hard bone, and she just... stays there, her lips light against his skin, holding him. "Partly because your car's description and plates have probably been recorded and you would need to get the hell out, too." There's a pause. "I'd apologize for that, but I didn't tell you to start following me around to restaurants."

Defiant, argumentative, stubborn, even now.

Still: she nuzzles his chest then, his neck, breathing out against him. "I want to have you again here," she says, dreamily but seriously. Her head tips back, looking up at him. She shifts closer beneath the blanket-bag, her hands on his lower back and her thighs parted, welcoming, inviting,

maybe demanding a little, or at very least encouraging.

"Slowly this time," she tells him, softer. "I just want to... feel you in me."

Erich

Erich is not defiant right now. Or argumentative. Or even particularly stubborn. He's quite agreeable, really. See, he agrees:

"Nope. You didn't. I did that all by myself."

The fact that she's touching him like that, dreamily and intimately as though she had some inviolable claim to every inch of him, plays a role in that. But the truth is Erich is, in fact, about as agreeable and sociable an Ahroun as one is likely to meet. He really only argues with her. Maybe it's a schoolyard crush sort of thing. Or maybe -- backwards as it seems -- he just cares enough about what she thinks, how she feels, to argue about it.

"I hadn't thought of that, though," he adds. There's a hint of unsteadiness to it, because -- after all -- she is touching him like that. Painting him with her fingertips. Laying her lips against his collarbone, where if she's patient and perceptive she'll feel a deep, subtle thrum from the artery that underlies it. A major artery, that one; one of the very first to branch off, very close to the heart. It seems profoundly right that that's where her mouth lingers a while.

"That I'd have to get out too." He's still trying to have this conversation. "But it's all right. I'm used to it. Being on the move. I ... "

he trails off. She nuzzles his chest and he wraps his arm around her, the inside of his bicep against the side of her breast, her ribcage; his hand sliding up her back to cup the back of her neck. Then her head, when she raises it to look at him. His eyes are unfocused already. There's a slow flame there already, smouldering, flaring when she slips a little closer and opens her legs around him.

What she says, though. There's a reaction there, a look in his eyes that's complex and faceted, fleeting. Gone when he leans into her and closes the gap, closes his eyes. He's lost track how many times he's kissed her by now, but every time he's a little more confident about it. A little more instinctual. The bedding shifts; he rolls over her. His weight is on his elbows, his arms wrapped around her, his torso against hers solid and secure -- dense muscle compacted onto bone.

Slowly this time. The beat of his heart. The hardening of his cock. The lazy grazing kisses he gives her while they grind maddeningly together: those kisses meandering over her neck and her shoulders; lingering on her breasts. He's there for a long time, tonguing her nipples, kissing her skin, sucking at her while her back arches, while her hips lift for his. His hand is at her hip when he enters her, holding her steady just long enough to ease the penetration. Then she's moving, she's wrapping her legs around him and riding up on him, and he's gasping into her mouth, and his body is answering hers in slow, long slides. Heavy and dragging.

That's how it goes this time. Slowly, patiently, as though they had all the time in the world. Near the end the broad muscles in his back and his shoulders have run iron-hard with restraint. His arms are wrapped around her, and he's panting and gasping against her neck, trying to hold on, slipping, letting go.

A hard thrust, and then he holds -- deep, pulsing, his breath caught for an endless instant. Then he groans, low and long and quiet, overcome, coming into her, bucking against her, hard and deep and slow until he's utterly spent, utterly through, collapsing onto her in a sprawl of loose limbs and liquid joints, eyes closed.

He does call her name this time. Whispers it, kissing her jaw, her ear: Melantha. Melantha.

Celia

She wants him again. Here. Slow. Close like this, watching him the way she is, Melantha sees the way his eyes flicker at what she says; it isn't simple lust, an easy yes. There's more there, and she's curious, but:

she wants him again. Here. Slow. And now.

It is a good conversation they're having. About not losing each other, at least not forever. About finding one another if they need to. About what it means that he's 'Derek', that he's 'Celia's step-brother', that his mobile den has been recorded and possibly photographed and he's been seen staring at her inside of it, looking at her sometimes with frustration and sometimes with what looks suspiciously like longing. Like ache. This is an important conversation, and they might also want to discuss how on earth he could fit into her life, or she into his, and whether or not it's fair to ask either of them to try and 'fit' with the other at all.

But Erich trails off. Slides his arms close around her, making Melantha suck in a breath at nothing more than the feel of his skin on her own. Her arms wrap around his neck as she rolls gently, easily onto her back. She wondered briefly last night if he urged her atop him because she's a Black Fury, because she's so argumentative, if he thought she might not want him to do that, but it was as brief as an eyeblink; that was desire built up night after night unfurling in a gasp, and she had no time to stop and think about anything for long. It didn't really matter why. She wonders now if he expects her to say no, to make issue of position, to tense up in his arms the way she almost, almost did last night.

Like last night, it's a brief wondering. He kisses her. She melts just as she did before, like she really is a virgin, like she's never been kissed quite like this before. It makes her sigh, and it makes her legs part gently, smoothly to either side of him. Her inner thighs stroke his hips as he moves over her, settles against her, hardens to the softness and heat of her. He didn't kiss her breasts last night, couldn't take his mouth from hers except to groan. Today he does, and she shivers from shoulders to hips at the first touch, panting softly by the time his tongue has made her nipples stiffen in his mouth. He can't see her when she tips her head back, when her eyes close, but he feels her spine arch and feels her hips lift and feels her legs slide up higher, wrap around him.

