Like so many other signals, that willingness to have her hand held was too subtle for the wolf to catch. He doesn't see it. He looks at her bruise until her dress falls, obscures it from view. Then he looks at her, frowning.
Girl gets up. Wolf follows. They go back to the car and girl starts undressing and wolf is looking around instinctively, scowling, but there's really no one around. No one staring at her. No one sneaking peeks.
Not even when she pulls her shirt off. Turns so he can slather that strange, fantastic-smelling goo on her shoulder. Wolf's careful about this, using the palms of his big paws, rubbing it in the way he saw her do it.
"What is this?" he asks.
She answers or she doesn't. He doesn't know any of those names anyway.
--
Engine turns over and A/C comes on. Girl curls up, looking out the window. Wolf drives and eventually the drone of the engine, the sway of the car lulls her to sleep. Sun slides across the dazzled sky and toward a horizon obscured by the densest, darkest, oldest forest the wolf has ever seen. They're barely at the edge of it, closer to the sea, but even he can sense the antiquity, the age, the old, wild power in there.
Strange, but girl has more connection to this forest than wolf does. This is not his forest. Not the forest of his people, not the forest of his ancestors. This forest belongs to other shapeshifters, stranger and more secretive, more savage. He doesn't belong here.
Girl does, though. In some strange way he can't understand, but can intuit. Young as she is, flickering and mercurial as she is, there's something in her that is ancient, that has its roots in a world that was still young.
Her magic is old, and so is the magic locked beneath that endless green canopy.
--
Dusk when they reach the first gleaming branch of the Amazon delta. Dusk when their road turns along the floodplains, away from the sluggish mouth of that mighty river.
They pass a fishing village; stop for food. Fresh-caught fish, deep-fried without batter, sprinkled in salt and pepper and a handful of spices the wolf doesn't recognize. They keep going. Wolf with a whole fried fish unwrapped on his lap, breaking off chunks of tender white meat with his fingers as he drives.
Night falls. Road curves on, backward along the flow of the river, toward the heart of the continent.
--
Past midnight when they reach Macapá. Turns out the city sits right on the equator. Line that bisects the world bisects the city. Here there's no such thing as winter or summer, only wet and dry: and this is the wet season. Eighty degrees. Stiflingly humid. A heavy monsoonal rain blurring the city lights, obscuring the river.
Wolf can smell it, though. Smells its history, smells its depth and distance. Smell the secrets dredged up from the heart of the rainforest, carried through this little town on the waist of the world, and onward to that sprawling delta they passed hours before.
They get a hotel, close to the river as they can get. Wolf wants to find someplace nice, someplace fancy, something to make the girl happy. Make up for the fight they had. Ends up finding a glorified beach motel, two stories with an outside hallway. Hotel do Forte, it's called. Give it this much: the fixtures are new, and the furnishings are stylish.
Both tired and hot and sticky from the drive by then. Take showers, brush teeth. Collapse into bed, air conditioner up high. Sleep.
--
Morning, and the sun rises over the largest river in the world. So vast, so mighty, that they can't see the other side. Nothing but the stately, slow passage of a river nearing its mouth. Muddy brown waters rich with the silt of the continent. Barges in the distance, and overhead, enormous thunderstrewn clouds that will, by afternoon, turn to a drenching torrential rain.
Girl wakes first this time. Wolf sleeps on, unaware of the world.
[this! http://www.hoteldoforte.com/fotos.php]
witchSo he doesn't hold her hand, and he does help her with her bruises. She tells him there's green tea leaves and aloe and arnica and a few other things in the goo he's rubbing onto her. And then she very swiflty falls asleep. Ends up shivering a little in the air conditioning, pulling her shirt on over her shoulder like a blanket.
Much later, hours later, she wakes. She didn't even wake on the last two brief stops he made to take a leak or stretch his legs. She wakes up bleary-eyed and drowsy, and the shirt falls away from her shoulder. The dark mark that was there, brownish-pink, is a faint tan. Right on the verge of healed. She checks her hip: it is much the same. Gone are the tones of black and purple. There's a soft spot of greenish-yellow, some hints of pink. Nearly healed. Days of healing, all at once. She rubs her face and drinks water and slips her shirt back on and lets her tousled hair down, combing her fingers through it.
