we're not easy pickings.

Erich

This!

was not a date night. This was just a Erich-patrols-Cold-Crescent night, which became an Erich-gets-Hawaiian-bbq-night, which becomes a Melantha-comes-pick-Erich-up night because she was coming down to the city anyway because of reasons, and it seemed wasteful to drive two cars, etcetera.

So she comes to pick him up, and by then he's sitting on the curb with a little plastic to-go bag in hand, and behind him the Hawaiian BBQ place is shutting down. He has his phone in hand, head down, face lit by the tiny screen. When her headlights wash across him he looks up, squinting, then smiling, then tucking his phone away and getting to his feet.

She pulls alongside. He drops his to-go bag in through the open window. "I got you an order of barbecue short ribs," he says. "Wanna park for a while? There's an ice cream place around the corner that's open 'til two a.m."

Melantha

Melantha pulls up in the Jeep. The dark green, boxy old Jeep that has given her freedom and given she and Erich -- on occasion -- privacy they lack in the tinyhouse. She comes along the curb, her hair in a braid over one shoulder, hitting the button to unlock the doors.

Of course he got her ribs. Meat. Of course he wants ice cream.

"I don't know," she says. "I was thinking about just driving back up home." There's a beat. "It's pretty late."

Erich

"Oh." Erich looks a little disappointed. He doesn't look crushed. He shrugs -- a quick lift-and-fall of his shoulders -- and then he pops the door open and picks the bag-of-meat up and sets it in the back instead as he pulls himself up, in, plops into the passenger's seat. "No problem, I think we've still got some in the freezer anyway. Let's go back up."

He shuts the door; slides the belt over his shoulder and clicks it into place.

"Are you tired? Want me to drive?"

Melantha

The bag of barbecue has to go somewhere: the back seat, maybe, or the floor, or Erich's lap. Melantha leans over when he's settled and gives him a small kiss on the cheek. "No, I'm okay. It's just a long drive back."

She puts the car in gear again and checks her blind spot, pulls away from the curb, starts heading home. "Anything crazy happen on patrols?"

Erich

Erich's cheek moves under Melantha's lips; pulls into a quirky little grin as he settles in. She slips into traffic. He waits for her hand to become un-busy so he can hold it.

"Nah," he says. "You know, I feel like an old married couple right now. You picking me up after work and asking about my day, and stuff. And I-know-I-know-I-know you don't know if you even wanna get married or not, and I'm not hinting at anything. But it's kinda nice. Sometimes I kinda like imagining, I dunno, life with you in ten years or something. I bet you're gonna be someone important. Well, you're already important to me, but you know what I mean.

"And maybe I can just come home from being sort of important myself and like... just be the guy that cleans your house and cooks you dinner and moves your heavy things with my shirt off. And, y'know, occasionally services you in bed or something." He's grinning at her, unrepentant. Dear god. He must've gotten that line from a romance novel.

Melantha

Melantha likes Erich, and loves him, and is in love with him. And also, sometimes, he says or does things that make her roll her eyes. Or pull away. Or that are meant well but not well-received, simple as that. Sometimes, no matter how much they like or love each other, there are things about them that don't quite mesh.

Like, sometimes, their sleeping schedules, or what they want to do. He wants to get late-night ice cream. She just wants to go home.

Like him wanting to hold her hand, but she actually wants to use both to drive with, especially because it's night.

But also this: what he says, about feeling like old-marrieds, whether the actual marriage part is a possibility or not, and how it's nice. Picking him up, asking about his day, life-in-ten-years, and what he thinks she's going to become, and what he might become, and cleaning her house and cooking her dinner and sex and he's grinning and she's driving so her eyes are forward. Maybe he's thinking she'll grin back, or that there'll be a soft little smile on her face, or maybe he's not expecting anything. Melantha knows him, though; she is pretty sure her face is not a blank right now, because she's not trying to blank it. She is pretty sure that he can tell from the small line across her forehead and the slight downturn of her mouth that she's uncomfortable, and that discomfort is leading to tension up her spine.

"Um," she says, and it's pretty quiet. "Okay."

Erich

[i haz THIS MANEE DICE]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 8) ( success x 1 )

Erich

It's not the response he expected. He wasn't expecting a soft smile, god no, but he was expecting -- well. Something back. A grin, a joke, a grin-and-joke laced with a spiky edge of argument because this is Melantha and this is Erich and.

What he gets is an uncomfortable silence. And two words. Well, one, really, plus a little not-word syllable. And Erich looks over at Melantha for a while, his own brow furrowing a little now. He thinks a minute, both of them staring forward, both of them sharing the same air suddenly turned stiff with discomfort.

"That was mostly a joke," he says. "I mean. I'm not really thinking I'm gonna be your live-in boy-toy slash housekeeper."

Melantha

"I know you were joking," she says, almost too quickly. She is quiet after that, for a bit, driving. "It wasn't just the boy-toy housekeeper thing," she adds, after some thought. "It was sort of all of it."

Erich

"What... the life in ten years thing? Or the feeling like we were married, or...?"

Melantha

"Yeah," Melantha says, but this is a repeat: "all of it."

She stops driving. Well: she slows, and looks, and pulls over into the parking lot of someplace. Puts it into park, idles there, turns to look at him. "Not the part where you say I'm important to you, even though I know that." Her shoulders draw inward, a tight little shrug. "But the old married part, and the sort of... fondness for the idea of picking-up-after-work and how-was-your-day and imagining everything in ten years and... you keep talking about what you think I'm gonna be like down the line, or what I'm gonna do, or what you think I should do. And I know the rest was a joke, but I didn't really like it."

It's evident, by now, that she's trying to figure out what is bothering her as she goes. She has her seatbelt on still. She has her hands out, talking with them, ending up with holding them palm-up in front of her as though she's about to weigh separate objects between them. "I know you're not hinting about getting married or something. But you talk about the whole old-married-couple bit and how-was-your-day stuff sort of... fondly," she repeats again. "And right now at least, that sort of thing doesn't really appeal to me. Plus whenever you talk about my future I get really uncomfortable. And I don't totally know why, but it does. Honestly I sort of just want you to stop imagining me in ten years or five years or what I'm gonna be like or what I might do and just... deal with me in the here-and-now."

Erich

It's the parking lot of a Big Lots store. It's rundown, it's not in the best part of town, its lights are guttering out one by one and even by day it would look dingy and straggly at the edges and maybe not the sort of place you'd want to be alone. Except they aren't alone. And they're far from defenseless.

This is where they park to hash this out. Smart thing to do, considering how often they argue, and how sometimes those arguments turn into genuine fights. Wouldn't want to have one of those hurtling down the freeway at eighty miles an hour. So: Melantha parks, and Melantha tries to figure out, herself, exactly what it is that bothers her, and Erich

listens, his brow furrowed. He's sort of got a heavy, deep-cut brow. Very All-American Jock. A little bit Neanderthal. But Melantha, at least, has never assumed he was stupid just because of how he looks.

"Okay," he says quietly. "I hear you." A small pause. "And I do see you, y'know. Here and now, I mean. It's not like every time I look at you I'm seeing some barbie-and-ken future of who we're supposed to be in ten years or something. I see ... you. I love y--"

and just like that

something enormously fast and enormously strong plunges its paw through the passenger's-side window. Sinks its claws into Erich, yanks him wholesale out through that window, flings him fifteen bone-crushing feet to land skidding on his back. Melantha has a glimpse, just a glimpse, of Erich's face: stunned, shocked, aghast, outraged,

and then it's not a human face anymore but a monster's, furred and fanged.

Melantha

Melantha is already taking a breath, and it's a heavy, tight one, because she wants to tell him -- and may even be gearing up to interrupt him -- that Jesus, she knows he loves her, that's not the problem, she doesn't think he's only seeing a Barbie and Ken future or something.

She is mid-breath when something flashes, when claws dig and blood spurts. And Melantha screams, sharp and quick, as Erich is somehow yanked through the window, thrown. It happens so fast. She gives that sharp shriek, then slams the car into reverse, hits the gas.

Erich

Melantha screams. Erich goes flying. Tires screech. The thing outside slams its paw back through the window. The SUV lurches backwards, that sudden acceleration rocking Melantha violently against the steering wheel; wrenching the thing's arm brutally back. There's a yelp of pain, a thud, a scrabbling of claws on asphalt and then,

and then she's free, her car is careening backward, the engine is roaring, the headlights wash

over

that thing, that snarling thing with its fur greasy and lank, its ears and its maw hideously hairless and ridged, its nostrils flaring up and backward. It bares its teeth at Melantha, roaring.

And then it comes after her. She's going backward at ten, twenty, thirty miles an hour, blindly, the world a blur in the rearview mirror. It's coming at her, one lunge devouring half the distance she's put between them, the second --

-- tackled aside. A greyish blur of growls and snaps collides with the blackish one. They slam aside, tumble over one another, come apart bristling and snarling, circling, wary.

Melantha

[Belated WP for phobia!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 4, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )

Melantha

Reverse. Gas. Brake.

Drive.

The Jeep zips backward, but stops hard when Melantha stabs the brake pedal with her foot. She is nothing but mechanical now; the motions of her feet, the placement of her hands. Action followed by action. She has her hand on the knob, the car is starting to roll and she is hovering for half a second before hitting the gas again,

if that thing really wants to come for her.

But Erich gets it first. And secretly -- not too secretly -- she is relieved. She is not a hero, and she is not a martyr. Shame may come later, if there is also grief, but the instinct goes deep: one way or another, she's going to get out of this. So Melantha, still not quite processing or thinking so much as merely acting, turns the wheel hard, accelerates, and drives the hell away.

This is the craven, self-serving thing to do. This is also the smart thing to do. Erich fights. Melantha runs.

Erich

So she flees. She flees, and the roar of the engine drowns out the roar of the animals -- beasts -- monsters behind her. She flees and those monsters become small, become toy-sized, become tiny in her mirror, and then she whips around a corner and the sight is gone and the sound is gone and it's just her,

her and her breathing,

her and her hammering heart,

her and her four wheels on the road.

Until of course it's not. Until of course it all goes wrong, those best laid plans of Melanthas and Erichs; until of course suddenly there's a shape lunging into the street ahead of her, headlights turning black fur silver-white and lambent, headlights reflecting green out of those constricting pupils. The thing snarls at her. It is a different thing, smaller than the first, wiry-lanky, with a shriveled left arm. It is still strong enough, large enough, to rip her to tiny pieces with hardly a thought.

Melantha

Melantha is in control enough to drive sanely. Not slowly, not carefully, but sanely. And she does. And when she's out of the lot she slows down. She pretends nothing is wrong. She exhales, slowly, and waits for Erich's voice in her mind.

It doesn't come. Something else does, though, and Melantha scowls, and rams her foot down on the gas.

Erich

[roll wits+drive or dex+drive!]

Melantha

[wits + volcano + drive!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 4, 10) ( success x 1 )

Erich

[bad thing: ACK CAR *DODGE*]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Melantha

[fak]

Erich

Whip-fast, the thing,

(let's just call it what it is, shall we?)

the Black Spiral Dancer twists out of the way. Melantha's car roars past. There's a KCHUNK, a shockingly loud noise of metal crumpling in on itself. A harried glance into the rearview mirror would tell her all she needs to know: it's grabbed onto the car, dug its claws in; its hindpaws are scrabbling and slipping and dragging bloody on the asphalt as it struggles for purchase.

Melantha

So she brakes.

HARD.

Melantha

[wits + volcano + drive! burning wp.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Erich

[ack! react! dex+dodge, +2 diff cuz CAR SMASHING INTO FACE]

Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (4, 4, 5, 5, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )

Erich

[car base dmg 6, x2 for 2 cumulative succ. roll 12d10 bashing damage!]

Melantha

[car go SMASH]

Dice: 12 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Erich

[OW]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Erich

The brakes squeal. The tires screech. The Dancer hanging off the back of her car hits the rear window with a satisfying THUD, though in the end it's more a bruised ego than any real damage.

He roars at her through the window. He throws his weight one way, then the other. Starts rocking the car. Starts trying to flip it over.

Erich

[BSD: strength! when cumulative succ >20, car tips!]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Melantha

This time, Melantha just stops the car. She puts it into park, scrambling for the glove compartment. Yelling at Erich in her mind: another one oh my god it's trying to flip the car over IS THE OTHER ONE DEAD YET i'm gonna shoot it

It's not loaded. She unloads it when she comes down to the city. Shaking, Melantha tries to get the gun ready to fire. She hasn't removed her seatbelt. The car hasn't turned off.

Erich

There's a burst of something like static in her mind, something hot and incredibly noisy and it's rage, that's what rage soundsfeelstastes like, it just seems like static because her mind, her human mind without the capabilities of shapeshifting at-least-in-this-life, can't interpret it any other way.

Then:

ALMOST. I'M KILLING IT RIGHT NOW. FUCK. WHERE ARE YOU?

-- because Erich, angry, sounds like all-caps.

Her car lurches to the other side. Metal groans. Springs creak.

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 5, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Melantha

There's a flinch, mentally. If it were given words it would say ACK. STOPPIT. even though she doesn't really want him to stop. She knows he can't stop. His rage doesn't feel like static to her, not like white noise. But she might not try to describe to him what it feels like. Sounds like. How it lives in her mind.

road

is all she says. She unbuckles her seat belt. The car is idling. All she has to do is shift, hit the gas, move, if she needs to. But for now, she turns in her seat, taking aim at the rear windshield, which she'll have to replace now, dammit.

She shoots it. She's not even trying to hit the thing. She's just going to break the window. Then fire at the spiral.

[1a. one shot!1b. 3rb!]