Just like he can feel her tighten on him and hear her gasp when he slides into her, slowly this time, feel her wind her hips up to meet him, to take him further. This time, he can see her, in the air that's turned silvery from the light coming through the tent walls. A breeze from the half-revealed mesh of the tent's door runs up his back when the sleeping bag shifts away, disrupted and dismissed by their movement. She's looking up at him for a moment then, talking to him with her eyes,

before they close again.

A couple of times she puts her hands on him -- his back, his flank. Sometimes it's to hold him, gasping that she wants him to go slow, even as she's circling her hips on him the way she does, maddeningly, moving him inside of her just for the sake of feeling him there. And later, sometimes, it's to urge him on. She groans softly, low in her throat, and whispers harder like a secret, shuddering when he listens, shuddering if he relentlessly, mercilessly ignores her. She is surprisingly tender like this, was even last night, but that was so much faster, so much more needful, so desperate. But still tender. Today she gives him dozens of soft, sweet kisses whenever his mouth is near enough. She holds him close as she would if they were just embracing, just hugging in her elevator or on a couch he made out of nothing.

In the warmth of day and wrapped so well between the sleeping bags and his body, Melantha's thighs and belly and breasts grow slippery with sweat. She pants when he grinds into her, when his hips buck, when she can feel him losing control over his own body. She touches his face then, kisses him harder, lifts herself up on him and whispers something else against his lips, softly spoken but demanding, but hungry:

give it to me,

she tells him, and he does, and lets go, pushing into her, pressing against her, panting and gasping like that. Her hand cups around the back of his neck, holding him close to her, pushing bedding off of their overheated bodies, folding her legs ever tighter around his waist. She whimpers his name in his ear a couple of times, but it tatters apart. She swears oh god, oh fuck, rising louder and more needful til it's just fuck -- god, fuck! coming ragged and quivering out of her mouth, her other hand clutching at his back. Erich comes deeply, barely moving, overwhelmed by the sense of her. When Melantha comes she's shaking, trembling all over, still riding him even though he's bucking in her, spending himself in her, losing his mind and all ability to move after that. She squirms underneath him a little longer, working her own orgasm out, her head turned to one side, gasping. Even then, her hands are moving up his back, down his sides, holding him there.

He murmurs her name, mutters it while he kisses her. She shivers at the sound, or the sensation. She unlocks her limbs from him, falling apart like a marionette, even her arms dropping away from him and laying to either side of her head. Her thighs and her cunt quiver, and her legs slide downward, unable to remain wrapped around him. She just lays there, catching her breath, putting her mind back together.

She licks her lips. Sighs.

Erich

It's so good with her. And that shouldn't come as a surprise, considering what she does to earn her keep and fight her war, but -- it does. Achingly, it is a surprise, because it's not good like that. It's not good because she's so fucking hot. It's not good because she squeals like a little girl when you nail her. It's not good because the things she does to you, the things she knows how to do, it's like fucking your own personal porn star,

or whore,

or slut,

but because they are who they are and they are both here; themselves and no one else. No one they're pretending to be. Not Derek and not Celia and not twenty-something humans who don't know anything about the world and its war; not the versions of themselves who were afraid of what-ifs and what-nows and what-afters. They're not even thinking about any of that, anyone else they're supposed to be, anything else they're afraid of.

It's just them. It's just that they've wanted each other for so long, kept shying from it for one reason or other, a little silly now in retrospect; kept sweeping it under the rug and hugging each other because they're Just Friends, hanging around closer than they needed to be because they're Just Friends, telling all their friends that they're Just Friends,

until of course the word goodbye came up, and the spectre of a lifetime of regret, and suddenly they weren't Just Friends anymore but simply: the two of them. Melantha and Erich, making love: so good.

Erich opens his eyes. A drop of sweat slides into the corner of one, stinging, and he rubs it away against his shoulder. The movement shifts his arm over her. There's a breeze nosing its way through the mesh door of the tent, pleasantly cool up the furrow of his spine. He kisses her: the side of her neck, the diminishing beat of her artery. It's a small, loving thing, communicative in its own way. He's not going very far, he assures her, even as he draws tenderly out of her a moment later; rolls aside and onto his back.

There isn't enough room here for them to sprawl, really. His arm hits the insloping wall of the tent. He reaches up and fumbles with the little window, gets it unzipped, and now there's a crossbreeze. It's nice. He spreads his fingers against the mesh to cool the space between them, and meanwhile his other arm is still around Melantha's shoulders. He urges her a little closer to him. He does like to cuddle.

Celia

So good, she keeps thinking,

when he's kissing her, about to touch her,

and when he's sliding into her, making her clutch at his sides just to bear it, and

of course when she comes, and of course when it's like this, and she's laid out under him and beside him, drowsy with satisfaction, sleepy with warmth and not wanting to tell him it's never been like this or I've never felt like this before or I didn't know it could be this good because she has said all those things before and they've been lies but this time they're true and she doesn't know how to say them without fearing that she will sound like a liar.

Melantha curls up against his chest, nuzzling his skin, willing him by her thoughts and body language to wrap both of his arms around her and just hold her there a while, keep her there a little longer, so she can go on feeling like this:

so good.