They stop somewhere for fish. The roads are narrow and bumpy. They eat the fried meat and get another for the road, and turn on the lights as night comes down. No regularity of streetlights here. The moon outside, beaming down. Watching them.
"Feels like we're alone in the world," she says softly, aloud, staring out the window.
--
Very dark and very late when they reach the city. See lights ahead. It's a capitol; it's a breath of sudden civilization. There are universities and hotels. It's very wet outside; it rained as they came in, is drizzling to nothing when they get there. It's hot outside, the humidity choking. They've both gotten a bit used to it from their travel, but if they flew here straight from Denver, they'd suffocate at the sudden onslaught of both extra oxygen and overpowering moisture.
They climb out, close to the river. Devon is quiet as they check in to the hotel that he found. He wants to find something nice. Room service, fluffy towels. It's not what they get, but it's hardly some roach-infested road motel. It's actually quite nice, she thinks. And they go up and he's set to shower, brush his teeth, go to sleep. She lingers near the door, even after dropping her backpack. Rests her head against the jamb, watching him.
Til he asks.
Til she says, quietly: "Want to go to the river now," with the faintest emphasis on the last word.
wolfmanDoor's still open. Letting in the heat, the humidity, the distant rumble of thunder. Wolf's already tossed his bag in the corner, walked into the bathroom. Has the door tapped shut. Is taking a piss.
Girl says she wants to go to the river. Wants to go now. Toilet flushes and sink runs and then the wolf comes back out. Tanned and sweaty, shorts hanging off his hipbones. Frowns at her.
"Dark outside." Leave it to him to point out the obvious. "You won't see much." Finishes drying his hands on a towel, wipes sweat off his brow, his neck. Tosses it aside, then, and comes across the room to her. "Go with you if you want, though."
witchGive her this much: she waits til he comes out before she says anything.
The guy who this morning said he didn't want to leave her alone at night because something might come and try to eat her all up tells her she won't see much, like going alone is really a Thing.
Her brow furrows slightly. She thinks of arguing, but says nothing of what's in her mind. Turns to head out. "You don't have to," she tells him, walking down the catwalk outside the room, towards the stairs.
wolfman"I want to." Door shuts behind her, wolf pocketing the keycard. Follows her across the catwalk and down the stairs.
Quieter, when he reaches the ground, comes up alongside her: "I wanna go with you."
witchDevon doesn't wait for him, but she naturally slows on the dimly-lit stairs. He tells her he wants to go with her, when they get down. She looks up and over at him. Defenses are up. Walls are up. She doesn't trust him. Regarding what, it's hard to tell. But the distrust itself is almost palpable.
She gives a half-hearted shrug, a little shake of her head. "As you like," she says, very quietly, and starts to walk.
--
Or they drive. Doesn't matter to her. Walking feels good, even if it takes a long time to find a spot where they aren't walled off from the water somehow. Long walk along roads that go right alongside the great river, dark and brown and immense.
Maybe they do drive: either way they end up in Araxa. Find a beach down there. And the moon is high and bright and waxing from half towards full. Eventually they get to a place where Devon slows. A place where they can walk off a sidewalk and onto shale, onto flat and sharp rocks. And into water. And that is what Devon does. She treads over the rocks in those rope sandals of hers into the water, silty and sacred, though not as sacred as the Ganjes.
Terrifying things live in the waters of the Amazon. Obvious beasts like green anacondas and black caiman and electric eels and red-bellied piranhas, but then incredibly terrifying things: the arapaima, so vicious that even its tongue has teeth. The horrifying, tiny candiru. The bull sharks, who swim as far as Peru, adapt automatically to the salinity of the water, and like to hang around densely populated areas. The payara, whose lower tusks are so large they have special holes in their upper jaw to keep from impaling themselves. The new and exciting breed of leech, that tyrannobdella rex. Nightmares, every one.
Devon has been taking malaria pills that Rafael doesn't need. There's a chance that even some of the creatures here wouldn't be scared of a werewolf, even with their rage. There's a greater chance that, simply wading into the water until it touches just over her knees, she won't encounter any of these beasts.