Melantha

[dex + firearms - 2]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6) ( success x 1 )

Melantha

[damage vs. window 4 +0]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )

Melantha

[1b. dex + firearms -3][WP]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (7, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Melantha

[damage!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

Erich

[OW]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )

Erich

The first bullet shatters the rear window.

The second smashes into the Dancer's chest. Right smack in the center of the sternum, driving it back a step. Doesn't even break the skin. Its eyes are almost aglow, burning down the length of the SUV's interior. Silence for a second, an instant, and then:

a roar, a boneshaking snarl. The Dancer comes storming around the side of the car, smashing its fists into the windows as it comes, cracking one, spiderwebbing the next, and then, and then it's at the driver's side window, bringing back its arm to elbow through. Smash Melantha's head in with the same motion, if it had its way.

Melantha

[rerolling 1b since I forgot that I declared a 3rb!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 4, 5, 5) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

Melantha

[are you FUCKING kidding me.]

Melantha

[I guess we'll roll damage with that bullshit.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 5) ( fail )

Melantha

That

did not work. Melantha feels her skin crawling up, crawling over her, and sees the dancer moving, breaking all her windows. She's not waiting, shrieking little helpless shrieks as it makes its way toward her. She turns. She puts the car back into Drive, and she gets the hell out of dodge.

Erich

It was a split-second away from smashing through the driver's side window. It was a split-second away from carrying that motion through, smashing Melantha's head with it or at least knocking her for a loop. It was, but Melantha's no shrieking damsel; she doesn't sit there screaming at her doom while she waits for some superhero to save her.

No. Melantha turns. Melantha smacks the gearbox back to Drive. Melantha floors the gas. The Jeep bucks forward. The tires squeal, but it's not terribly theatrical: just a quick screech and then the rubber catches. She peels out. The Dancer's claws rake paint off the flank of the car. She hears it howl in frustration behind her, and then

in her head, very loud, almost gleeful:

I SEE HIM I SEE THAT MOTHERFUCKER HE'S MINE.

Melantha

There is no answer from Melantha. Not a dead silence, a cut-off phone call. Just a buzzing, a sharp static of panic held in the mind if not permitted to control the body. There's a stab of it, from Melantha, in some sort of response to him, but otherwise, she just keeps driving.

It takes a few blocks before she even looks in the rearview again to see if she's still being chased. She can taste bile in her mouth. She can feel the burn of acid on her throat. She is shaking, without realizing it, until she is starting to slow down closer to the speed limit.

Then, anxiously:

Erich?

Erich

Nothing between them for the space of those panicked blocks. Erich isn't the sort to give a play-by-play, blow-by-blow, of a fight. He's got a big mouth, talks a lot, but not when blood's flowing and lives are on the line. Has enough respect for the brutish work he does to keep silent then.

So: silence. Silence and then Melantha slowing down, 50mph, 40, 35. Speed limit. Wouldn't do to be pulled over right now, with her back window shattered and a recently-fired gun at hand. Too many questions.

Her inquiry is met with silence. That silence lasts for a few seconds at most, but perhaps it seems longer. Then suddenly a burst across the mind-link:

I'm here. It's all good. You okay?

Melantha

Hesitantly: ...yeah?

She thinks she is.

I'm pulling over. I'm at... I'm almost at 6th. I see a park. Barnum?

Flashes of circus animals, grotesque posters, feelings of anxiety and distress that are related to circuses and not to what's happened tonight. Makes sense that someone like Melantha, going to a circus as a child, would be stricken with horror and dismay and grief. No delight for her there, no joy, no wonder. Only brutality, only gross feelings. Even as a child, she didn't like seeing anything in cages. She never had a pet.

Need me to come back?

Erich

No.

Truth is he does want her to come back. He wants her to come back so he can put his hands all over her and make sure she's okay, and once he's sure she's okay, then he wants to flex and show off and maybe wave some grisly trophy about until she praises his might and prowess and maybe bandages his wounds or something. Except he's fairly sure she'll just throw up at his grisly trophies, and also not be terribly impressed at all with the flexing and showing off. And anyway:

he wants her to come back. He doesn't need her to. And truth part two is: it may not be safe for her to come back. You never know.

Keep driving. I'm gonna drop by the Sept and get Cleansed. I'll go by Umbra. Then I'll get someone to give me a ride.

Melantha

Also at the sight of blood she might pass out or throw up on him, so there won't be much wound-bandaging from her. She's not that type of Kinfolk. Not the sort to be impressed by his trophies or clean up the wounds that will heal on their own anyway or mend his torn clothes. Or have his babies and keep his den clean. She's not really much in the way of a useful Kinfolk, not in any of those ways. There's more than one reason why she ended up doing what she did for so many years. She was good at it. It's something she could do that was useful.

I'll meet you there she says, which is not an offering. It's just a statement. She doesn't want to drive home alone. She doesn't want to do so with broken windows, especially. She wants to see him, too.

Put her hands on him and make sure he's okay.

Erich

A small hesitation; then he relents. She did say she was tired earlier, but he can drive on the way back. Plus the Sept was sure to be safe. So:

Okay. He sounds sort of happy.

--

It takes him longer to get to the Sept than it does her. He has four legs and she has four wheels. He gets there, though, and then it takes him a while to actually get to her because first there's the business of taking a trophy to the Warder, and the business of telling the Guardians where they might need to do some cleanup, and finally the business of getting Cleaned Up himself.

Eventually, though: eventually his mind reaches out and brushes hers, sort of gently-carefully, just in case she was sleeping. He just wants to know where she is. She tells him. A few minutes later, he's showing up where she is, his dirty clothes churning in one of the Sept's washers, his borrowed clothes a little ill-fitting on him. Too tight across the shoulders and chest, and doesn't smell a bit like him.

He stands in the doorway of whatever room she's in, looking at her with a stupid little grin growing on his face. "Hey," he says, also stupidly. She looks like she's okay. She looks like she's okay and he's glad. "Ready to go home?"

Melantha

To be fair, Melantha wasn't waiting for him to relent to anything, or expecting resistance. She's already turning around, breathing deeply to try and clear her head. In the end, he doesn't even give her reason to suspect that he might have been inclined to give her anything to fight with him about. Or something for her to ignore entirely in the course of doing what she wants, anyway.

--

Melantha drives to Cold Crescent. Parking is in short supply around the building, but she finds a spot in the garage across the street, hiding the car down somewhere it won't be noticed, where no homeless people will try and climb into the windowless Jeep. She darts across the street and into the building, buzzed in by the kinfolk lobby guard who works nights. After that she just rides up to the dorm floor, going into the lounge area and curling up on one of the couches, legs drawn up, arms tucked.

Most people are asleep or out. The television stays off; it's not Melantha's habit to just turn it on because it's there.

She feels Erich before she sees him, and lifts her head from the side of the couch, looking around. Not long after he walks in, looking silly in a t-shirt that isn't long enough and sweats that are too big. She smiles anyway, part fondness and part amusement. "What are you doing over there?" she asks, because he's at the door. They talk at the same time, though. She hears him anyway and huffs a laugh, nodding. "Yeah. "Tomorrow we should hit a junkyard, look for windows to replace the ones in the Jeep."

Melantha has gotten up, is walking over to him. She is still tucked up in herself, and just sort of thumps into his chest to be hugged.

Erich

"I'm looking at you," he answers her, and they talk at the same time again, and he grins as she smiles.

"Okay," he says, amenable to the idea of junkyard and window-replacement. "Hope we find something suitable. It's getting too cold to drive with a broken window."

He straightens up as she comes over. He takes a couple steps forward, and she doesn't untuck her arms, so they just run into each other. Thud. Her meaty Get-of-Thunder-Lord boyfriend puts his arms around her, a big bearish hug that he accompanies with a growl. It's a happy little growl, so far as these things go. After a while he loosens his arm, turns, keeps one arm heavy around her shoulders, hugging her to his side.

"Want me to drive on the way back?"

Melantha

Melantha rests her face against his chest. She sighs, glad to feel him solid and warm as always under the stupid clothes he's wearing. She is hugged, and he growls a little, an rrring sound of a kind. She huffs a little laugh again, rubs her face on him, and draws back, looking at him. "Nah," she tells him. "It'll keep my mind occupied. I don't wanna just sit in the passenger seat being whatever."

She's quiet a moment. "What happened? Like... what was it? Or what were they? All dead now?"

Erich

"A couple of Dancers," he says. Neither of them turned the TV on, so as he strolls out of that common area with her, they leave behind an empty, quiet room. "Probably just Cliaths, I think, or whatever their equivalent is. Probably thought we'd be easy pickings."

He bumps his brow, the bridge of his nose, against the side of her head. It's a gruff, physical sort of affection. He's feeling gruff and physical right now. Affectionate; protective; maybe a little bit proud of the both of them. Survival's a feat in this day and age.

"But we weren't."

Melantha

She wrinkles her nose. "If they have equivalents to rank I don't want to know those names. We should make up names for Dancer ranks. Based on like... insect development stages or something. First rank is 'larvae'."

Her arm slides around his waist as they walk. He's nuzzling at her, bumping, nudging, and she rolls her eyes a little, her mouth curving to one side wryly. "You're all caveman right now," she teases him.

Erich

Erich laughs aloud. "Larvae," he echoes, amused, and now her arm is around him too. They're wound together, ridiculously photogenic all-american young couple that they are, even if his shirt is so short that it rides up and shows skin on the side where he's got his arm around her. "What would their elders be, then? Parasitic hookworms?"

He is teased for being a caveman. He does his best approximation of a shoulder-to-shoulder bump, but since they're more side-by-side right now, he ends up just swaying them off-course by a couple feet.

"Well, I do live in an arguably cave-like structure," he points out. "Though really it's a den. So I'm just being all wolfman right now."

Melantha

"Ew," is all she says to that.

"Pedantic, pedantic," she also tells him, shaking her head. She lays her head on his chest, where she walks under his arm. She exhales. "I changed my mind. You can drive. You probably totally want to anyway."

Erich

Erich grins at nothing in particular and everything at once. "Yeah, I do," he admits. "'Cause I want you to nap or something on the way back. Or just stay up and, I dunno, we can tell ghost stories on the way up."

They're at the elevators. At this hour they don't have to wait long. Soon enough a shiny metal box zooms up and opens it doors for them. Getting in, Erich keeps his arm around Melantha. It's nice, having his arm around her. It's nice having her arm around his waist, her head on his chest. It's just nice, all of it.

"You're okay, right?" he asks, softer. "They didn't hurt you or freak you out too bad?"

Melantha

"Let's do a dumb joke-off instead, so I don't end up with nightmares where the hook-handed man is actually a Black Spiral Dancer, okay?" She squeezes him and WHOOSH,

down they go.

He asks her the question he's probably had on his mind since he saw her in the lounge, and she just shrugs. "I'm not hurt." And she isn't in full-tilt meltdown. But she doesn't lie. She doesn't say she wasn't freaked out, and badly. That's what the do. That's what their common enemy lives for. She can't help that they succeeded.

Erich

Erich's heart breaks a little. Of all the unforgivable things the Dancers do, the first and foremost would probably be their desecration of the Mother. But the second, and not a distant second at that, is the sheer terror they spread. The psychological warfare they wage. The horrible, horrible, terrible things they do just for the sake of doing it. Just for the sake of fear.

He's quiet a while. He sidehugs her pretty tightly all the way down in the elevator. And when they emerge in the lobby, when they cross the lobby and go out the doors into the crisp, cool night, he gives her another squeeze.

"We'll have a joke-off," he says. "And you can just sleep in my bed tonight. Okay?"

Melantha

There's a part of Melantha that wants to argue that no, he can come sleep in hers. And she can't even figure out why, so... maybe... it's just her being contrary. She's so tired. She nods, tucking herself against him, realizing how defensive she is, and starting to realize why. She'll talk to him about it sometime. For now, she just nods like that, holding him, heading out of the building.

"Okay," she says, sighing it, but more like an acceptance than a resignation.

They walk across the street and into the garage. They brush glass off of seats by the dome light, and Erich adjusts the driver's seat and Melantha curls up in the passenger seat and they go home. As he starts driving, the first time she speaks again is to ask him: what do ghosts get when they're turned on?

And answer: a booooooo-ner!

thanks for thinking of a veggie, erich.

Erich

Late summer: that languid hour, those endless days. Heat settles over the distant plains, windless and still, shimmering, blurring, obscuring the horizon. Up in the mountains, a droning, buzzing heat. Insects and foliage. Wind in the trees. Sleepy afternoons, the nights still cool; thunderstorms now and again to leach the humidity away.

A little before dinnertime on one of those nights Charlotte is down at Cold Crescent, Erich packs a little picnic and rolls up a blanket. He slips a couple candles into the basket, because yes they have a picnic basket because one day Erich saw one at Ikea or something and just had to get it. He brings a few bottles of beer. He brings a whole rotisserie chicken, store-bought. He brings some bread and maybe a cucumber for Melantha, he doesn't know, it's been so long since he's eaten veggies. He brings all these things and he carries the basket in one hand, the blanket over one shoulder, and with his other hand

he holds Melantha's.

They walk into the woods while the sun still rides above the rim of the mountains. They climb a little, and then they find a nice shaded outcropping of flat rock. Erich lays out the blanket and unpacks the picnic. Erich produces the candles with a sort of shy, delighted flourish. Erich lights the candles, and then Erich sits crosslegged next to Melantha, carving meat off the bone.

This is a sort of date, too. He doesn't call it that, but if Melantha could look into his brain and read his thoughts, she'd see it written right there:

date with Melantha :]

Melantha

This is more Melantha's style of date.