He welcomes the breeze; she's already chilled a bit by it, the air wicking sweat off her skin. She tugs the sleeping bag on top over her again and tucks her feet close to his and closes her eyes. She has had an apple and water; her stomach is comforted. She has a warm, soft place to sleep. And for the first time he's been with her, truly, she's as simple and animal as he ever is. Sated. Safe.

In moments, she is asleep again. This time not dozing for just a few minutes but dropping off completely, heavy as a stone. Go back in time twenty-four, forty-eight hours and ask her if she would be this content, or this comfortable, or if this would ever happen. She is immune to wonder over it right now, though; she cuddles, and Erich does like to cuddle, so he lets her.

Perhaps an hour and a half, two hours later, she wakes up again. It isn't morning. It isn't early afternoon anymore, either. It's quite warm outside. The crossbreeze feels lovely. She wriggles and turns over and yawns, hugging his arm to her chest -- if he is still there holding her -- and refusing to move... again, if he's there holding her. If he's with her. That is where she'll stay.

"Let's wait til dark to go back," she says, dreamily as before. Whether she finds him in 'bed' with her or outside, poking her head through the tentflap. "And not talk about anything in D.C. until we're back there. You can tell me all about yourself instead."

Erich

Erich is, in fact, in 'bed' when Melantha wakes again. Not that he hasn't stirred at all: for a little while there, he'd left. He'd eased himself out of her arms, eased her to the pillow and the bedding and the pad, smoothed back and hair and kissed her temple if she'd started to wake.

"Sleep," he whispered then. "I'll be back."

And he was. After five or ten minutes: because he'd needed to take a piss, frankly, and because he was hungry. He comes back with a bit of leftover rabbit or stew, with the last of their water to share with Melantha, and with another apple for her. Crawling back into the bedroll, he wiggles his arm back under her, gathers her against him, laughs softly if she mutters, glomps her, sprawls.

Sleeps a little more. Lazy and careless as a teenager on Saturday; as a wolf in the full flush of summer.

Later: they wake up, and they're loathe to move. Loathe to go. They keep pushing their own personal deadline back. Tomorrow. Afternoon. After dark. Erich doesn't mind. His arm is hugged. He yawns. He has a sip of water. He finds that apple he found her rolled under the pillow, and he produces it for her with a flouish, as though he'd turned a magic trick.

"There isn't much to tell," he says, self-deprecating and laughing. "I'm pretty boring." He thinks a moment. "I even like vanilla ice cream."

Celia

Her hair is mussed, but not as much as it was when she woke up from a night of almost total debauchery. She looks sleepy and drowsy, but not nearly as much as when she woke up with a mind-bending hangover. She looks, still, very happy to wake up and find him there. He glomped her when he came back; she hugs his arm to her breast and kisses his hand. His other arm flails around, wraps around her, and produces an apple he brought. She blinks at it, then reaches for it, drawing it back and rubbing it on the blanket to brush it off, then takes a bite. Apples are all she's had today, but: no matter. It's all right.

She rolls a bit so that her arm presses to his chest, her head resting on his arm. "Boring isn't bad," she tells him, licking a bit of the apple's juice off her lip.

The breeze rolling through the tent has, at least in part, kept it from smelling like a den of iniquity and lust. That doesn't mean it isn't one, right now. It is something of a den; her den, her cave, where he was welcomed. And there is lust there. Nothing iniquitous about it, though. It's almost innocent. And there she is with her apples again.

"Tell me about your family. Or your best friend growing up. Or whatever."

Erich

Erich grins at the ceiling. "Y'know," he affects a tone of shock and offense, "I'm not sure how I should take that. The girl I just slept with ... twice ... just called me boring."

He wiggles a little deeper into the covers. Tugs one up a little, rearranging the den that's gone a little asunder from all the activity and sleep. Erich yawns, then fishes another strip of jerky over to gnaw on.

"Well, let's see. I think I told you I've got a sister. She's five years younger than me, graduating high school this year. Her name's Ellie, short for Elisa. She's going to the state college after the summer, but right now she still lives with our parents. We have a farm out in the northwestern corner of Nebraska -- we being my whole extended clan. My mom and dad, an uncle, two aunts, and all their spouses and kids. My mom's the one that's part of the clan; my dad married in. Then I've got seven girl cousins and two guy cousins. I guess my family's a little skewed toward girls. Me and my sister are sorta in the middle of the brood.

"Back when we were growing up we'd all pile into my dad's big old van -- like one of those twelve-seaters -- at the crack of dawn and go to school down in Harrison, the nearest little town. It was like our own private school bus. After school we'd get picked up again, and usually we'd help out on the farm 'til dinnertime. There was always something that needed our hands, especially as the older cousins grew up and left for school or whatever. Our staple crop was corn. We had some cage-free chickens and organic vegetables after that turned into a Thing, and one of my aunts had a small-time dairy business going shipping overpriced 'all natural grass-fed milk' to Chicago.
"My parents took me out of school after 8th grade. It was getting pretty obvious I was going to Change, so they sent me up north. The nearest Caern was across the state line in the Badlands. My Fostering was pretty short, just a couple months, and ... I guess after I went up there I didn't really go home again. 'Cause, yeah."

Erich trails off. He's quiet a moment, his fingers drifting lazily through her hair. Then he takes a breath.

"So that's me. Sort of."

Celia

"I did not call you boring," Melantha corrects him,

as she would.