So she goes out. And the edge of her skirt barely touches the water and only when it ripples. She would rather be naked. She would rather be able to swim here as she does in the ocean. But the Amazon is not the sea. The Amazon is as hot and dangerous as the equator itself. She rests her palms on the water and looks up, and then down, and imagines all the carnivorous things she's read about, the creatures from another time, when everything that lived was as savage and brutal as the Garou.
Traces her fingertips over the water, unafraid. Or at least: living with her fear. Sitting with it, and offering it a cup of tea, if it insists on staying.
--
"Mum really loved my father," she says, out of nowhere. "Married him, even. I used to be Devon Sharpe."
She lifts up a doubly cupped handful of the water, tips it, lets it run down her wrists, her forearms, her elbows.
"Left when I was real little. Just... went off. They weren't fighting. I don't remember. Mum says they weren't. That he just went off one night."
Devon looks over her shoulder at him, lowering her wetted arms again. "She doesn't know," she tells him, if she hasn't before. "What he was. What that makes me. So many times I think of telling her, if maybe it would be a comfort. But it's not like he left and was killed and couldn't come back. He didn't die for years and years after that."
Shrugs, tightly. "Just got bored. The husband, father thing. And she spent years putting herself back together after that. Years trying to figure out what it was, what she'd done, why. Long time before she started to believe it wasn't her fault."
Doesn't say it. Doesn't say it but maybe it's obvious:
how many years did it take Devon to stop thinking it was her fault?
Did she?
Or was she always as harsh in her wisdom as she seems now: even as a child, knowing better than to think her daddy left because he didn't love her?
"Right bastard, he was," Devon says, with anger shivering underneath the dismissive words. Deep, clawing anger. "But see... I don't want that. You know? To be left like that."
She sniffs; breathing is harder for her, in this humid heat. She's not used to it. London, Boston, Denver. None of them places where this is familiar. "Don't like to get attached."
wolfmanEven by day they wouldn't be able to see the far bank of the river. Not in this heat. Not in this haze. Was hot and humid by the Gulf, but this is a different world altogether; a forest so vast it exists in symbiosis with its climate. Macapá -- largest city for miles and miles and miles around -- seems an isolated island of civilization in this place. Surrounded, enveloped, devoured by jungle, the way the very first human settlements were.
Old land, this. Old waters. Old laws.
--
Girl wades out into the river. After a moment, wolf takes his shoes off and follows. Feels the rich mud between his toes. The thickness of the water, which would be silty brown by day: the fertility of a continent pouring out to sea. Seeding the floodplains. Enriching the soil.
Ancient river. Sacred river. Almost as sacred as the Ganges.
Wolf says nothing. Follows girl out there and stands beside her. A little behind. Barges on the river blinking their lights in the distance. Night is so deep and black, so silent. Last of the afternoon's rain has finally tapered off, but the clouds linger. Swelter overhead, waiting for the heat of day. Here and there, a glimpse of stars, innumerable. Girl rests her palms on the water like maybe she can divine something from it. Wolf wants to take her hand but he doesn't.
Doesn't dare. Funny thing, when he's a werewolf and she's just a girl. Just a skinny thing
with ageless power. Depthless knowledge in her bones.
--
After a while she speaks into the darkness.
Tells him about her mother. And her father. And that history. That aching, bitter story. Wolf who sired her. Wolf who left her, without rhyme or reason. Didn't die for years and years afterward, though perhaps she's wished it more than once.
Wolf who didn't love her and her mother. Or worse: wolf who loved them, but didn't know how to stay.
Wolf like him. She doesn't have to say it. Doesn't have to draw the parallel. He hears it; understands her. Just a little more.
Water stirs around his thighs. He takes a few steps forward into the river. Current pulls gently at him. His hand trails water when he lifts it from the water. Takes her hand now. Subtle grittiness to their palms passing over one another: the silt in the water, suspended.
"Don't blame you," is what he says. Quiet as the current, the wind.
witchHe's gone deeper than she has. The water touches her above her knees; he goes in to the thigh. Reaches back to take her hand. And he can see her, and he can see in her eyes that what he says doesn't make the walls come down. She is re-bricking them, piece by piece, and slips her hand from his, drawing back to herself.
wolfmanFeels that. Her slim fingers slipping from his. Turns -- so dark he makes her out only as a shape, an outline.