Granted, Melantha has not really had a style for her dates. She didn't date as a child, obviously. There was no dating among the sisters, though there were still subtle games of courtship and consummation. Her dates have always been with men she did not want to be with, who wanted her badly, men whom she pretended to want in return. Older men, soft in the middle most of the time, worshipping her because she made them feel so young, and so vital, and so powerful. They took her to nice places and they gave her gifts and they weren't always wealthy but they always tried to impress her, pay for her somehow, to make her stay.

The thing is, though, Melantha likes the trappings of that life: the nice clothing, the champagne, the jewelry, the dinners. They were part of how she tolerated it all. They were pleasurable. But she didn't connect it to feelings of affection, either receiving or giving such feelings. She just liked them. So the ideas of those dates, the gifts, the images of them, are surprisingly untainted. They are things to make her happy, not things to earn her love. And the trick is: trying to make her happy without trying to earn something from her is, itself, a way to get into her heart.

Anyone's heart.

But this: walking together out from the tinyhouse and tinyhouse-in-progress, hiking up into the mountains a bit farther, Erich carrying a picnic basket that smells obviously of chicken... this is a good date. It is a lot, LOT better than Asking Her Out and then taking her, in her pretty skirt because she tried to dress up a little, thank you very much, to KFC to extol the glory of the Double Down. This makes her feel seen, and noticed, and pleased. This makes her feel comfortable. This makes her feel special, too, as Erich starts setting out candles and lighting them.

She smiles at him, when he looks at her again. She wonders if all he brought is a whole chicken in that basket, but she's not going to tease him about it right now. She leans over, giving him a kiss on his cheek.

Erich

There's enough shadow now that the candles cast a noticeable glow. They are both warm-skinned and golden in that soft, flickering light. Erich's eyes look bright. Melantha's eyelashes look endless, endlessly thick: black as soot when she glances down.

She looks happy, he thinks. She looks pleased and happy and like he's made her feel special. This makes him happy. He smiles at her wordlessly, sharing that feeling, as he carves thick slices from the breast. And then, when that task is done, he sets the knife down and produces dinner rolls, which are also store-bought. And finally the cucumber, which is store-bought, and washed, but neither peeled nor cut nor prepared in any meaningful way.

There are utensils, though. A peeling knife, some forks. Some plates.

Melantha

Okay, he brought rolls. Melantha doesn't dare ask for butter. But then he pulls out the cucumber which... is just. You know. A cucumber. And Melantha looks at it. And looks at him. And looks at it. And looks at him.

And quirks a brow. "What is that for?" she asks, amusement skirting the edge of her tone.

Erich

Erich, cucumber in hand and peeling knife in the other, looks mildly alarmed. Like he's caught in some act.

"It's a vegetable," he says cautiously. "For you. To eat?"

Melantha

Her lips purse, then spread in a wide grin. "Ah, I see," she says, and reaches over, taking the peeler and the cucumber from him, setting them aside. "Pass me a roll, okay?"

Erich

Erich surrenders cucumber and peeler. That look on his face resolves: he grins back. "Not interested in cucumber?" He passes her a roll.

Melantha

It is starting to dawn on her that the joke of her look, the cucumber in his hand, the wryness of her grinning, isn't just something he's pretending not to get to be playful. It looks like it's just sailed right over his head. Melantha takes the roll, and looks at him.

"I was making a joke," she tells him. "Because of the whole idea that women sometimes use cucumbers as... y'know." She shrugs. "Dildos. And you brought it out all plain and unpeeled and just, like, a cucumber in the picnic basket, so I was teasing you about your intentions with said cucumber."

Melantha bites into the roll.

Erich

"Oh.

"Oh."

And Erich gets another look on his face: all bug-eyed and blowing his cheeks out, then turning red, then glancing at Melantha with this quirking, awkward half-grin.

"No. Well, I mean, I know about that joke. Just. I wasn't thinking of it. I just figured maybe you wanted something other than meat and bread. Like a plant. And that was literally the only thing in the fridge I could take along easily. I was afraid the tomatoes would get smashed by the beer.

"Oh, right." He remembers: "I brought beer too." Pause. "I'm really bad at this date thing."

Melantha

Melantha laughs, a soft sound. "Thanks for thinking of a veggie, Erich," she says, and she says his name sometimes the way people say baby or sweetie or honey, but it's all that wrapped in her tone, and the way she leans over and -- for the second time tonight -- kisses his cheek. "It was very sweet of you."

To remember that she's not like him. That her body needs more than just meat.

"You're not bad at it," she adds. "I mean, look at this," and waves her hand. "We're having this candlelit picnic in the mountains under the moonlight. It's really, really nice, Erich."

Melantha, still close to him, nuzzles him under his jaw, a half-eaten roll held aside in her hand. She kisses him behind his jaw, and once, softly, on his neck. "This is a great date."

Erich

Veggie, she calls it, which makes him grin inexplicably. Well; it's not inexplicable at all, to him. Veggie amuses him. Veggie sounds like something out of kindergarten, elementary school. Eat your veggies, Erich.

That grin grows as she calls it a good date. A great date. "Yeah?" he replies, sounding pleased; sounding a little surprised. "Nice. I got it right. Was it the candles? I thought about like, y'know, a white tablecloth too. Or a white blanket? But I figured it'd be a pain in the ass to wash all the dirt and grass stains and stuff off later.

"Here," on that note, he reaches back into that little basket and pulls out a couple bottles of beer, offering Melantha one. "Libations."

Melantha

No one tells Erich anymore to eat his veggies. Maybe strangers, old ladies in diners, but they generally don't talk to him. They can't figure out why; they usually trust white good old boys, but something about him sets them on edge, makes their hands shake. They do not tell him to eat his greens.

Melantha and Charlotte don't, either, because he eats meat and Charlotte eats bubblegum ice cream with peppermint and whatever else she fancies in the moment. Melantha is the only one of them with a balanced and healthful diet, as human beings might recognize it.

She grins as he asks her if it was the candles. He thought about a white tablecloth. She takes the beer, and they have a bottle opener or the caps are twist-off, and so the caps go back into the picnic basket. Melantha takes a drink. "It wasn't the candles," she says, after a swallow. Then smiles. "Well. Not just the candles."

For a moment she's quiet, sitting there, looking around. "It's because you know I like being outside like this, with Gaia. So that's where we went. And tried to think of things I'd like to eat, even if you don't like them. Tried to make me happy, tried to give me what I need." She smiles at him, again. "Made me feel special, with the candles."

Erich

Something about that last bit -- making her feel special -- makes Erich grin. Makes him happy. Makes that grin burst forth and then kind of hide itself away again, shy, as he bites the insides of his lips. A little later, he smiles at her; nudges her with a sway of his shoulder.

"You are special. To me. To everybody. But maybe especially to me."

Melantha

"I'm not special to everybody," Melantha tells him, still smiling, sounding a little wry. "Special to you: that's what I mean. That's why it's a nice date."

Erich

"Well," Erich says, unalarmed by the news that Melantha was not special to everyone, "you should be."

He twists the cap off his own beer, then. It's an effortless motion, a flick of the wrist. The cap goes back in the basket, like hers. He knocks his beer back. He leans it against the crook of his knee, then, while he puts some meat on his plate. A couple slices of breast. A leg twisted off.

"Though you'd still be especially special to me," he adds, as though this were some sort of honor to be had. "'Cause I love you."

Melantha

"I don't want to be special to everyone," Melantha argues, partly because Erich isn't getting that Special To Everyone isn't much of a compliment, it doesn't mean anything, it's not about that, and so on. She leans back, weight on her wrist, which is actually sort of uncomfortable: blanket on top of rock is not the softest picnic spot, but it's okay for now.

Still especially special to him. She smiles, the corner of her mouth curling, a half expression. A soft one. "And you're in love with me," she tells him.

He has never said this to her. Not aloud and not directly like that. Has he? She doesn't think he has. But she says it. She holds her beer against her thigh and watches him and lets her eyes close and open. "You're a Fostern Full Moon of Thunder and you're Gaia's little boy and Gaia's fierce guardian and you're in love with me."

Melantha doesn't say this as an honor to her. Big strong Ahroun of rank, big special chosen of what-have-you, and he's in love with little-old-her, he deigns to bless her with being special or especially-special. She just says it like it's a fact. A fact, like all the others.

Erich

Oh, she makes him feel special, too. She makes him feel seen, and heard, and known, and understood. He can't contain his grin when she states it like a fact: you're in love with me. He's Gaia's little boy, Gaia's fierce guardian, and he's in love with her.

"I am," he says. That slow blink of hers is like a beckoning. He sets his plate aside and he leans over and his mouth is kind of greasy and he probably tastes like chicken but he kisses her anyway, a soft sweet thing. "I am in love with you."

my head's just wrong.

Charlotte

Charlotte does not love this place. Erich knew that from the start. The metal and the glass do not speak to her spirit and her soul the way that natural spaces do: the mystery of the moon and the vast expanse of the sky, or the closeness of the forest, tangled and brooding and silent - at least to contemporary human senses, by contemporary human measures.

But she comes here and she comes here with Erich and she comes here faithfully, taking her turn with the rest down below, guarding that which must be guarded, and then ascending ascending ascending to the highest floors, where she tends to the shrines that call to her, and maybe does some laundry, and sometimes she can be found in the plaza down below, spending time beneath the statue of the Veteran, slurping noodles (she does like noodles) or tearing a heel of bread apart for the pigeons (she also likes pigeons, their strange gray grace, their alien boldness, their beady little eyes).

That's where she is now.

It is afterhours. The security company is kinfolk-staffed and kinfolk owned and afterhours they are used to the strangely intense young people who come and go, and don't come out to run them off.

So, afterhours, at the edge of sunset, Charlotte sits beneath the statute of the Veteran glancing from his profile to the church also embraced by the strange, crescent-shaped building, eating sushi.

With chopsticks.

She has a small plastic bag with a few heels of stale bread beside her, too.

Erich

"Hey."

Erich drops down next to Charlotte. Like literally: drops down, as though maybe he'd hopped from a tree onto the Veteran, and from the Veteran down to the ground. Charlotte is ting sushi. Erich looks longingly at the shiny, supple slices of fish. He eschews the rice and nori utterly.

"You know what I think?" So very Erich of him, this: to immediately launch into whatever topic he had in mind, regardless of lead-in or warning shots or anything of the sort. "I think maybe we should like... practice talking about the things that bother us. Like me, and my family. That bothers the hell out of me, and I just deal with it by not thinking about. But maybe if I did think about it, maybe it wouldn't bother me as much someday."

A small pause. He reaches over, quick and quicksilver, and snags a piece of fish. Pops it in his mouth, grinning unrepentantly if shoved or glared at or whatever.

"Okay, well, to be honest that's not just what I think. That's an idea Melantha kinda floated."

Charlotte

Charlotte smiles sidelong at Erich when he drops down beside her. Something lovely about that smile, the way it curves her cheeks and lights up her face. He says Hey and she says "Hi," and catches the edge of longing in his glance at the fish and lifts up her little bento box (this is not supermarket sushi) so that he can inspect and choose what he will because this bento box is her kill and he is her packbrother and when she feasts, well, so will he.

Though not on rice and nori.

--

And Erich is telling her what he thinks and he asks her if she knows and she thinks he means that as a question and she shakes her pale head, just the tips pink now though she's thinking about freshening it up sometime soon.

Charlotte likes pink.

She doesn't know why, she just does.

Then she freezes a little bit when he says he thinks they should talk about the things that bother them and she is not sure what is coming next but oh - stiff shoulders, stiff-spine, which relax as he goes on to mention something that bothers him.

"Maybe it'll always bother you. Make you sad or angry or both at once. I don't - "

A short, sharp breath. Then she plunges forward,

"I don't see how talking changes it. But if you want to talk, I'll listen."

Erich

Charlotte is lovely. Charlotte is lovely, even if Charlotte doesn't really see it herself. Erich sees it: he sees it in her smile and her spindly frame and her careful-feral way of moving, part heron part wolf part falcon part girl. Sometimes Erich really wishes other people saw it too, or really: that they see it, and Charlotte sees it, and Charlotte sees other people seeing it and Charlotte doesn't crumple up in horror and trauma at the very thought of other people looking at her and thinking,

what a special girl. i wish i knew her better.

"Nah, it's not that I need to vent right now. I'd rather not vent. But my point is: maybe it's like when you drink coffee for the first time and it's like BLECH but then you keep drinking it and eventually you don't mind the taste anymore. And then you even like it.

"I doubt I'd ever get to the point of liking talking about certain things, but maybe at least I wouldn't mind, you know? Maybe at least it won't make me curl up on myself and just shut it all out. And maybe,"

oh, Charlotte, did you think this wasn't about you, too?

"it'll get to the point where you won't wither up into a little ball of misery when you think about certain things, too. I mean, it won't make the things any better? It'll maybe just make us a little stronger."

Charlotte

Charlotte knew it. Charlotte knew that this was about her; could feel it like a tremor beneath the ground but ignored that, ignored that, ignored that,

until she cannot ignore it, and she glances up at Erich's profile, her own gaze lovely and lambent and startled and startling the way it is always startled and startling and she's pulling in a breath and forgets to breathe out for a heartbeat, too.

Honestly,

she looks a little bit heartbroken.

"That doesn't help me, Erich. My head's just wrong."

Erich

"How do you know that's how your head is wrong?" Erich challenges. "I mean, I don't think your head is wrong that way. I know your head is wrong, but there's nothing wrong with that, it's like when some people are born nearsighted or maybe their face isn't totally symmetric. That girl from Game of Thrones, Margaery Tyrell? HER face isn't totally symmetric and she's totally hot. Okay I'm off topic.