"You called yourself boring and I said that wasn't a bad thing." So she bites him, though not hard, on his bicep. It's a gnawing, soft set of her teeth, but there's still a fierceness to it, a sharp little reminder of her ferocity, her intensity. She keeps eating her apple while he talks, now facing him, lying on her side with her hair off her neck and her shoulder, spilling upwards as though she were hanging upside down.

He's from Nebraska, and he and his cousins took a twelve-seater van to school every day. She smiles at the phrase something that needed our hands. The smiles fades easily and naturally as she munches her apple and listens to him tell the story of his life -- well. Some of it. He mentions not going home again

because

yeah.

Her brow knits. Suddenly, tightly. His hand is in her hair by then, sweeping tendrils back, feeling it cool between his fingertips. Melantha rubs the top of her foot against his shin beneath the covers and snuggles closer. She's finished her apple and has let it roll into the dirt to be dealt with later. Her fingers and her lips and her chin smell faintly sweet from the fruit's juice.

"Going home again isn't always a good or easy or... desirable thing," she says, and she's talking about herself, how could she be saying anything else, but there's more. Her head tips back and she looks at him again. "It sounds like it would be for you, though. In some ways. I'm sorry you can't. I think it's stupid and unfair and pointless," she adds, because

it's Melantha,

and she would.

Erich

"It is stupid and unfair and pointless," Erich agrees, and just for a minute there his tone is sharp as a knife. Then it subsides. "But I guess I get it. Being Fenrir is a tradition for my family. A part of their identity. And traditions only survive if everyone passes them down. Identity only works if everyone wears the same one."

Celia

Melantha's frown deepens a tad. "I don't think that's right," she says, after the mention of identity. "You can have your identity as a family even if you don't share your identity as Fenrir. Your family is your family. You're cut from the same cloth." There's a pause there, and her frown soothes, but not from happiness or his attempt to swing away from that into optimism, or shrugging it off, or seeing their point. "When my brothers left, they weren't Black Furies anymore. One of them couldn't be. One of them chose not to be. But if I found them, they'd still be my brothers. Even if they changed their names, that would still be true. And we'd always share that part of our identity. Same father. Same mother. Same blood and memory. And if they're angry and stupid about it, then it's because they know they can never undo that bond just because Thunder came for you, and not Fenris."

Erich

For the first time in a very long time, there's a flicker of tension in Erich. And more than that: a closing up, a withdrawing. It begins when she talks about his family. It escalates all through what she says. When she pauses he's still, thrumming. When she continues, he exhales a short, sharp breath and rolls onto his back, staring at the ceili. By the end his mouth is a flat line.

"I don't know why they're angry and stupid about it," he says, "and I don't really care to sit here and make assumptions about exactly why they ran me out and threatened to kill me if I ever come home again. But they obviously don't feel like they share anything with me anymore. Family or identity or tradition or anything. Which is fine. I'm fine with that as long as I don't have to sit and think about it. So let's just stop talking about this, okay?"

He's angry, he realizes. His cheeks are hot and his heartbeat is palpable. He stretches his hand over his eyes, closing them, squeezing his temples until the pounding subsides. Drops his hand back to his chest.

"Let's just stop talking about this, okay?" He says it again, quieter this time. "It's not going to change, no amount of analysis and discussion is going to make it feel the slightest damn bit better, and it really doesn't matter anymore."

Celia

She hugs him.

Even though he closes up and rolls onto his back and glares at the ceiling -- for no one with a brow like his, and clear eyes like his -- merely stares. Even though he rejects what she says and says threatened to kill me if I ever came home like it isn't one of the worst things she's ever heard. Even though he is almost vibrating with anger, with hurt, with something. By the time he tells her to stop talking about it, he's angry, and his cheeks have color in them that wasn't there before. His eyes look into his palm as he covers his face, then close.

Melantha hugs him. Which, given some of their arguments, may be surprising in and of itself. Then again: she woke up this morning wrapped naked around him, made love to him under the moon and under the sun both, and things are, perhaps, a little different because of that. Or maybe it's because they're naked: not just in body, not just to the skin, but deeper.

Her arms are slim but he knows they're strong. They hold him tightly, and she rests her head on his chest, beside his ribcage, listening to his heart slamming deep inside. And for a few moments, that's all she does. She doesn't say anything at all.

Maybe it has nothing to do with the sex or their friendship or their nakedness. Maybe it's because of things like when my brothers left,

when my mother died,

when my father and my other brothers died.

Those few moments pass. She doesn't nuzzle him or kiss him, but just holds him there, like she's going to keep pieces of him together but has to wait for the glue to set. "I wasn't making assumptions or analyzing, Erich," she says quietly, after that long while passes. "And we can drop it. Just... don't say you're fine with it or that it's fine or that it doesn't matter, when it... obviously isn't, and obviously does." She's careful, saying that. She doesn't want to set off an argument. But at least she can tell that in truth, his anger isn't really for her. That would be absurd. He would be absurd, if it were really all for her.

And granted: he can be absurd. But she still thinks: it isn't me he's mad at. And that matters.

Erich

It isn't her he's mad at. And she knows that. It's proven incontrovertibly when she hugs him suddenly and tightly and silently, hugs him perhaps not just because she's lost her entire family, too, but also because she has the intuition of having had that family, all those brothers; knows what it looks and sounds like when one of those brothers is suddenly fuming about something with so much anger and hurt that he's on the verge of bursting into tears and, consequently, might just prefer to put his fist through drywall instead to prevent such a display --

when she hugs him, he doesn't throw her off and storm out of the tent. He drops his arm heavily and tightly around her shoulders instead, hugs her back for few silent, fuming, I'm angry but I'm not going to cry or put my fist through a tree-type moments.