"Devon." Says her name so rarely, and always, only, when he wants to call her back. Back from some abyss. Back from some brink. Back from unreachability, unknowability.
"What do you want me to say?" Edge of vulnerability there. Beseeching. "Want me to promise I'll never abandon you? Never leave you like that? I'm a Silver Fang Ahroun. It's death or insanity for me in the end. Don't got much of a choice."
witchAsks her what she wants. Well, no: asks her what she wants him to say, which makes her frown at him, and pull back a bit more. Rejecting, a bit, but more: retreating. Throws promises he could make in her face. And scares the shit out of her. And makes tears come to her eyes, as they so often do when he says or does things that scare her. Which he so often does. Almost always, nowadays, without meaning to.
She just gives a little shake of her head. "Don't want you to say anything," she says quietly, and there's another sniff. Might not be able to see her eyes, their shining, or see if she's sniffing because the air is wet and thick or because of the tears.
wolfmanWolf wades after her. Fords the river in great powerful strides, but inelegant. Moves like he fights the river, because he does: water is not his element. Earth, perhaps. Fire, for certain. But nothing so mutable, so mysterious, so drowning as water.
Comes after her, though. Comes close to her even as she retreats. Tries to catch her hand again in the slippery darkness. "Devon," he says, again. "Devon, wait. Wait."
And if she lets him:
if she lets him, then he catches hold of her again. Her hand, his hand, her arm, his arm -- wrapping around her, tugging her in. Pulling her to his body, nearly bare in the darkness, and here it doesn't feel like a capitulation to the heat. Doesn't feel like a rebellion against the mores of society. Feels right. He's an animal; of course he doesn't wear clothes if he doesn't have to. And his skin is taut and hot, and his arms are tight and hard. He holds her tightly, with a certain desperation.
"Never willingly," he whispers, harsh. "I'd never abandon you willingly."
witchCan't smell her. Might not be able to smell her anyway, even if she had a real scent of her own. This place is so rich with its own strength: the various animals, the water, the air, the pollution, the people, the food -- everything competes for his olfactory attention. But she's a silhouette here, a voice without presence, and a small voice at that. He walks through the water to the shadow of her, and she's only drawn back a bit but hasn't run, so he comes to her. Places wet hands on her arms, pulling her into the water that on her now is deep enough to wet the edge of her skirt.
Feels her breathe in when he pulls her close. She curses herself a little then, not just for her blatant vulnerability but for the fact that being close to him like this turns her on. Even when she's exposing a wound, even when she's scrambling to hide it again: he wraps his arms around her and she just sighs softly, held like that.
She doesn't know what to say to that. The rough promise, so like others: never hurt her if he could help it. Never willingly abandon her. But even if she doesn't know what to say, a word comes anyway.
"Why?"
wolfmanToo dark to see his face so she can't see the way he frowns. Maybe can imagine it though. Seen it often enough: heavy eyebrows coming together, brow wrinkling, mouth setting. Silence for a while, stormy. Wolf struggles with that question. Answer's at once so simple and so amorphous. Eludes him, and then he grates it out:
"Because."
Seems so inadequate now that it's out. Hanging there, tattered, flag without an emblem. Something to stand for. Something to give it form, purpose. Wolf tries again:
"Because I don't want to. Because I like you. Because it feels right when you're with me. So I'm not going to give that up."
witchStrange that she likes that answer more than a dozen others he could have given her just now. No falseness to it. Just as much wariness as she still has thrumming inside of her bones.
Achingly, Devon smiles against his chest. She's listening to his heart beat. It's going a little faster than usual. She has her hands on his sides, lightly, her ear to his body. Likes it here. She doesn't say anything. Some of the tension leaves her spine though, leaves her shoulders. She strokes him where her fingertips happen to land. Amazon flows around their legs.
Devon's hands smooth around his lower back til her fingertips touch along his spine.
"Me, too," she murmurs, finally.
witchStrange that she likes that answer more than a dozen others he could have given her just now. No falseness to it. Just as much wariness as she still has thrumming inside of her bones.