"My point is: okay, so your head is wrong. But that doesn't make you bad or whatever. And also! You think your head being wrong makes you all squicky about romance and relationships and sex and stuff, but I think even if that was part of it, that's not all of it. 'Cause I mean, if you think about it? You only got squicky about it all after What Happened To You happened. And that'd make anyone squicky.

"Maybe your head is wrong enough that you get REALLY SUPER SQUICKY when most people would just be squicky. But maybe your head isn't so wrong that, with some effort -- with maybe a lot of effort -- you couldn't go back to being able to deal with stuff like that. At least a little bit."

Charlotte

PAUSE.

Charlotte

The moment slews so very strangely and even after living together for so very long Charlotte shows very little interest in popular culture, in Netflix on Melantha's laptop or Erich's tablet, curls up with them when they want to pile in for movie night as often as not as a wolf, and only becomes a girl when Melantha insists that Charlotte will really, really like this one. Like the time they watched Mulan.

So there they are on the patio beneath the tower that lifts their shrines into the sky, over the crawling pit that they quite nearly died to keep sealed, in the failing twilight.

The business people have all gone home.

Sometimes the lights go on in the building, as the cleaning crews move through the mostly empty offices. Then off again. The building management company is very environmentally conscious. The place does not blaze through the night. The planters are xeriscaped and there are cachements and rainbarrels and solar panels and there might even be a geothermal heating system if there weren't a pit from hell quite literally in the subbasement of the place.

Charlotte's cheeks feel hot.

They are bright little fever points and she takes a breath and another and another and does not quite remember to breathe out. Something about the word squick makes her shoulders tense before he has even moved on to sex and relationships.

And Charlotte trusts Erich implicitly and entirely but:

this hurts,

this hurts,

already this hurts her head.

She is in a room and the walls are closed and the air is closed and there is a - a - a buzzing noise that comes from everywhere and nowhere inside her and when it comes, it never stops.

"I don't - " Charlotte is saying, "I don't - "

Erich

"Hey," Erich says,

cuts in, he hopes, as she starts to get that sick look, that green-around-the-gills look, that trapped-in-a-diminishing-room look. "Hey," he says, again, his hand reaching across the table but not touching her, no, some instinct tells him not to do that carelessly right now. "I'm here. You're here. You don't have to do anything. Okay? I just thought maybe it'd help but if it doesn't, if it makes everything worse, you don't have to do anything at all."

Charlotte

[Denver @ 6:22PM

♪♫ Welcome to Dedicated Dicing Den, we've got fun and Charlotte! ♫♪

Charlotte @ 6:22PM

WPRoll: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 3, 3, 7, 7) ( success x 2 ) ]

Charlotte has both the sick look, the green around the gills look, the trapped in a diminishing room look, the world is made of razor blades and arsenic look, and another look entirely. It is just as sick, you must understand. It feels fleshy and wet and ripped-from-the-body but they are wolves and they are monsters and they understand that some things must be ripped from the body.

"I can't - " and she is a little bit breathless, you understand, but, "I can't just talk about it," this is a struggle, even this is a struggle, fighting free of the noise inside her to be here, to be present, to remember that Erich is her pack. She does reach out; brush her mind against his, "without feeling like it's happening again. Like it's happening again and it'll never stop happening and I won't -

"Sometimes it's like quicksand. But if I just think about - about good stuff."

Erich

They are pack. Their minds brush together the way their bodies do sometimes, unself-consciously and naturally and amiably. Their minds brush together now, though hers is sick with horror and revulsion and old decay. He shivers a little -- she can see it -- but then he reaches out, reaches back,

brushes her with his mind and with his big hand folding over hers for a second.

"There's so much more good stuff than bad," he says. "Even if the bad is like quicksand, it's like... well it's like a little puddle of quicksand, and you can reach right over and pull yourself out using the nice, uh, the nice grass and stuff next to it." He sucks at metaphors, he thinks.

Charlotte

The truth is, Charlotte jerks her hand back; as if she had just touched a hot stove, a scalding kettle. Her slender fingers, the small knobs of her knuckles, the twists of the friendship bracelets Melantha gave them so long again still knotted there, worn until they have frayed, repaired or perhaps Repaired as often as is possible, and she tries not to let her hand jump when he touches her but they are what they are and and she is what she is and ugh,

another shiver.

And Erich is trying, struggling, reaching to understand, to remind her that all that noise is just noise; is passing; it goes away, every time it goes away, there are good things all around her and she knows it. There is her pack and the moon in the cradle of the sky and the rise of the nightwind and the tinyhouse(s), one rising beside the other high up in the mountains. There is the hunt, and the harrowing, and the prayers at dawn. The ache to howl in her throat, the sharp bite of instinct beneath her skin. The pleasure of bringing down a foe, of tearing them open, of spilling blood and watching it steam in the cool morning air. Of cleansing: making what was Wrong, Right.

And Charlotte listens, and she listens, and she believes him with every part of her mind, except the part that is damaged, which will never believe him, and so she nods agreement: because all these things are true.

Just as: all these things are false, in equal measure.

Charlotte's breathing is still high and tight and fast.

But: she hasn't freaked out.

She hasn't puked.

Perhaps that is progress, of a sort.

Erich

Erich's hand darts back nearly as fast as Charlotte's, but it's different. It's different. It's not the way you jerk back from fire, from pain: that instinctive motion, that reflex arc that cuts the brain out of the loop entirely. His: quick, yes, but not as quick. There's a mind there. There's thought. It's the way you jerk back from a wounded animal who just whimpered in pain. Who just, maybe, bared its teeth in warning.

They sit apart, divided by a table. He watches her and she -- she tries to hold it together. After a while he stops looking at her, made ashamed by her trauma. He shouldn't stare.

"Do you wanna -- "

he breaks off. He thinks; seconds tick. He tries again:

"Maybe we can ... maybe we can go run. On the other-side. Up in the mountains. Maybe that'll make you feel better."

Charlotte

There is something odd and wrong and perceptive about Charlotte, sometimes, and that strange face, the hollows of her cheeks, the compressed plane of her features, those huge pale eyes and she is being careful, you see, because things inside of her are very very strange and the world is strange and sometimes it feels as if there were hot little needles pulling together everything wrong, and sometimes the world is too close, too intense, too immediate, and sometimes it is too far away.

Erich at her side, made for savagery, and she is not remembering precisely the first time they walked together, from the GW campus to his car-that-was-his-home and how he made her feel like she were sailing at the prow of a ship, the wind in her face, the way strangers parted for them, but she is aware of it, pricklingly aware, and she is lifting her stubborn little chin.

Gives him a quicksilver smile, the sort that seems to have disappeared before he even becomes aware of it.

"We can run here. Hunt. Warder said there was something he wants us to check out four blocks north. A sink. You wanna?"

Erich

Erich: dubious. Charlotte can see it on his face. He begins: "If you think you're -- "

-- and stops. A beat. No, that's the wrong way to go about it, all wrong. If he doubts her, if he doubts her ability and her strength and her self-awareness, the fact that Charlotte herself would tell him if she couldn't -- if he doubts that, then everything else may as well be for naught. He may as well tell her: stop trying to get over your past, because you never will. Stop trying to rise above your madness, because you never can.

He doesn't believe that. Either of that, any of that. He doesn't believe that, and so, after that hesitation, he returns her smile. Small and slight and hesitant, hesitant but growing.

"Yeah." Palm to the floor and a push: he gets up. "Yeah, I wanna."

you use flexibility and ambivalence as a shield.

Erich

In a different life, Avery might have had an office in a building like this. Might've been some high-powered executive, some up-and-coming stateswoman, someone ambitious and smart and principled. In this life, it turns out Avery has an office in this building after all, though her name might not be on the door. Her position certainly isn't.

It's an impressive office. It's on the 42nd floor, one from the top. It may or may not be a corner office, but it's certainly an office with a view -- a sweeping glassy panoramic of city or mountain or both. Through the plate glass, and from several hundred feet up in the air, Denver is tranquil and aglow, skyscrapers lit from within, stars above.

A quick rap on the door announces a visitor. It's Erich, looking out of place in jeans and a rumpled t-shirt. It's his Throwed Rolls shirt again. He wears it so often that it has to be dedicated. He lingers in the doorway, awkward, until invited in -- and when invited in, all but bounds in, eager, happy to see his friend. He comes around the desk; there's no stopping him. He hugs her! He goes straight to the window a second after, plastering himself to the glass as though he doesn't see the exact same view from the 43rd floor.

"Oh man, I bet you can see all the way to the state line from here," he says. His geography may be a little shoddy.

Avery Chase

Since achieving her still sort-of-new role as the Master of Challenges for the Sept of the Cold Crescent, Avery has spent at least several hours per week in her office. She redecorated, of course. The room had been stripped bare after the punishment of the previous leaders and the temporary closing of the sept, so she had a clean canvas to work with. And work she did. The office is in the eastern arm of the building, catching morning light but safe, for the most part, from the searing heat brought by western and southern exposure. It is not at a corner -- the apex of the triangular building is occupied by the wolf who serves as a bridge between this sept and the caern, and Avery didn't want to be at another corner, too far from that liaison.

She does have a wall made of glass, however, and a large, open office. There is a division within it, a wall she put up with a frosted glass door and a heavy lock. Through that little interior door is a small -- tiny -- sanctuary: there is a serene daybed, and a door to her small executive washroom with its spartan shower cubicle, and a little table and chair by the windows. Erich doesn't get to see that, but that's what's there. All he sees, inside the office, is the frosted-glass door with the heavy lock, unobtrustive in the midst of the rest.

See, this is the office of the Master of Challenges. The Challenge Floor is one floor above them, but not all challenges have to be taken there. The majority of the space in Avery's office is open, open, empty. Angled at a corner of her office is a clean, simple desk, long and broad and modern-simple, with a comfortable chair of white leather and shining chrome behind it. Avery has a computer here, and a sleek wireless printer hidden in a nearby cabinet, and she has a small pot with an orchid growing from it, but she has little else. She has shades that she can roll down over the windows with the press of a button, light-blocking but -- more importantly -- concealing everything else inside from any eyes that might see in, whether by telescope or helicopter.

There is a massive shelving unit against one wall, made up of several rectangular cabinets of varying sizes. There are weapons in that cabinet. There are games both recognizable and obscure. There are many things in those cabinets, fit for many sorts of challenges.

There is a small seating area in another corner, three armchairs and a little table in the middle that has a bowl of peanut butter M&Ms -- white, navy, and baby blue only. It's a spot that Erich might even be able to imagine seeing himself, Siren of Persephone, and Avery sitting at once upon a time, trying to talk through their differences. But other than her desk, the cabinetry, and the little seating area, the rest of the office is open, open, open.

There's enough room for people to throw punches at each other, for example.

--

Avery's office does not have a nameplate beside the doors -- if you are here, you know where the find her. You know whom you are seeing. The doors are double, set with frosted glass just like the interior one. One of those dual doors is open when he arrives, not because she is expecting anyone, but because she is not currently seeing anyone, and she is here. Erich, having better manners than he gives himself credit for, knocks anyway.

The woman inside has her hair up -- most of it, anyway -- and a swath of gold falling wavy across her brow and cheekbones. She wears little earrings of pale gold with blue pearls dangling from the metal flowers. Her dress is short-sleeved, mid-thigh, and pink. It is a bit old-fashioned, coming out of mid-century lines with modern patterning and jeweled flower buttons on the sleeves that seem to hearken back to the 1920s. Her heels are a bit mod, though, white and black and strappy and a bit funky, with stripes and spots both. She looks very pretty.

But then, this is Avery.

She also looks nothing like the sort of woman who might preside over a bloody challenge either in this room or at the challenge floor. But no matter; Erich knows better.

Standing by her desk but bent over it, signing something that has nothing to do with sept business, she looks up at the rap, and sees Erich there in his jeans and Throwed Rolls shirt. Her face breaks into a bright grin as she straightens, pen immediately set down, stride picking up to take her across her office toward the door. "Erich!" she says, pleased as... well. As punch. Pink punch.

So they meet in the middle, arms going around each other, hers over his shoulders and his perhaps around her waist. "It's wonderful to see you! I thought I wouldn't again until the moot."

They've parted; he's wandered to the window. She laughs at his supposition. "Perhaps. I think the Glass Walkers have a gift for that, if you wanted to learn it." She bends to her desk again, finishing some initials, a few pages of signatures. "What have you been up to?"

Erich

"The Glass Walkers have a gift for seeing to the state line?" Erich looks appropriately awed. But: "Nah, I don't think I should learn it. I'd probably piss someone off. Some elder or maybe Cockroach or maybe even Thunder, who knows. I don't need it. I can just get binoculars.

"Oh, stuff." One thing segues into the next. No it doesn't; there's no segue. One thing just kinda pops into the next. "We're still living in the mountains. More so now actually, 'cause it's warmer and there isn't a ton of snow in the way. Melantha's building a second tinyhouse. Charlotte and I are still in our tinyhouse. Honestly I haven't been down to Cold Crescent much lately, but I think once Melantha's tinyhouse is done we might be moving closer to the city again. Maybe? I don't know, I have to talk to them."

There you go, Avery. More than you ever needed to know. Erich turns away from the night, the mountains, the city. He peers at Avery's desk, curious.

"What are you signing off on? Challenges?" That would be quite Cold Crescent, he thinks: challenge forms in triplicate.

Avery Chase

"They have a gift -- eyes of the eagle, eagle-eyes, something like that."