Then his hand drops to his chest. And his arm stays around her.

"It's not fine," he says grudgingly, and is surprised when he feels a little better to say it aloud. "It sucks, and that matters. But when there's very little I can do about it, I usually feel better if I pretend it is fine and it doesn't matter and it's all in the past so I can just forget about it. I hate whining about anything, and complaining about something you can't or won't change is basically whining."

He turns on his side again. Facing away from her, though. That could be read as a rejection, except his arm -- disentangling -- finds hers. He laces his finger through hers and drags her arm around his side, wordlessly but rather eloquently requesting that she maintains the hug.

A few minutes go by.

"My best friend was one of my cousins," he confesses quietly. "So ... I'd rather not talk about that right now, either."

Celia

He's not fine. It sucks. It matters that he isn't fine, and that it sucks. And Melantha says nothing. She doesn't argue, and she doesn't suggest anything further than what she did at the beginning: that it's stupid and pointless, and that it isn't fine. Melantha, in whatever incarnation she's taking on, seems comfortable with simply... letting it be. He hates whining. So what if he hates whining? There's nothing he can do, or at least he thinks there isn't. So what if there's nothing he can do? She has no need to see him in pain, just as she has no true need to see him cover over that pain.

Erich turns, and she is rolling to embrace him from behind even before he's urging her arm and her body to follow him. Her breasts press to his back, her face nestled between his shoulderblades. Their hands weave together over his chest. She breathes in deeply, and exhales, and closes her eyes. He can feel the edge of her eyelash flick over his skin. It hits a freckle he doesn't know he has, because he has never seen it except diffusely, if he's seen his back in a reflection. She likes it like a secret between his body and her, even though it isn't anything of the kind.

"That's okay," she whispers, after he tells her he doesn't want to talk about his cousin. His best friend. Who might be one of those people who would want to see him killed if he ever went back home. She breathes in, and stretches her legs out behind him. He can feel her body quiver with the tension of the stretch, then the warm melting relaxation as she snuggles against him once more. "There's a lot of stuff I don't like talking about, too."

Erich

Something about that stretch, that subsequent bone-deep relaxation, seems to seep into Erich by osmosis. Melantha can feel it, the way his hand doesn't squeeze hers so firmly; the way his musculature grows supple. After a while, he turns, looking at her over his shoulder. He's smiling again, albeit a little wryly.

"I like you though," he says. It'd be insufferably sweet, except he's still so quiet. Except there's a note of ache there. His fingers spread, stroke between hers, close again. "I really like you."

Which is different, somehow, from telling her he loves her. No less important.

Celia

She smiles, slow and spreading and fair, when he says that. She looks like she's almost laughing and just hasn't gotten there yet. "I know," she says, like he's just told her that the sun? It's made of fire. Also that stuff coming from the sky is water, and they call it rain, isn't that silly? Isn't he smart for knowing this?

Melantha kisses him, soft and sweet as that smile, her hand closing further around his. She leans over his shoulder to kiss him, and kisses him slowly. Kisses him -- let's call it what it is -- lovingly. And wantingly, though she's had him twice in the last twelve hours. They are young and this is new and this close to nature she herself is more... natural.

Her lips leave his for a moment but he can feel them move against his own when she speaks. "I like you, too, Erich. A lot."

Kisses him again, just as deeply, but she doesn't move to climb over him or roll under him. A moment ago he was so angry, so hurt, so touched where he's sore, that he nearly wept or hurt something. A moment ago she was thinking of fire and blood and the fact that her other two brothers would never, ever find her now. even if they came back, everything would be gone --

She doesn't try to make love to him again. Wanting him is enough. And liking him. And loving him in their strange, soft way. She lays back down, holding him as before.

"We'll go back later," she whispers to his skin. "We don't have to talk at all."

Erich

That gets him to turn around again. He fairly flops about, twisting first at the shoulders and then at the hips, rearranging himself under the sliding and haphazard mass of their covers.

"I like talking with you," he says seriously. And he is serious: absolutely serious, absolutely earnest. "I don't ever want to stop talking just because we hit a bump or one of us bangs into a bruise we didn't even see or we fight. Or any of that. I always want to talk with you. I wanted to talk with you even when all we did was fight. Why'd you think I kept finding excuses to make fun of you?

"We don't even have to stop talking about the stuff we don't want to talk about right now forever. I don't want to talk about it right now, but who knows, maybe tomorrow or the week after I will. Maybe someday you'll walk to talk about something you don't want to talk about right now, either. All I mean is,"

he takes a breath here; he's been rambling, and he pulls his thoughts back together:

"I like talking with you. We never have to talk. But most of the time I'm happy to." His mouth quirks. "Occasionally, though, I'm ... otherwise occupied."

Celia

It's Erich's turn to talk at length, to spill his thoughts everywhere. He does ramble, and Melantha is half startled and half amused, which thankfully doesn't leave much room for being disgruntled at the way he's flopping around when she was perfectly comfortable just holding him for another few hours like that.

She laughs at him. Not just because he cocks a half-grin at the end and mentions being Occupied just like she mentioned being dot dot dot HAPPY earlier. She laughs at the rambling and the earnestness of it all.