Achingly, Devon smiles against his chest. She's listening to his heart beat. It's going a little faster than usual. She has her hands on his sides, lightly, her ear to his body. Likes it here. She doesn't say anything. Some of the tension leaves her spine though, leaves her shoulders. She strokes him where her fingertips happen to land. Amazon flows around their legs.
Devon's hands smooth around his lower back til her fingertips touch along his spine.
"Me, too," she murmurs, finally.
wolfmanWolf can't see that smile either. Can imagine it. Full of secrets, even when it aches. Can feel it, maybe -- the stir of her lips against his chest. Girl listens to his heartbeat. Wolf listens to the night around them. Water slipping almost soundlessly past. Lapping on the distant banks.
Girl's hands raise trails of sensation on his body. Close his eyes and he can almost imagine them, scintillating in beyond-visible wavelengths. Her shoulders relax and so do his arms. For a while he's just holding her, half a world away from home.
First real home he's had for years and years, and even then it took a while to feel like it was really his. Not sure when it started feeling like home. Certainly not when the keys were put in his hand. Maybe the first time he dragged home a kill. Maybe when girl started living down the hall. Maybe the first time she came down the hall, wearing that soft little sleep-set, and crawled into his bed.
"Don't leave either," wolf says in the darkness. Gruff; leaves out the pronouns. Has to keep some armor, right? "Stay. Okay?"
witchQuiet for a moment.
Then:
"Just said 'me too'."
Duh, Rafael.
wolfmanLow whuff of a laugh. Gives her a squeeze. Kisses her hair. Draws away a little, then; though not completely. Has her against his side now, arm a reassuring weight across her shoulders.
"Maybe I just wanted to hear you say you won't. Ever think of that, smartass?"
witchHe draws away and she follows. He moves and she stays close, looking up at him. Chest to chest. Still. Maybe he just wants to hear it.
Calls her a smartass. Amusement flickers behind something else in her eyes. That something else is transparent, though, visible. Nameless but known, all the same. He must feel it for her, too. Or he wouldn't promise not to leave.
"If I want to leave, I will," she says quietly, though the words are harsh. Shakes her head a little, slow. "Don't want to, though. I like you." Breathes in, exhales with a faint tremble to it. "Don't want to give this up."
wolfmanSomehow the harshness, the bluntness, the honesty: it helps. Wolf's reassured by it, because then he knows she's telling the truth. Isn't just saying it to make him feel better. Isn't just parroting what he said back to him.
Says: I like you. Don't want to give this up.
Says: Me too.
Says it because it's the truth. Shows him it's the truth. Stays close to him, even when he starts drawing away. So he doesn't. Wolf settles those brutish arms around her again; hands holding her by the waist. They stand together in the slow-moving shallows, chest to chest, legs brushing under the water.
Wolf doesn't miss his cue this time. Girl's breath is a shiver, and he leans down. Kisses her, softer and slower than most their kisses.
witchOther declarations would feel like lies. Smoother words, phrases that come easier: neither of them would be able to trust it. This, though: these awkward, stilted, wary, withholding promises... these they can settle into. These they can trust, because they're imperfect.
Devon relaxes against him. She lifts her arms up when he leans down to her. She can tell he's going to kiss her, and a faint smile flickers over her mouth. Reaches up, and around him, and kisses him back. Slowly. Shows him what she felt a moment ago, when he first pulled her close. Lifts herself a little into his embrace.
When they stop kissing -- they have to, eventually -- she sighs a little, opening her eyes to look at him. "Let's fly to Recife," she murmurs. "Don't want to drive anymore." Still-wet fingers trace the nape of his neck, the ends of his hair. "Massages. The beach." Flick of her eyebrow. "A hot shave."
wolfmanHot shave. Oh, he gets it. Smirking now, bringing a hand up to trace that flicking eyebrow. Trace the seam of her lips. That little curl at the edges, full of mystery.
"All right. We'll fly."
Kisses her again. A lighter one this time, mouth touching hers where his thumb was a moment ago. When it ends, he lifts his head. Jaw to her temple. Arms around her.
"Ready to head back? Or you wanna stay out here?"
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