Avery re-situates the stack of papers she was signing, lifting and tapping and straightening them before laying them aside, pen on top. It's a very nice pen. She gave her father one to match on Father's Day. Inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Very pretty. Not what she would have liked to get him, but he has put spending limits on Avery's gifts to him for years. She only gets away with going above those limits at Christmas.

She perches on the corner of her desk, lightly, long legs stretching, one crossing over the other at the ankle, hands folding. She listens, intent and interested as he tells her about his pack, about his packmate-kinswoman, about his thoughts.

Avery laughs. "No," she admits. "Just some spillover from other business -- family, real estate, you know." She handwaves it off. He doesn't know, most likely. "Challenges in here are matters of honor. Some have questioned it, but... that is the way it should be. Having to sign your name to something as insurance that your word is true is a human invention, borne of human dishonesty."

Her head tips. "You know, I realize -- speaking of names -- that I haven't heard a new one for you, these past months. Did you decide against a higher name to go with your higher rank?"

Erich

"Sounds like a Silver Fang gift," Erich comments, and honestly it sort of does. He thinks, anyway. His eyes glance at the pen; it's not avarice or envy or anything deadly and sinful. It's just curiosity. It's also the predator's eye, drawn to movement.

A second later his eyes flick up: he looks at Avery. "Oh." A faint flush to his cheek now. "I guess I kinda forgot. I think we were kinda bouncing a couple ideas around? Earth's Heart, particularly. But it was never really official.

"I don't mind not having a new name. I don't mind having one either." His hands tuck into his pockets; he shrugs. "Whatever works."

Avery Chase

[Perception (Insightful) + Empathy]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )

Erich

[Erich SAYS he's okay with it either way, and it's mostly true, but in his heart of hearts Erich totally wants a second name that would be so cool forever always awesome yay. And he's not totally set on Earth's Heart by itself? But he kinda likes Storm's Teeth - Earth's Heart. That makes him happy cuz his mommy is the earth and he loves his mommy and yay.

Also he's sort of embarrassed that he totally forgot about the name thing. And that he doesn't have a second name yet. And all that.]

Avery Chase

Avery gives that a moment's thought. Then she laughs, pure as the clinking of crystal. "You're not wrong," she tells him. Her moon is outside; it is coming into view, but not through the windows she has. She can feel it, though, hovering in the air, a cleanly halved face of obsidian and silver. She considers everything.

Good time to do paperwork. Good time to consider the origins of gifts.

He tells her that 'we' -- she imagines he means his pack -- were bouncing a couple of ideas around, and her dark brows perk in interest. She mulls 'Earth's Heart' over in her mind, thoughtful, considering the sound, the implications, the meaning. Perhaps she's already heard the story of how Erich was elevated in his rank. These things do tend to get around, after all.

Then she notes the way he slips his hands away, the way he shrugs, the ambivalence. And she watches him, still thoughtful. In some ways, as much as he's grown and changed in the year or so she's known him, she still remembers keenly getting so angry at him that she punched him in the face. The way he talked about himself, about what his use was. What he's for. What he's meant to do. She's changed since then, too. Recently, she came the closest to death save dying that she has come since her First Change. And she doesn't remember that death. Avery still has not fully processed how this experience with the minotaur-like creature in Calden's fields changed her, but she knows it did.

She imagines Erich has changed since she punched him, too.

"It is sometimes good to be at peace with many outcomes," she mentions. "To be flexible, to care little for the names and labels and more about the truth we find." Quiet, for a moment. Her eyes are on him, steady and bright, as they ever are. He has never seen her cloudy, her eyes like glass from sheer pain. Always bright. Always clear. Always far-seeing as the totem that blessed her by birth and by rite.

"On the other hand, I think that occasionally, you use flexibility and ambivalence as a shield." Her brows lift slightly. Her voice is gentle; her expression is expectant. "It's easier, sometimes, not to admit -- even to ourselves -- what we really want. Then it doesn't matter if we don't get it, right?"

Avery's hands slide together atop her skirt, lacing, folding. She wears a right-hand diamond ring, and its setting looks a bit like ivy, a princess-cut stone in the center of all the tendrils. It catches the light and gleams. It was a gift from her father, after she earned her first name -- and her true voice -- among her people.

"My tribe," Avery says, her voice lower, though just as clear, "obviously places a great deal of importance on names. Lineages. Deeds and the poetic recitation of deeds. My first deed name echoes the first name my mother bore, in fact. I do not believe you require a lecture as to why Silver Fangs -- or any tribe, for that matter -- may consider these things to be important. But... even though we have a tendency to be a tad wordy with our christenings..."

She has lost herself a bit in her language. She huffs a small laugh, smiling, and for a moment there's no rhya and not even any yuf, despite her office and standing in the sept or their shared ranks, there's just Avery, talking to her friend: "Erich, would you like me to name you?"

Erich

Really, he shouldn't be surprised when she sees right through him. Isn't she a Philodox? Isn't she a daughter of Falcon, twice-blessed? Still, when she calls him out -- gentle though it may be -- his eyes shy aside. He shrugs a little; he's about to do it again, he realizes, to use flexibility or at least ambivalence as a shield, and so he stops.

Looks her in the eye. Nods. "I think you're right," he says. "I think maybe 'cause I've had a couple times when I didn't get what I wanted, I tend to pretend I don't care what I want now a lot. Not just to you. To myself, too. 'Cause then, yeah: if I don't get it, then it doesn't matter. Or at least I can pretend it doesn't matter.

"So. Okay. Here's the truth: I'd love having a second name. I'd love it if you named me."

Avery Chase

'A couple of times', he says, like they weren't big deals. Like what he wanted was out of the ordinary or strange or impossible somehow, and not getting it shouldn't have been any big surprise. As though being loved and accepted by your family or respected by your peers or given worth beyond cannon fodder were outlandish desires for him to have in the first place.

Avery doesn't know every detail of Erich's past. She does know that it couldn't have been easy, anywhere or with anyone, having the blood he has,

in the tribe he's in.

He confesses, as people are wont to do with her, particularly under her moon. And Avery is not sitting in judgement of him, which is why he can admit anything. It's easier, perhaps, that she said it first, that she let him know -- by acknowledging it -- that it was okay. Understandable. Maybe it even helped that she made her offer instead of dragging it out of him, making him ask, making him uncomfortable and vulnerable when, frankly, he already is.

They all are. Just because they're monsters doesn't mean they aren't also people.

Avery smiles at him. She stands from the corner of her desk that she was standing on. "Then I shall." She walks toward him, a few steps. "Will you give me a little time to think it over? I know you've already been waiting some time now, but I don't want to rush something this important." Her smile grows a bit, her eyes twinkle. "Perhaps in time to announce at the full moon?"

Erich

She walks toward him. That's invitation enough for Erich. He hugs her again! He wraps his arms around her and fairly squeezes her, nevermind that she's wearing that slightly retro outfit with those slightly mod heels; nevermind she's so put together that he ought to worry about messing her up somehow.

He's not worried about that. Somehow, he doesn't think she would be, either.

"That would be amazing," he says, still squeezing, "though you don't have to rush it for the full moon either. Just whenever, you know? I'm just happy you're gonna name me. I'm so happy you're gonna name me. I probably would've just asked you to do my challenge, if it wasn't so inappropriate."

Avery Chase

Avery is not expecting to be hugged again. She laughs, though: does not swat him away or stiffen or otherwise react awkwardly. She hugs him back, far more gently, patting his broad back and giving him a little squeeze. He makes her think of Oakley, in a few ways. Not many. Just enough to forge a connection in her instinct toward him.

"Oh, it won't be a rush," she says, laughing again. "That's positively dragging it out just for the effect. You should be named," she says, stepping back from him, touching his shoulders, "publically. Proudly. And yes," she adds, eyebrows up again, arch, "it would have been very inappropriate for me to do your challenge."

A third time, she laughs, patting his shoulders and circling her desk, picking up her purse -- a tidy little white thing with black piping and gold accents, one of which is emblazoned with a heavy MK -- and her stack of papers, setting them inside a white portfolio. "Let's get some dinner," she says, out of the blue. "Biker Jim's is just up on Larimer and I know it's still open. Have you been there? Doesn't matter -- you'll love it. Meat as far as the eye can see," she says, palm out, arm giving an epic wave. "Elk dogs, wild boar dogs, veal, rattlesnake, bacon-wrapped beef. You'll love it."

And won't they be a pair, eating late at Biker Jim's downtown, in her pink dress and mod heels and Michael Kors bag, her diamonds and pearls. And him, in a Throwed Rolls t-shirt and old sneakers and at-least-mostly-clean jeans. Nevermind that she, being fancy, will probably get the Duck Cilantro hot dog. Or pheasant. They're still getting hot dogs.

no one ever knows if they're going to be alone.

Melantha

Several days ago, whenever Erich came back from duty at Cold Crescent or hunting down rabbits or whatever it was he was up to, he found lines strung between the eaves of the tinyhouse and a nearby tree, all of them flapping with clothes hung up to dry. That would be Melantha, with her bio-degradable soap bought at REI and her river water and her the-sun-is-the-best-dryer. By the time he got there the wet clothes were already nearly dry, because Colorado is dry and the sun in summer is hot and there has been a great breeze lately.

Melantha was happy to see him, and quiet. Melantha spent the night sleeping next to Charlotte in the downstairs bed, her nose pressed against the back of Charlotte's neck. And she was awake before anyone else the next day, already working on the house-next-door. Her new house. The other house. Tinyhouse 2.0.

And she's quiet for a while after that, and they don't see each other much. She works, he patrols, he fights, she builds, they all sometimes have sandwiches and go to get ice cream.

But one night, when she's nearing the end of her shift, she sends Erich a text:

Wanna come pick me up? We can go for a walk.

It'll be like a date. A very low-key, very cheap date.

Erich

They share chores around the house, the three of them. When Melantha washes their clothes, Erich tries to hang them up. If he's not around when they go up, he brings them in when they're dry. Sometimes he even folds them.

That's how it is, that day he comes back with a pair of hares slung over his shoulder, dirt under his nails from when he ran on four legs. He came in with his arms full of clean clothes, their dinner flopping against his leg. Melantha was quiet, which was unusual, but she was happy and he's happy when she's happy so it goes unremarked.

She shares a bed with Charlotte that night. Erich sleeps on the kitchen floor, four-legged again, his paws thumping against the cabinets now and then as he dreams.

--

Melantha gets a text back:

K!

--

Erich's bumblebee-yellow pickup truck is parked at the curb with the windows rolled down. Erich is lounging in the cab, the seat reclined, his forearm hanging out the window. Seeing her, he reaches across the seats, pushes the passenger's door open for her. Meaty nebraska boy picking up his pretty girlfriend after work: as americana as can be.

"Hey," he says, smiling. "Where do you wanna walk?"

Melantha

They live farther from Evergreen these days, migrating like animals. They go higher and deeper into the wilderness when it's warm, descend closer to civilization when it grows cold and snow-blanketed. Melantha doesn't walk to work much, not if she has a closing shift, because by the time she gets out of there it's the middle of the night and she doesn't want to tempt fate every time she just tries to get home. Some days when it's a mid-shift or a morning shift she walks, though. She doesn't mind the heat, the distance. She says it's good exercise, and no one can really argue with that.

This was a mid-shift, showing up to work the lunch and dinner shifts but not dinner and bar, well into the night. It's dark when Erich picks her up, but not fully: the sky is a deep, rich twilight blue; you can see some stars but not all. There is a haze of sunlight that looks not unlike the fluff of a young chick near the mountaintops.

Melantha comes out of the saloon dressed in khaki shorts and her work t-shirt, carrying her waist-apron at her side. She has her hair up in a ponytail still, is wearing her comfy sneakers still, and hops up into the truck when Erich pops the door for her.

She exhales, clearly glad to be seated, and in a cushy seat no less. She looks worn out; she always does after a shift, though. It's not easy work, on your feet for eight hours, rushing and weaving the whole time, trying to hold math and orders in your head, avoiding pinching hands, fighting a headache from the night's band, keeping your balance, avoiding getting splashed with so. many. gross. things. Plus, it's summer. The Little Bear is busy even during the weeknights.

"Let's go out to that lake in Three Sisters. Go swimming," she says.

Erich

I fucking love you, Erich thinks as Melantha settles into the truck. No rhyme, no reason. The thought just pops into mind, brilliant and searing.

He puts the truck into gear as she shuts the door. He reaches over, giving the back of her neck some absent, gentle kneads. "I read about amoeba that live in freshwater ponds that crawl in through your nose and eat your brain," he says, and you can just imagine ten-year-old Erich saying something like that with awed horror. Twenty-some-odd-year-old Erich says it in a more tongue-in-cheek spirit, though. It's not like he really expects to die by amoeba. "Hope you've got your Amoeba-B-Gone."

They pull away from the curb. He stops kneading her neck; he kinda drapes his arm over her shoulders instead. Pulls her against his side unless she protests, and nevermind the center divide.

"How was work?"

Melantha

Melantha closes her eyes when he touches her, her head dipping forward a bit, her ponytail swinging to the right. She exhales, sighing while he talks about

no, not the part where he loves her, or the part where he tries to explain that it's because she's so hardworking, or because she's so strong, or because she's so beautiful, or because he's so happy to see her after hours and HOURS and hours without her, or any of that. Nope, Erich massages her neck and starts talking about brain-eating amoebae. As you do.

"I'll hold my nose closed if we go underwater," she assures him, rolling her eyes a little, but it's half-hearted; his hand is so warm, and his fingers are so strong, and what he's doing feels so good. He stops, though, probably for doing something weird like Driving The Truck, or just to hold her. He starts pulling, forgetting that there's a divide between these seats, it's not a bench, and Melantha makes a little noise of whining protest. She leans into him for a second anyway, then draws back to sit up again.