"I like talking to you, too," she tells him. "And I like arguing with you. I'm not saying we don't have to talk because of anything bad, just... we're out in the woods." She snuggles a little closer, now that he's gotten still again. "It's nice out, and I'm lazy, and... sometimes my mind is going two hundred miles per hour and this is the only place where I can just stop and just be, you know? So now is..."

Her voice quiets, and she smiles, and nuzzles her way into his chest as her arms come around his waist. "Now's one of those times when we don't have to talk.'

Erich

He studies her for a moment. They're both blue-eyed; an odd little bit of overlap in two people that otherwise could hardly be more different. Even that blue is different, though. His eyes are quite clear, quite pale. There's more saturation in her irises, more depth of hue. Ice and fire, one might say. Glacial, and the heart of a flame.

Erich hardly thinks of that, though. He studies her, and when she smiles and nuzzles closer he wraps his arm around her and smiles over the top of her head. We'll go back later, she said. He thinks briefly, fleetingly, of DC and All The Things There They Aren't Talking About. He lets it go. They don't have to talk.

"All right," he agrees, mollified. "You can't blame me if I fall asleep again, though."

Celia

"I won't," she says, shaking her head a few times, very quickly. Then grins and squeezes him. "But I might go lie naked in the sun. So. If you're asleep, I'll try not to bother you."

Erich

"I have a better idea," Erich counters, raising himself on an elbow. "Let's go get water. And take a shower. And then let's come back and both go lie naked in the sun. Because I don't know if you've noticed,"

he leans over, he mouths the outside curve of her shoulder for a moment before biting her there very, very gently,

"but I am absolutely filthy at the moment."

Celia

Lifting on his elbow moves his arm underneath her. They shift again. She looks at him from where she lies almost entirely on her back as he talks about going to hike for water, using it to wash themselves off, then lying around naked in the sun. It's not like it's summer yet. It's still cool outside. The air in the tent is warmed because it is focused and held in, but the air moving through the little window and the door is still chilly. She wasn't kidding, though. She doesn't want to lie in the sun because it's warm.

Erich leans over and runs his lips along her skin. She shivers, watching his profile lazily. He bares his teeth and bites her and she breathes in. He tells her that he's absolutely filthy.

Melantha meets his eyes when he lifts his head again. She doesn't say a word.

Erich

The lack of response -- or rather, the lack of verbal response coupled with the presence of physiological response -- has Erich's eyes skating sideways to scan Melantha's face. He studies her for another moment, obliquely, head tilted a little, teeth still scraping her skin.

Then he sets his elbows down on either side of her, leans into her, pauses just a moment before kissing her because he is, quite frankly, a little lost at the feel of her bare breasts against his chest.

And then he does kiss her. Hungrily.

Celia

She looks at him. He feels something shift in her, and meets her eyes. All on his own, he works out something out. Moves over her. She shifts another inch or two to lie on her back beneath him for the second time. Her breath moves in as he settles atop her, lifting her breasts more fully to his skin.

"I love that," she whispers, which he is thinking, or not thinking at all because he can't. Her hips roll gently, too, reinforcing the words. She can't help it. Doesn't want to. Hardly needs to.

Melantha sinks back down when he lowers himself to kiss her. This time her arms don't fold around his neck. She runs her hands up his sides, shuddering a little at the sensation of his body under her palms.

This third time, there's almost no sound to it. Gasping, and later: panting. Every sound from Melantha's throat is half-caught, cut off before it's completely voiced by some new thrust, by another grind, by his hand lifting from the bedroll to cup her breast as he slides himself into her, firm and warm. Yet as quiet as they are, they're almost more athletic now, more energetic. All that playfulness, all that eagerness starts to unfurl between them. Her hand moves to his ass to pull him harder into her when she wants it like that, faster now, and she whispers

yeah

into his ear when he quickens his pace with her, watches her with glazed, ravenous eyes the way he does. Watches her as her head tips back and her thighs rises up higher on his sides to take him in deeper. They are filthy. They smell like sweat and sex and each other and by the end when he's all but pounding her, teeth set, she's got her back arched to take him, her hands clutching at her pillow and his skin. It's only quiet until the end, when Melantha comes like a shock, swearing in whimpers, almost crying from pleasure. She isn't quiet then. She isn't quiet when he finishes in her, his hips giving short, hard throws to fuck his cum into her. Then, she's still swearing, but softer than before, and panting instead of whimpering.

They dissolve. For the third time they just... collapse together, melt together, suddenly and animalistically drowsy. This time their little post-coital nap-and-cuddle doesn't last as long, though. They're awake, energerized. At least: Melantha is. She has to try a few times to get up without being tugged back but she bites at the air and almost catches his hand a couple of times. She's naked, and she has to pee, and her mouth feels gross, and she's completely filthy, and yet she's starving by now. She wants potatoes from the stew and a banana and everything else. That's why whenever he drags himself out of the tent she's standing in hiking boots over by their lowered food-bag, her flannel shirt hanging open on her body like a jacket.

She is eating some of his beef jerky, and holds a piece out to him like an offering. Grins. And suggests they wash up in the lake first before they go hiking for drinkable water.

Erich

They have quite literally spent all day rolling around in bed now. Waking, talking, fucking, sleeping, waking again, laughing, talking some more, not-laughing, talking yet again, not-talking, fucking yet again, sleeping yet again,

and waking. Erich's eyes open as soon as Melantha moves. He tracks her as she stands, smiling lazily, sleepily, as she steps over him. His hand trails over her leg. He sits up as she steps outside.

And he's moving up behind her as she's stretching a little later, pulling his boxers on as he looks at her body half-bare and lovely in the late afternoon sun. He wraps his arms around her, and he's such a contrast to the air: warm and solid, intensely present, right there. He drops a kiss on her shoulder. Holds her a moment, her shirt rumpled between them.

Then he leans over to snap that piece of jerky up from her fingertips. He grins -- wolfishly would be the word -- as he lets go, steps around her.

"I think that's a plan," he says.

He takes her hand, snagging up another piece of beef jerky as he passes the bag, and walks with her through the trees and down the slope to the lake. Tiny wavelets are lapping at the shore. The sun gleams off the water.

They run in, shivering in the cold. Erich washes vigorously, thoroughly, scrubbing and splashing, jumping up and down and yelling about the temperature. When they're done they're not merely shivering but outright shaking, laughing, voices quavering as they wrap their arms around each other to stay warm. Back at camp Erich drags his sleeping bag out and wraps it around the both of them, standing together face to face, tucking their bodies together until warmth returns to their limbs.

Then they dress. Then they pick up their empty water jug, put on their socks and shoes. He reaches for her hand again, and she takes his. It's not that long a walk to the nearest source of potable water, but Erich is glad for it. It's nice, hiking with her across gentle terrain. He tells her so.

Celia

They emerge like the first man and woman, in a manner of speaking. The sun stings Melantha's eyes a bit and she shades them, squinting as she crawls out and tugs on her boots, pulls on the flannel to shield herself a bit from the breeze. She eats random snacks -- fruit, jerky, protein bars. When Erich comes up behind her and hugs her she leans into the warmth, making a low noise of comfort. She feeds him meat -- salted and dried, but meat -- from her hands like someone comforted with animals. Or simply with men. Or both.

His nose nudges aside the collar of her soft shirt so he can kiss her shoulder. She smiles at him and rubs her fingertips over his scalp. At that point she still smells like him, and he like her. At that point they are still mostly naked. And tenderly, warmly, actually somewhat erotically, they just stand together. Melantha smiles. "You have jerky breath," she informs him. "It is profoundly gross."

Kisses his cheek. Her breath isn't that great right now, either. She grins.

Melantha has a camp towel, incredibly thin and lightweight yet shockingly absorbent, that she takes down to the lake with her. She has a small bar of camp soap that will vanish into the water without hurting it, without hurting the wildlife. Of course she does. They are lucky it's still so early in the year; the lake is empty. They are double lucky: their little campsite has a spot that is at least somewhat shielded by trees, even if they are barren. No matter; he already knows how shy Melantha isn't. Even less, now. She shares her soap with him. He splashes around, yells about the cold. Melantha just shakes her head at him, washing rapidly. She ducks completely into the water and actually swims a few more yards out, coming up like a mermaid, gasping, freezing.

When they leave the lake her lips are tinted a faint shade of lavender. She doesn't complain but she shivers, whisking water off her body with that towel and squeezing it through her hair, wrapping herself up in her flannel even though it's 'dirty'. Erich glomps himself all over her; the heat is already rising from inside of his body again, so great that he almost steams in the air. He hugs her all the way back to the campsite until her lips are a normal color, even though she's laughing at him, she's not complaining about the temperature, she knows she'll warm up just fine. Still: he wraps them up in his sleeping bag, which is also (and slightly more thoroughly) 'dirty'. Her wet hair smells like the lake, and her skin like her strange little soap.

"You're weird," she tells him fondly, as sweetly and as lovingly as she told him that his breath smelled gross. She lays her head on his chest. Faintly, she remembers Damaris wrapping her in a towel after her first experience washing in a lake, how cold she was, how the only warm part of her seemed to be her eyes as hot, angry tears of frustration and humiliation spilled to her cheeks, how Damaris gently, firmly told her that self-pity never built a fire or filled a belly, reminded her as she lifted her up into an embrace that no one else was any warmer than she was, nor were they stronger or better than she was. She remembers understanding, even then, that this meant she could bear the cold without crying if she wished it. She remembers understanding, even then, that Damaris would not always cradle her like that, lifting her feet off the rocks and sharing her own body's heat with a newly orphaned child.

You're weird, she informs Erich, but all the same, it's only weird because it's been so long since someone freely gave what she could have lived without.

They dress. Melantha in her sturdy jeans, a fresh t-shirt, a new flannel. Thick socks that somehow feel luxurious on her chilled feet. She finger-combs and quickly, loosely braids her hair back. It isn't neat, but it's off her face and neck. It keeps her hair from soaking her back. She does it as thoughtlessly as one would scratch an itch. They drink the last of the water and set off carrying it. Erich slips his free hand into hers, and it makes her smile. She steps a bit closer in stride with him. He tells her this is nice. She looks at him. "Yeah," she murmurs, as they walk.

They pass a family of campers on a spring break trip: the kids are young, two girls and a boy. The parents are tall and look like the type who ski in the winter, camp in the spring, climb in the summer, hike in the fall. The eldest girl has a backpack from a private school in D.C., and her little sister has a Perry the Platypus t-shirt and their little brother keeps running off the path to chase a grasshopper. RunrunrunrunrunJUMP. RunrunrunrunrunHOP.