"Normal," she says, with a shrug. She has her apron on her lap; she has already counted her tips, she is folding the apron into vertical quarters, where the pockets line up. She is using the straps to tie around it. It's a stiff, scotch-guarded cotton clutch in the end, with a couple of stains it's hard to see because the fabric is black. That's why.

She looks over at him. "What'd you do today?"

Erich

So the side-hug doesn't work out. Erich doesn't mind. Erich hugs Melantha, and Erich turns his face to kiss her wherever his lips may fall, but then Melantha goes back to being an upright Melantha and Erich goes back to being a driving Erich.

Well. For a while. Then he slides his hand back up to the back of her neck, kneading away. He's a pretty quick study. Doesn't take much for him to figure out: hey, she liked that.

"Slept til noon," he says, or maybe brags. "Did laundry. Finished up those stairs we were building last night. Got your text, took a nap, came here.

"It was a good day," he concludes: because it was. Simple, uncomplicated, good.

Melantha

There's a bit of a drive between Melantha's job and the lake she's talking about. She relaxes into the touch as it renews, smiling across at him. Her eyes close again; she lets herself be tended to with an easy acceptance. In some ways all of this is still new, though they've known each other for a year and a half or so by now. Melantha doesn't have to overthink this, right now; she doesn't have to try and understand it, or explain it to herself, or explain herself to anyone. It's simply okay. He gives; she accepts. It feels good; she enjoys it.

She asks about the stairs: how they look, and so on. She'd wanted to finish them last night but it was very late and the bugs were eating her alive and they were starting to snap at each other from how tired they were getting. She does not tease him about sleeping til noon and then taking a nap on top of it; there are days and nights that go by without him shutting his eyes. They all work hard, in different ways.

Mostly, though, Melantha is quiet. If Erich couldn't tell her weariness by her body language, he could see it in the one-word answer she had regarding her day and feel it in the tension in her neck and shoulders. He can tell by the way she eventually re-situates herself in the passenger seat, leans over the center divide, and rests her head on his shoulder finally. They drive; the lights cut through the dark, taking them out to the middle of nowhere. The water there is still, and surprisingly high for summer, given the rain Denver has been getting regularly this year as opposed to last year's drought. It's dark, but for the moon, and for the stars, and they don't leave the car running and the headlights on to drain the battery.

Hopping out of the truck, Melantha heads to the water's edge and starts nudging off her sneakers, peeling off her socks. She looks almost like she's going to slip into a warm bubble bath at the end of a long day, complete with candles and wine, but that's not where they are. She's still quiet. But she looks at him, sees him. Looks at him like she knows him. And starts to unbutton her shorts.

Erich

They talk on the way to the lake. It's companionable. It's sparse, but not in a bad way. It's the way you talk when you've lived with someone for some time, know them, like them, love them.

When they get there, Erich parks without a word. Confirmation hardly seems necessary between the two of them. The engine shuts down, the lights go dark. Melantha gets out and Erich follows, locking his truck, following her toward the water.

While she slips off her shoes, steps out of them like she's coming home from a long day, he pulls his shirt over his head. While she lowers her shorts, he undoes his jeans.

He thinks to himself that he can imagine her a trial lawyer, an activist, a stateswoman. Something like that. Someone who argues for a living, who fights for a cause. He can imagine her coming home, stepping out of her heels, letting down her hair, sighing as she sinks onto a couch and against his side; sighing while he massages the tension from her shoulders.

Down to his boxers, he's no longer so pale as he was in winter. He's summer-tanned, golden-brown, his body hard and his musculature carven. Coming to her, he takes her waist in his warm hands and kisses her. It is a soft kiss, full of knowledge. It is a mature kiss; a grownup thing to do.

Melantha

When she went back to Oregon, this was one of the first things she did. Everyone was sniffing her and nuzzling her and touching her and kissing her and smiling. Not everyone, no, but the ones who mattered, the ones Melantha noticed. They ran out to the reservoir, enormous and deep, the water dark even in the moonlight. They swam in various forms, out as far as they would dare, down as deep as they would dare. Melantha remembers holding close to the pigeon-bead around her wrist, because it was made by Charlotte and held Charlotte's magic and Charlotte's magic was safe there among the sisters, safe there in the moonlight, safe in the water, safe against Melantha's skin because all of these things are, Melantha knows, part of Charlotte's magic. They share an essence. She remembers holding close to the pigeon-bead because the power it was imbued with was there for one purpose: not so Charlotte could find her.

So Erich could.

Melantha feels a pang go all through her body at that thought, as she's slipping her shorts down her legs and letting them fall, as she's reaching for the hem of her t-shirt, which smells like bar food and beer and sweat. The pang feels strangely like arousal, and also ache. It feels strongly of love, has that scent about it. In-love love and familial love and far-away love, all at once. It feels like pain, too. Plain, simple, unadorned pain.

She lifts her shirt and drops it on top of her shorts. Melantha, who looked so piercingly into Erich a moment ago, has gone away in her eyes, her thoughts drifting as she raises an arm, peeling the hairband off her ponytail, shaking it out a bit, ruffling her fingers through it though it makes no difference to the ponytail-dent that's there. About then, she senses movement, nearby, lifts her eyes quick but does not move her head from where it has gone still. It's not the lurching startle of a deer, a rabbit, prey. It's the awareness, motionless and patient, of another predator.

Erich is in his boxers. His hair has been sun-bleached again, his skin bronzed. Damn midwestern boys and their corn-fed muscles. Damn midwestern boy, this one in particular, with his broad hands and broader shoulders and the way he is so warm that it contrasts the chill that comes with nightfall in the mountains, and damn the thrill that sends through her. Melantha breathes in.

He kisses her and it's not really like any other kiss he's given her before. There is no rushing to it, no fierce need that will end with her back slamming against something, some surface to be pressed against. There's no gnawing hunger, like their lust is a starved thing clamoring for them to feed it, feed it. It is not many things. He does not kiss her in many ways. It is soft. Its way is unhurried. It tastes, it savors, but does not devour, does not demand.

Melantha's hand is touching his bicep before she quite means to touch him at all. Her bra is white and her panties are blue and in this light they both look shades of grey. She's kissing him back, drenchingly and slowly, running her hand up his shoulder, over his back, up his neck into his hair. She's not shy about her body against his; they have no reason to be shy. And right then it feels like she's going to be swept up in this, in him, even though she's tired and she's a little withdrawn and she is also sad and also afraid. But Melantha stops. She is kissing him, holding him, and if he has slipped his hands up her back to unclasp her bra or run his hands underneath her underwear she hasn't stopped him, and doesn't stop him now.

She just takes a breath, lifting her mouth from his and tipping her head back, looking up at the stars until she gets a little dizzy -- which doesn't take much, given the direction of her blood's flowing right now. She closes her eyes then, sinking against him, tucking her face to the crook of his neck, wrapping both of her arms around him, catching her breath.

Erich

Erich feels it: the way she is swept up in the kiss, swept over and under, borne along by the way their mouths meet and recognize and greet.

Erich feels it, too, when she stops. When she pauses and takes a breath and lifts her face to the stars. She sways in his arms. He bends to kiss her throat, but it wasn't an invitation; not quite. She puts her arms around him. She tucks her face to his neck. Her arms encircle him; all that well-muscled breadth, all that warmth and vitality.

He wraps his arms around her, too. He senses the slowing, the pausing. He squeezes her gently against his chest, his heavy pulse. A press of his lips to the top of her head, nevermind if her hair smells a little like booze and bar food. She always smells like herself in the end, anyway.

"Everything okay?" he murmurs.

Melantha

Melantha exhales, relaxing into it. He can kiss her neck if he likes; she doesn't resist that any more than she discourages his hands wherever they are. She just is slowed, and stopped, and feels safe there, even half-naked and pressed against him. That is how things have changed.

"Yeah," she says, half-true. Then all true: "I'm okay. I just want to talk to you about something and I'm not sure how to start. Or even what I want to say."

Erich

This is how things have changed: Erich doesn't screech to a stop. He doesn't grow alarmed, grow insecure, grow unsure. He keeps kissing her. He keeps hugging her, holding her, keeping her close to his body. They are both half-naked, most of the way naked. Neither of them seem to be in any particular hurry.

He kisses her hair; he kisses her temple; he kisses her earlobe and the side of her neck. He kisses her shoulder, the softness of her skin just to the side of her bra strap. He plays with the clasp a little. Thinks idly of undoing it, but doesn't. There are limits to what he can take without losing his mind, after all.

"Maybe you should just start from the first thing that pops into your mind," he suggests, "and then go from there."

Melantha

Erich is cunning and fierce and many other things besides, but he's also a big dumb idiot, and Melantha knows it. She hears him say that and knows it, taking a deep breath and then huffing a little laugh. "How about we get in the water?" she says instead, lifting her head from his body, looking at him, feeling the way he's touching her underwear, the way he's restraining it. She has her hands on his arms; she smiles a little, soft to one side.

Erich

He likes it when she puts her hands on his biceps like that. He likes the subtle way her fingers play over his arms; he likes that he can tell she likes the way he feels. It makes him feel strong, and brave, and worthy of her, and very very manly.

Erich bends his neck, a quick dip, to drop a kiss across the bridge of her nose. "Okay," he says, agreeable Erich that he is. "Are you getting naked? I'm getting naked."

And so he does, losing his boxers in a quick swoop. No one could ever claim Erich doesn't do as he says.

Melantha

"Why would I go swimming in my underwear?" she asks him, stepping back and unhooking her bra. He's whipped off his boxers already, but she goes more slowly, undresses casually, idly, dropping first the bra and then rolling down her panties, stepping out.

Then she is filled with a wild notion, sudden and stricken by darkness and lust and sadness and moonlight, and instead of walking slowly into the water she takes off running, splashes with high steps for the first several feet, jumps into the deeper water, lets it rise up and consume her, sundered and then restored over her head in a chaos of motion turning clear water to white froth for seconds, only seconds. It is cool enough that the water feels cold, but not icy. She is not chattering when she comes up. She is dripping, opening her mouth wide for air, treading water, hair saturated and hanging over her face.

Erich

She surprises him with that sudden bolt into the water. She stuns him, and then she thrills him: his openmouthed surprise turning into a whoop of delight. Erich races after her, his bare feet dashing over twigs and dirt and pebbles; his bare legs churning up great fanning splashes. He leaps after her, springing high into the air and tucking into a ball, detonating into the water like a depth charge.

He comes up inches from her, spraying out a mouthful of water, laughing. Erich whoops again, and then he kicks up to float on his back, arms spread to maximize surface area.

Melantha

The surface of the water is amok, choppy as though from wind. Melantha watches him as it begins to still, and as he tips back to floating. She swims to the side, familiar with the water, like she was born to it. Which in a way she was: Melantha was born underwater, at home, with a midwife and a doula and her father attending. Her eldest brother was the one bored by the whole thing, informing the others that there was nothing at all to be so whiny and freaked-out about, seriously, it's just a big fuss and then there's the baby, whatever. Her eldest brother, who she barely remembers, because he took the brother born before Melantha and they left: the family, the town, the tribe.

Melantha was born in the water, and likes it more than fire, because fire took the house she was born in after her father and remaining brothers were slaughtered inside of it, and water is where she was taken by Damaris and the others, to wash clean and to feel protected even while very, very exposed.

She swims away from him, or around him, thoughtful strokes. She disappears under the water for a while, not to play a prank on him -- she ran into the water, sure, but there was no playfulness to it, and she is growing less and less apologetic for the fact that she is often just not as playful as Erich, not really. She is quite serious. She is quite thoughtful. Right now, especially.

"I talked to Charlotte about going up to Oregon when we finish my house," she says, and the water has grown more still, and her voice is easy to hear over the lapping at the shore, over the sluice of water over her body as she moves through it. "She was a little worried that I might want to stay with them."

Erich

A great sweep of his arms tips Erich back upright. Beneath the surface, lost in darkness, his limbs weave a slow pattern to keep him afloat. He moves a little closer to Melantha, serious too now.

"That never occurred to me," he says quietly. "Do you think you might?"

Melantha

Melantha moves with the sway of water as Erich upends much of it again, mild waves under the surface. He comes closer, so she stays where she is.

And she nods. "I told Charlotte that maybe a part of me will want to. But that doesn't mean I will stay." Her brow is furrowed.

Erich

So he comes closer still -- until the motion of his legs brushes waves against hers. There's little light here. Perhaps she can just make out his expression, as he can make out hers: both of their brows furrowed.

"Don't stay," he whispers. "'Cause I can't follow you there."

Melantha

But their furrowed brows mean different things.

Melantha lifts cool, water-covered hands to his face when he comes close. "Relax," she tells him, but it isn't dismissive. It's earnest. "You don't need to be so scared I'm just going to vanish on you."

Leaning to him, she kisses his cheek, and slides her arms around his shoulders. If he holds her, that's okay. If it's tight: that's okay.

"Charlotte was worried about the same thing," but he already knew that. "But Erich, that'd be like just... going backwards, for me. I've changed. I've changed a lot. It's easy to go back to what's familiar, and stop there. But I don't think that's why they wanted to let me go. I don't think that's why I didn't fight to stay the first time."

She comes fingertips through the ends of his wet hair, and kisses his jaw, a swift turn of her head and press of her lips. "And I can't imagine my life without Charlotte. And I'm --" there is a beat of hesitation here, barely barely barely heard or felt, but it's there, as though once before she did not know the full weight of these words but now she does, "-- in love with you. And neither of you would belong there."