The water comes from a hand-pump, which is so common to Melantha's experience, at least, that she doesn't think anything of it. One of them holds the jug while the other pumps. They don't fill it up all the way; just three gallons, give or take. They're leaving tonight, after all. They'll trade it back and forth on the way back. It's not as though Erich can't carry it by himself without straining; it's that Melantha says, as ritualistically as so many things she says at times: we share the water, so we share the burden. To put it colloquially: she ain't playin'.

Granted, by the time they get back to camp again her shoulder is sore from her turns, but not much. She doesn't care; fills her cup and drinks the water greedily, then sets about building a fire. She wants to boil some more water for coffee, for oatmeal, maybe for another stew.

Erich

They share the water. So they share the burden. And even Erich, who once upon a time looked into the darkness when he learned Melantha was going camping and thought of all the things that might go bump there, can understand that. And on the way back they take their turns with the jug, passing it from hand to hand to hand to hand.

When they're back at camp Melantha starts building a fire. A small one, just as their jug of water isn't full, because they're going back tonight. That makes Erich a little sad, even though they've been here two nights and two days, even though that was, frankly, more than he expected. He helps her with the fire, handing her logs and sticks and twigs and scraps, and later on when she lights the fire he rocks back on his heels and stands.

Coffee, she muses. Oatmeal. Stew. His eyes light up at the last one. He's a little hungry. Actually, he's starving. Jerky isn't a complete meal by any stretch of the imagination, and they have nothing else that Erich can eat without ... consequences.

"I'll get us another rabbit," he says,

and he does, disappears into the woods while she feeds the fire and boils the water. When he comes back the sun has slid a little closer to the horizon, and the west is turning red.

They skin and clean the rabbit together. While Melantha chops the meat into pieces, Erich shifts back to his wolf-form, crouches quite contentedly near her, and devours the offal in a few greedy gulps. Melantha occasionally tosses him a bone. He eats those too, crunching them apart, gnawing, licking, devouring. Very little is wasted of this rabbit.

Eventually the meat is in the pot. And the scraps are gone. And Erich gets up and trots away, goes down to the lake where he laps at the water and then shifts and washes his face, his hands, his mouth. When he comes back he's dripping, clear-eyed, his hair a little wet. He sits next to Melantha and wordlessly holds his hand out for the knife and the chopping block; rinses some potatoes in a little water from their jug, cuts them up. An onion follows the potatoes in the pot, and a little salt and pepper. Then, as they settle in to wait for their dinner, Erich

builds

a couch out of nothing. Well, not nothing: out of his sleeping bag rolled around his duffle bag. As he settles against it, he opens his arm for Melantha to lean against his side. The sun has set. It's getting darker and colder. He thinks of the drive back.

"Do you think I could stay the night?" he asks her quietly. "In your room, I mean."

Celia

Out here, Melantha is in her element. She's not Celia, she's no man's paradise. She's building a fire and listening to the crystalline thudding of water pouring into the pot until she turns off the jug's spigot. She's poking at kindling with a long stick to urge the flames to devour their offering, smelling the smoke and feeling the heat on her hands and face, which makes the rest of the air around her feel all the cooler. She is herself out here, more than she can be in the city, more than she ever has been with Erich.

Her eyes follow him as he takes off into the woods, shedding the illusion of humanity like it's a shirt he's tossing away behind him. He's not human, and he's not just an animal. It's not that simple. It never is. Melantha watches the dark place against the trees where he vanished for a long time after he's gone, listening intently to the early evening for the sound a wolf makes when he hunts. There isn't one. She almost thinks she can hear the crack of a neck, but that could be a twig being stepped on. Rabbit bones are so delicate. Comparatively.

There's blood on his teeth when he comes back to the fire. There is blood on Melantha's camp knife when she cuts the rabbit's throat, and blood on her hands, and blood dripping into the fire as she holds it for a while and lets its body drain. The droplets hiss briefly when they fall into the flame. It gives the smoke a strange smell. Melantha is stoic as she does this, emminently practical and yet deeply religious. This is as much an offering as her drunken wildness, or their achingly tender and utterly joyful lovemaking, or Erich's hunt itself.

The wolf next to her, steel-gray instead of black, watches her cut and wrench the carcass open, scraping off skin, digging out organs. He licks his maw. Red-fingered, Melantha tosses him the rabbit's heart and watches his eyes spark with hunger and eagerness and enjoyment as he devours it. And the liver. And the rest. He gnaws bits of flesh from where they stick to the bones that she gives him, which are not many, because most remain in the pieces of meat to go into the stew. He cracks them open, sucks the marrow out. And as they rinse and chop up potatoes and onions, dropping them into the pot of water that is already hanging on the spit, she catches him looking occasionally at the fresh meat that is waiting to be added.

But he is in homid then. He could eat it raw even in this form. She's certain of that. So he goes to wash up, comes back damp and clean and his hunger momentarily sated. He happily rebuilds the couch that he shared with her last night and she goes down to the water's edge to wash her hands. When she comes back, she sits with him, her hands chilled but warming quickly.

The water -- now becoming a stew -- is boiling away. She watches the fire, and the pot, and sits with Erich, her friend. Who asks if he can sleep over.

She smiles at the fire, and then turns her head to look at him, still smiling. "Of course," she says. "I invited you."

Silly Erich.

Except there's a pause there, and she lays her head back down, turns it to rest on his shoulder. "I want you to."