Or, as he well knows is the case with him in particular: be permitted to set foot in that sept.

Erich

They embrace in the water. She slides her arms around his shoulders, and even Erich -- big dumb lout that he is -- can sense the inherent trust in this. Their legs slide past one another underwater. He doesn't wrap his arms around her, as he needs them to stay aloft, but he supports her weight along with his own tirelessly and uncomplainingly. Of course he does.

I'm in love with you, she says, which is somehow different from the I love yous they've exchanged in the past. Erich is still for a moment. Then he treads water again, bumping his brow to hers, nuzzling against her with silent, animal ferocity.

"Good," he whispers when she's finished. "Because if you decided you wanted to stay I think me and Charlotte would storm the keep or something to try to get you back."

A small pause. Then:

"So why do you kinda seem sad?"

Melantha

Of course they can't hug in the water, Melantha. They'd submerge. And maybe that's just something she doesn't care about. If she wrapped her arms around him and he wrapped his arms around her and they sank, she'd hold her breath and hold onto him for as long as she could before they had to come back up. That's not just her attachment to him; that's her comfort in the water. Like all things Gaia has created, this element of nature is fatal to them if not respected, if not approached cautiously, if not prepared for. But it is not malicious. The water is no more out to get them than a forest fire would be.

Erich chooses to go on breathing. He sacrifices arms around Melantha naked in the water to keep them afloat, and he does it without much effort and without any protest. Hearing her, unable to squeeze her, he rubs their brows together, heavy and close.

What he says makes her scoff lightly. In part because if she wanted to stay with the Black Furies, no storming on anyone's part would do much good. And in part because against a sept of crones, mothers and maidens defending one of their own -- particularly against a Silver Fang and a male -- Erich and Charlotte would get shredded. Melantha's scoff isn't amusement at the idea; just the fact that it's moot. If Melantha wanted to stay, no matter how it hurt Charlotte and Erich, she knows:

Charlotte, at least, would tell Erich that they had to let her go. And Erich would know she was right.

--

Melantha rubs her face against his cheek, his ear, his jaw. She loves him so. And she isn't going anywhere, anyway.

He asks her why she's sad. He can't see her, clinging to him as she is, but her face pulls in a pained expression. Sometimes pain is a dull ache; then suddenly it will sharpen in a single, burning pang that goes right through her.

"I said that to Charlotte, too. About why I'm not going back to the sisters to stay, and she sort of got really still and said 'You're in love with Erich?' like she was holding her breath a little?" Melantha says, and Melantha takes a breath in, shimmeringly. "And... she seemed really happy. She loves us and she made the pigeon-beads for us and all that. But I think it hurts her a little, too. Not like she feels excluded, I think, but... jealous, in a way? Only not, because she can't even quite want something like this for herself, but sort of wistful."

Melantha goes quiet for a moment. "It's hard to explain."

Wanting something, and also at the same time not wanting it at all, is something she knows is hard for someone like Erich to grasp. Though truth be told, after watching what she's gone through the last year, he might understand it better than she thinks.

"I'm sad because I love Charlotte, and because she can't really be in love with anyone like this, even if she wants to be. And because she knows it, too, and it makes her sad, and I love her and I don't want her to be hurt or sad."

Her arms tighten. She holds him close, even though surely it can't be that easy to keep swimming with her hanging onto him like that, but there you are. Then she sniffs, and she blinks a lot, and slides her arms away a bit, loosening, because if she keeps holding onto him that way,

she's going to cry.

Erich

Wanting something; not wanting it at all. No, that's not something Erich is personally familiar with. Except -- well, in a way, it is. They're pack, after all. They can share thoughts and sometimes emotions. They belong with and to one another as much as distinct individuals possibly can. He's never felt such a thing himself, but both his sister and his lover have, and

sometimes he thinks he does understand after all.

Melantha holds Erich close. And Erich holds her in turn the best he can, which is to say he rubs his cheek fiercely against hers, curves his underjaw over her shoulder. He keeps treading water. She sounds like maybe she's going to cry again, and for once Erich doesn't think oh no I made her cry; for once Erich understands that no one really makes Melantha do anything at all.

"I kinda... talked to her a little bit," he says quietly, like an admission. "I mean, about that. About not feeling that sort of love, that sort of wanting? Just to kinda try to let her know that I wished she could, and I wished I could help, and stuff. But it was really hard for her to even talk about it. And I don't know that there's anything I can possibly do to ... to help her.

"I don't know that I should do anything. I don't know that it'd really be helping her, you know?"

Melantha

Melantha reaches up, and water trails down her hand, along her wrist and forearm. With her other arm she sweeps the water, keeps afloat. She wipes her face, the water cooling her cheeks and brow. She sighs. She floats near him, treads water near him, legs and arms moving. Sometimes they brush against one another, as though their limbs keep one another company.

"Sometimes I think we all do such a good job of respecting each other's boundaries and privacy and whatever else that we don't reach out and push each other enough to get past our issues."

She glances aside, then finds him again. "I mean, I'm grateful that you gave me so much time. I'm glad that you both gave me a lot of room to start coping with... everything, the past year. The past forever. But that was a fresh wound. I needed a lot of time and patience and respect, but I also needed to push myself and be pushed by my friends. I needed all those conversations with you, and with Charlotte, just as much as I needed the time to be able to relax and not fight with myself all the time. It really, really sucked to cry all the time and feel like I was bringing you both down and being generally miserable, but I had to go through that to get to the other side.

"Charlotte's been messed up about --" 'that'. She is supposed to say 'that', and dance, and evade it, and because Melantha is contrary and defiant and because she is a child of Pegasus and now a child of Volcano, she says:

"-- her ex-mate, and her baby, and sex and love in general, for years now. If you talked to her, you know that when she was younger, she wanted it. The idea of sex wasn't something that would make her run away or fall apart. So all of that isn't natural to her. It's not part of who she is. Even with the Silver Fang crazy she has to deal with, that wanting-not-wanting isn't Charlotte. It's the festering of a wound.

"And you," just in case he thought this wasn't about all of them, "kinda fold in on yourself a little whenever we talk about your family. So maybe you've noticed that we never really talk about your family, or what happened to you, at all. Not like 'oh it's in the past it doesn't matter, we can all leave it behind us da da da', even. Just... 'Erich shuts down, so what's the point in talking about it', you know? And since it's literally the only thing I see you avoid like that, instead of diving in head-on, I know that's not natural to you, either. That's not part of who you are. It's the festering of a wound."

Melantha exhales, and water drips from her chin as she bobs in the water. She is watching him, fiercely, thought not angrily, not with accusation. With earnestness. "I don't know if there's anything either of us can do to help her, or anything Charlotte and I can do to help you. But that's such weak, helpless bullshit. It's an excuse. Just because we don't know what to do doesn't mean we don't try. Or at least: doesn't mean it's okay to just sit back and avert our eyes and try to avoid talking about it. We're not Victorians or something. And like that time we talked while camping -- just because we can't go back and undo the sucky things your family did to you doesn't mean we don't do anything at all, or just swallow the hurt."

Her arms move and sweep like wings, in front of her and to the sides, stroke down, propel her up, keep her steady. "I love you and I love Charlotte. And I'd rather you both be angry and crying and feeling kind of miserable to get through to the other side than keep doing this thing where we run into hard topics and pull back from them. It's like watching you both eat glass and it makes me feel seriously sick to my stomach and makes my heart clench up. I want to help you two like you've both helped me. Even if I don't know what to do and even if neither of you really want me to do anything. I don't really care if you don't want me to, because it seriously is like watching you drink poison and not doing anything because you might get mad if I try to stop you."

She has finished. She takes a deep breath, knowing full well he might just get all mad at her and yell or -- as she mentioned -- just shut down. Storm off. Or argue with her! Or something. But she knew that before she really got started. She said it anyway.

Erich

Sometimes Erich almost wishes he wasn't so transparent. Sometimes he wishes he was capable of maybe just a little bit of that subtlety and deception his tribe is famous for. Sometimes he wishes,

when she says something that he doesn't like to hear, or something that he doesn't want to think about, he could hide his reaction, if only a little. But he can't, because he's not capable of such things, because he is a child of Volcano and an Erich and he wears his heart on his sleeve, and even if he didn't, even if one day pigs flew and hell froze and he became some sort of master manipulator, Melantha would still see right through him like water.

She reminds him a little of water, too. Fire and water and maybe a little earth, just like Charlotte is air and water and maybe a little fire, and he is earth and fire and maybe a tiny bit of air and water too. His thoughts stray; he's avoiding the topic. He pulls himself back. Water trickles down her face, Melantha-who-he-loves. Erich's brow is furrowed and he looks deeply unhappy and then he wraps his arms around her, his legs still stirring the water. He gives her a brief, tight hug.

"I hate thinking about all that," he says: unhappily. "I just wanna leave all that crap in the past, because in the past I wasn't happy and I didn't feel like I belonged and sometimes I was really angry. But now I'm happy and I belong and I'm not angry anymore, and... that's easier. It's easier if I just leave all that as before and all this can be now, or after, or something.

"I don't think that's swallowing the hurt." He looks at her. "Is it? I don't know. Maybe it is. But it's a way for me to just ... be in the moment and be happy."

Melantha

It does not please her that she has made Erich feel unhappy. Deeply, bone-wrenchingly unhappy. It pulls at her brow, but her crest doesn't fall. She doesn't rush to him, hold him, tell him sorrysorrysorry. He comes to her, and he holds her for a moment, and they sink a bit, but not very far. They bob upwards again just as easily. She wants to hold him back, but their feet aren't touching the ground, and they would drown just to hug each other.

"I know you do, Erich," she murmurs, when he says he hates thinking about it, he just wants to leave it, because it's Not Happy and he didn't belong and he was angry. She waits for his arms to flow outward, to keep them aloft, and then she hugs him back. See. She can be so patient.

"I'm not going to dig around in your heart until we find all the bad, sad, angry stuff out of nowhere just so we can say we did," she says softly, while she's holding him, before she slips away to swim, working her legs, spreading her arms across the surface. "But when it does come up, and you shut down and fold in on yourself like I mean? That's... I think that's swallowing it. It's pretending it doesn't still hurt sometimes."

Her brow is still furrowed. She looks sad. Or pitying? Which doesn't have to be gross. It can be gentle. Like it is on her face, right now. Merciful but firm.

"But I'm also mostly talking about Charlotte, too. She's --"

Melantha's brow tightens. "Erich, I think Charlotte's... in love with me, a little."

Erich

That sort of stuns Erich. Erich knows Charlotte loves Melantha. They all love Melantha. They all love Charlotte too, and Erich besides. But in love, that means something a little different, just like it meant something a little different and made his heart skip a little just to hear Melantha say that she told Charlotte that she was in love with Erich and this thought is going on forever.

His train of thought skips back to the present. Charlotte; in love with Melantha. Erich is surprised and Erich doesn't know what to say and Erich didn't even know Charlotte was capable of being in love when she couldn't even think about sex, but then that's probably just Erich being brainwashed by shitty modern culture and tying love and sex together when they don't really have to go hand in hand.

"Really?" is what he comes up with in the end. It's a dumb thing to say, and it kinda just hangs there a second. "I mean... why do you think that?"

Melantha

That was the difference that made Charlotte go still, too.

Erich loves Melantha. Erich has been in love with Melantha for a good long time, even if he wasn't calling it that. It was obvious enough that Charlotte made a talen to lead him back to Melantha, when it was time.

And then there is Melantha loving Erich and Erich loving Charlotte and Charlotte loving Melantha and Charlotte loving Erich and... then there is Melantha. In love with Erich.

And Charlotte.

In love with Melantha.

There's a difference.

--

It's not that dumb of a thing for him to say. He's stunned, and it is basically, if not exactly, the same thing Charlotte said to her when she said she's in love with Erich. Melantha comes closer to him again, as before, sliding her arms around his neck and shoulders even though that puts her weight on him to keep them floating. Occasionally, being close to him is more important than not drowning.

"I just know," she says quietly, like they have to keep a secret from the trees that ring the grass that rings the pond. "I know that you and I being together makes her happy and I know that she is... sort of lonely, but that's not the right word. And I know that somewhere deep down, she also feels jealous and can't admit it to herself or anyone else.

"And I know that somewhere in there, even though she's burdened by her tribe's curse and it's complicated and she's traumatized and she's also very, very happy that you love me and I love you, she's in love with me, too."

Melantha is quiet there for a second, and she looks sad, as she has seemed to look sad for days now. "And I know that ...I'm a little in love with her, back."

Erich

That makes Erich feel a little bad. Maybe Melantha knew it would, and maybe that's why she came closer. Maybe she just came closer because she wanted to. Because Erich and Melantha close together is a good thing.

"I kinda feel like maybe I'm in the way now," he admits. "I know that's a stupid way to feel but... a part of me feels like maybe if I wasn't here and all in love with you and galumphing over everything with my in-love-with-you-ness, then maybe you and Charlotte could be together and happy and maybe you could help her and maybe she could help you."

He thinks a minute. And this is new, see: this is a level of insight Erich may not have been capable of even six months ago. Certainly not a year ago:

"But maybe that's just my I-don't-belong complex acting up again. Or something."

Melantha

Their bodies are naked and the water is cool but not cold and they've acclimated, enough that she feels a little warmer when she touches him. When their legs brush together and her body is nearly flush against his, when her breasts touch his chest which may very well be her most favorite sensation on the planet. She came closer because she wanted to. Because it's good. And because she knew it would make him feel bad to hear all of that.

All the same, what he says startles her. He's close up, he can see it even in the darkness, in the nothing-but-moonlight, the way she seems so surprised to hear him say maybe I'm in the way. And it hits her like a knife, too. No, like an arrow: faster, concussive, going through her and not just into her. Her arms tighten around him, even though they sink a bit and possibly sputter on pond water. She hugs him tight, burying her face against his neck and shoulder as he's talking about galumphing over everything with his in-love-with-her-ness.

She eases, a bit, when he pauses and says, realistically: maybe that's just old wounds re-opening.

"Maybe," she says softly, which is the only way you touch such a wound. Very gently. "But Erich, you're not in the way of anything. You're not galumphing over everything. I'm in love with you," she tells him, earnest and fervent and close. "I'm happy with you and you help me and I really hope that I help you, too. And if Charlotte loves me in a way she can't really deal with or admit and if I love her back then... that's complicated and sad. But you're not in the way of me showing her that I love her, and being happy with her, and helping her. You're not in the way of her showing me that she loves me, and being happy with me, and helping me. We do all of that. We have from the start. Me and her and me and you and you two with each other and all of us together. I don't want you to feel, like... guilty or something for being in love with me, any more than I want to feel guilty that there's stuff between Charlotte and I that we may not be able to talk about openly with each other, much less resolve. And I really don't want this to mess anything up with you and Charlotte, either."

She looks, suddenly, very worried about that. Sort of afraid.

"Please don't be mad at Charlotte. If you are then I'm just in the way. I don't want that. I don't want anyone to be in the way of anything or go away, or --"

Tears. Thick, heavy tears welling up in her eyes, sudden and overwhelming, flooding her. She sniffs and she blinks and she tries but she's really, really worried. "I don't want anyone to go away."

Erich

There was a time when tears springing to Melantha's eyes launched Erich into a mild state of emergency. He wouldn't know what to do. He wouldn't know what to say. He wouldn't even know where to look or where to put his hands or or or --

okay; so truth be told, there are still times now that he reacts the same way. But not right now-now. Right now, he just wraps his arms around her, tight, and they kind of sink a bit again for a little while, enough that those tears welling up in her eyes become indistinguishable from lakewater, and then he lets go and they float back up and he kisses her fiercely on the arch of her cheekbone.

"I'm not going away. Neither is Charlotte. And I'm not going to be mad at her or you or anyone. No way. I love Charlotte and I love you and ... I totally understand why she might be a little in love with you. I even kinda understand why you might be a little in love with her, even if I can't imagine feeling that way about her 'cause she's Charlotte and I'm Erich and ew that would be like kissing your cousin.

"But I could totally see why someone would be in love with her. Which is why I think it's even more sad that she can't really ... deal with stuff like that? 'Cause it's not just her that's missing out, it's the imaginary other party too."

There he goes digressing again.

"But my point is," he gets back to it, "we're not going anywhere. I guess just ... I dunno. I guess if you felt like maybe the two of your were about to like... have a love affair or something? Maybe you could let me know? 'Cause I'm not totally sure how I'd feel about that. Or something."

Melantha

Melantha gulps on a sob and there's a bit of a gurgle as she gets some water in there too. She sputters and turns her head away, coughing, panting, but it does stay the flow of tears a bit. She sniffles and puts out an arm, sweeping the water to stay afloat without entirely letting him go. There's still traces of fear in her eyes: an old panic, and one she has never named, nor really thought of naming. Or acknowledged, at all.

Yet all she can think of, holding onto him in the water, is don't leave me don't leave me don'tleavemedon'tleavemedon'tleaveme.

Erich holds her, and kisses her cheek, and he tells her he's not. He's not leaving. Charlotte's not going away either. They love each other. They all love each other very, very much. And Melantha wipes her face with the heel of her hand, which is wetter than her face is, but at least the pond water is cool compared to those hot, ferocious tears. He is telling her that he understands, and then he's telling her the thought she has herself: it's sad that Charlotte can't deal with in-love, and with sex, and with all of those things. 'Stuff Like That'. She misses out.

Whomever might be blessed to receive her love is missing out, too. Which makes Melantha huff-laugh-cry a little, because in some ways, she is the 'imaginary' other party here. And she knows she's missing out a little,

but not as much as someone who could be a true mate to Charlotte. After all, Melantha is doubly blessed: she has Erich, too.

She shakes her head. "We're not. I wouldn't." She looks vaguely miserable. "I'll talk to you if I think something's going to happen," she says quietly, after a moment. "I'll talk to you if something happens that I didn't think was going to happen. I'll talk to you about whatever. I'm talking to you now." For the same reasons: because she wasn't sure how he'd feel. Because she loves him. She is in love with him. And because she doesn't want everything, all these things that are complicated and painful, to keep being buried under the surface with all three of them.

Melantha sniffs again. "But that's why I'm sad. Because it's sad, and it makes me feel better for you to know that I'm sad and why."

Erich

"It makes me feel better too," Erich says, "which probably sounds a little weird but it does. 'Cause even if I can't make you feel better, then at least you're not just being sad alone. At least I know why you're sad, and then we can be together. Not like sad together, but just -- together."

Erich sort of backpaddles a bit. Slowly, so Melantha can follow him and not feel like he's just leaving. He wouldn't leave. He told her he wouldn't, and that's as good as a promise. But he does get out of the depths a little, far enough that his feet can touch bottom, because there

he can hug her for real. Which is what he does: he puts his arms around her and pulls her against his body and they are both naked and her boobs on his chest is just about his favorite thing ever too, but right now it's not really about that. Right now it's just him holding her, and her holding him, and they are both in the water and neither of them are worrying about brain-eating amoebae, and both of them are just

together. Seeing her sadness and spreading it out and understanding it and making it better.

Melantha

When Melantha is with Charlotte, many things are not said but they are felt. They are there, as real and present as anything, but never given shape in word or tangible form.

When Melantha is with Erich, they are either talking or they're not. If they are talking, they are talking directly. And if they are not talking out loud, they are acting, and those actions are clear as day.

Erich does not tell her that he is going to swim back a bit with her holding onto him so that he can put his feet down and hold her for real without threat of drowning, and Erich does not need to tell her this aloud. He starts to backpaddle and she moves a bit, swims with him but not away from him, and when his feet drop to muddy earth beneath them she winds herself around him more completely than she could in the middle of the pond, all arms and legs and nakedness in the water, pillowing her head on his shoulder again.

And Melantha does not tell him that she understands, or that it's not weird, that she can be sad and he can be in her sadness with her even if they aren't Sad Together and they can both feel better about the together part if not the sad part. But she doesn't need to tell him this aloud, because she makes a sound, a sigh, and she holds him like that, close and tight and dear, because he is.

And resting her head on him, because she also feels very fragile right now, very scared, very afraid of things like Alone or Left Behind or Gone Away, and she cannot put any of that into words without making them all that much more real, bringing up a terror that is very very old and not well understood, even by Melantha herself.

She sniffs a little. She holds onto him, and is held by him, as she starts to feel better. As it starts to spread out more, thinning, becoming something she can see and not drown in. After a while the sniffing slows and stops. And after a while she shivers, of course, because they aren't swimming around and the night air is only growing colder.

"Can we go home?" she asks him, softly. And because her mind also goes in tangents sometimes: "I can't wait til the new house is done. Because of the shower," which he may understand to mean the larger, more reasonably-sized shower they're building in her tinyhouse, one that can fit two people at once if they squish, as opposed to the current shower, which kinda can't. She rubs her face on his shoulder. "I just want to go home and get clean and go to bed with you."

Erich

"Let's go home," Erich says, which is at once an answer and -- well, a sort of soothing, one supposes. His hand traces big, slow circles on her back. He says this like a fairytale, like a nice little bedtime story he's telling her, except it's true:

"We'll go home and take a hot shower and climb into bed and I'll hold you ever so tight and you won't have to worry about me going anywhere at all, because I won't. And neither will Charlotte. And then tomorrow we'll all work on your tinyhouse together, and we'll all feel better, I think."

He kisses her shoulder. It's easier to kiss her there right now; she's wrapped around him so. He kisses her and then he gives her a gentle squeeze and then he lets go, just enough so they can walk up onto the shore together.

"You're not gonna be alone again, you know," he adds, softly, as they pad through the shallows up to where their clothes are rumpled. "I don't think any of us will ever be alone again."

Melantha

Melantha is too clever by half, and she knows what he's doing, and she huffs a little laugh. It's not a bad story. It's just funny to her, achingly and sadly funny, that he rubs her back and tells it to her at all. It's hard for her to trust it. Not because it's hard for her to trust Erich.

But look at how she's lived.

He is right about this much: they'll work on the house and feel better. It'll be okay. No one is going to abandon her tonight, or tomorrow, not because of love growing so wildly it can't even find the light. Not because anyone is in anyone else's way. Not because anyone doesn't belong. They belong together: all three of them.

Erich tries to unwind his arms but Melantha doesn't let go. She's cold but she's still not quite ready. He's telling her she won't be alone. He's telling her they won't be. Ever. And her heart feels like it's collapsing in on itself, that terror -- that panic -- edging every breath she takes in silver, as though silver could burn kin the way it burns Garou.

"You don't know," she whispers. "No one ever knows."

Erich

So he doesn't let go. He hugs her very tightly when she says no one ever knows, because she's right. No one knows if someone's going to go away, not really; not when they're thinking about things like death and dying and the sort of lives they all live.

"Okay," he whispers back. "That's true. But none of us will ever let each other be alone if we can help it. And that's something, isn't it?"

Melantha

"Yeah," she says, and it's very small. It's a concession to the truth. It is not an acceptance, not the sort that would sink into her bones and soothe the hurt or smooth away the fear.

Some say that the fear of rejection, the fear of abandonment, is the most potent and intolerable fears that humans are capable of feeling. To be alone is to be vulnerable. To be vulnerable is to await death but not be able to see it coming.

To suffer abandonment, to suffer profound loss, is a back-breaking sort of wound. To endure it while very young, to endure it over and over, makes that fear more than just a shadow. It's not a phantom. It's a real enemy, bigger than you, stronger than you, haunting your footsteps from your earliest memories to your latest.

Melantha cannot let him go. But neither does she put on a brave face, and smile, and walk herself up out of the water with him to go make everything okay. She clings to him, and it is clinging, right now. Something very frightening that feels much more powerful than she is has been awoken in the depths of her body, the far reaches of her soul, and the night is very dark. She does not let go of one of the only things she trusts right now,

not just to keep her safe. But just to be there, with her, in it. Together.

--

It takes time, and then more shivering, before Melantha can unlock herself. Before she can be eased out of the water and towards shore, trembling and chilled, wrapping up in a blanket from the back of the truck that is actually sort of musty and has a leaf or two on it that needs to be shaken off. The blanket gets at least most of the heavy water off their bodies before they hop back into their clothes and get in the truck; Melantha's hair soaks the collar and shoulders and back of the shirt. Melantha's hair soaks Erich's shoulder, too,

where she leans against him, tucked to his side. Center divide be damned.

Erich

In truth, most times Erich thinks his role is to keep Melantha safe. He thinks that's what he ought to do, and what makes him manly and garou-ly and Ahroun-ly, or something. He doesn't think that's all he's good for, of course not, but -- he does think that's part of his Job as an Erich.

More and more, though, he's starting to understand that it's also nice just to be there. That sometimes he doesn't have to protect, or heal, or snap his fingers and make everything right again. Sometimes all he has to do is listen when she speaks. Hold her when she cries. Keep close when she feels alone. Sometimes that's enough. Sometimes that's the best thing he can do.

--

Up on the shore, dirt and leaves cling to their feet as they come out of the water. Erich runs back to the truck to get the blanket, and together they shake it out and wrap it around themselves. They huddle close, and they dry off, and then they climb back into their clothes that still smell like the days they've had. The truck seems small and warm and quiet after the night and the lake and the water. Erich turns the heater on a little, even though it's summer. Melantha's hair is heavy and wet, and it leaves their shirts a little wet. He puts his arm around her. She tucks herself against his side.

The drive home is quiet. They're both tired, Melantha more so than Erich. Erich is thoughtful, too. He thinks about Charlotte and he thinks about Melantha and he thinks about being alone or not-being-alone and he tries to think of a way to make sure none of them are ever, ever alone again but there just isn't one. No one can know for sure, just like she said.

He's here now, though. And none of them will leave if they can help it. That's true, too, and it brings him some small measure of comfort. He hopes it brought her a little comfort too.

--

It is quite late by the time they roll back into that highland clearing where they've made their camp these days. The tinyhouse is dark, and the new-tinyhouse seems ancient and mysterious in the starlight. Erich and Melantha are very quiet, unlocking the door and going inside, but when the shower starts up they'll probably wake Charlotte anyway.

Maybe Melantha goes to sit with Charlotte a while when Erich's in the shower. Maybe Erich goes hang out in Charlotte's room while Melantha's in the shower. Maybe they have a midnight snack together, or maybe not, but

in the end they settle down again for the night. They turn the lights out again. Erich pulls himself up into his loft, and then he drops back down because he remembers Melantha doesn't do that, she climbs the ladder, so he moves the ladder over and she climbs it and he climbs after her. His bed is the biggest of all their beds, and even though the mattress is thin it is soft and it is comfortable and all his bedding smells like him, comforting and familiar.

He wraps Melantha up in his arms. Midwestern boys, beefy arms, warm chest, beating heart. They don't make love -- they don't do that, not with Charlotte so near, not after everything they talked about -- but they stay close. They sleep together. They keep near, and they do not leave each other, and when morning comes it'll still be the two of them,

the three of them,

together.