home and hearth.

[Lukas] They greeted each other first like humans - touching hands, drawing, washing. Now they greet each other like animals, or perhaps simply like themselves: nuzzling heavily together, her mouth finding his softly but unequivocally, her hands on his face keeping him from shying away. Afterward, he rubs against her, cheek to cheek, neck to temple, her hair trailing over his face, his eyes closing. She doesn't need to say it. Neither does he, his hands framing her waist, holding her near.

What she does say instead makes his eyes open. He draws an inhale, looking about; then he smiles. "I'll get the rabbits ready," he says. "I brought some salt and spices, if you want to help me make a rub."

Danicka would recognize the intent behind that, too. A sort of protection: something for her to do so she wouldn't have to watch her mate skin and gut the thing that he had just killed not twenty minutes ago.

[Danicka] They both have to take steps. He has to come to her in homid, because he doesn't know yet how she'll react if he were to return to their little camp wearing fur and carrying dead animals in his jaws. She has to wait alone in the dark, making their fire, while her mate hunts for her, because she can't join him. He has to clean himself off, wary of disgusting her or making her genuinely sick. She cleans him off, so that he won't be afraid to touch her. So that he can come closer. He shies from kissing her, even when he's done his best, and she kisses him, because his best is more than good enough.

They both take steps towards each other, so that he doesn't have to pretend to be human, so that she doesn't have to pretend not to be.

Danicka smiles while Lukas nuzzles against her, as though kissing him unlocked him a bit, let him come near to her. He rubs into her like a dog, like he's forgotten his hands, and she remembers all the times he's just like this, searching her out with his nose and not his fingertips. And she holds him, arms loose and hands stroking, til they gentle a bit and she murmurs what she does.

"Oh, that's easy," she says tenderly, then gives him a kiss to his temple and eases back, reaching into the basket again. Digging around for a moment she finds the knife they brought and turns it around, holding it out to him, handle first. "Do you want to make a spit or use skewers?" she asks. "I have some sticks I didn't use for the fire that might work for a spit, if you want to do that. There's foil in here, too, if you'd rather do packets."

She frowns. "Why didn't we bring a bucket to drain the blood into? We thought of everything else. I barely stopped you from getting ice cream, but a bucket? No, we don't even think of it."

[Lukas] Sometimes he's like that. Moves like he's forgotten the use of his hands. Nuzzles her instead of caressing her. Bites her instead of holding her. Sometimes he loves her like that, mounting her from behind, standing on all fours, gripping her with his teeth. Sometimes, half-awake, when she's getting out of bed so early in the morning to go to school, he throws an arm over her and rubs his face against her back, murmuring wordlessly, asking her without asking to stay, stay, just stay a while longer.

Right now, though, Lukas is using those strong, dextrous hands of his. He's picking the kills up as she speaks so baldly of blood, of the dirty work that goes into making an animal into a meal. He turns the rabbits and the muskrat over in his hands, thoughtful. "We'll just drain it into the ground," he says eventually. "It seems appropriate, anyway."

Then -- putting his hand behind her neck for a moment, kissing her again, quick but firm. Grateful, perhaps. "Let's make a spit," he says. "Then we can just let dinner roast over the fire."


Lukas doesn't, in the end, take the kills out of her sight. He doesn't exactly flay the carcasses before her with in-depth explanation and bloodthirsty relish, either, but he doesn't hide what he does. The rabbits are drained, skinned, gutted, washed out; when he gets to the muskrat, Lukas notes that he has no idea what spitroasted muskrat would taste like. He wasn't, he explains -- almost shyly, really thinking at that point. Mate was hungry. Meat, any meat, is food.

By then the herb rub is ready, and the spit. They mount the rabbits and the muskrat, then skewer them closed to hold them in place. Danicka, science- and engineering-minded as she is, rigs up a string to the end of the spit to turn it slowly from a distance. Lukas washes his hands, then shakes out the blanket again, laying it smooth over a soft patch of wildgrass.

Their fire pops and crackles. The rich scent of roasting meat rises. Fat sizzles as it drips into the flames. They lie together on the blanket, the stars bright overhead, and eventually Lukas begins to tell Danicka of Istok teaching him how to dress a kill. It was one of the first things he learned, along with philosophy, ancient history, the ways of the tribe -- back when he was much more eager to learn how to swing that sword. How to use that newfound body of his. Istok didn't teach him any of that, not for months on end. He taught a young Lukas, far more impatient then than he is now, the butcher's art. Brought fresh-slain prey before the stripling boy; taught him where to slice, what to cut. Where to separate the cuts of meat; where the muscle peels easily from the bone. How to dress and prepare the meat so that the pack and the kin and the sept could eat. How to sustain his people, and how to find honor in such a menial task.

And later -- how to hunt, showing him how to flush prey, how to confuse it, how to pursue it, how to kill it swiftly and cleanly. Not like a beast, not even like a wolf, not through instinct and blundering experience, but like a garou: with a single sure bite. And so he graduated from butcher to hunter. Learned silence and stealth, speed and strength. Learned what prey to take, the old and sick, the young and weak. Learned what prey to spare, so that the next year's herd ran stronger than the last.

"Much later," he finishes quietly, "Istok finally taught me how to fight with all the weapons I'd been given. And I saw that he had been teaching me all along."

[Danicka] They cook. Danicka ties her hair back again and mixes seasonings together. She does this the way she works in that makeshift laboratory of hers, meticulous and thoughtful --

and curious, and a bit wild, and quite mischevious in a way. No telling how secretive she can be when she's in the university's labs for her degree program, coaxing her project partners into ignoring this or that element of the rubric so they can do something really nifty, even if it is a bit outside of the requirements. This is why Danicka's mind, turned to scientific pursuits, turned to elements of engineering, is as brilliant as it is. This is why she plays with numbers the way she does: she is both very bright and a fucking deviant. Her creativity may come flying in the face of what is accepted, and it may sometimes fail, but her pleasure and sense of accomplishment comes from doing it the 'wrong' way. And sometimes the 'wrong' way is so very, very right.

Why would a woman like that be afraid of a little blood? Or a woman like his mate, wolf-blooded if not wolf-bodied, who was fascinated and morose at the same time when her father took her fishing and with a chop and a slice and quick work of his hands he dismantled that once-living thing into a filet they could fry up with butter and lemon and pepper and make into a meal. A woman like Danicka, no, she plays with the spices and sniffs at them to see if the smells go together, because if the smells do then the taste likely will, and all she does is remind him that he might want to dig a little hole to drain the blood into, then bury it.

She doesn't say why. If it's for hygiene or to keep away vermin or to not disturb hikers later on. Or if it's a ritual, in and of itself. She just goes about her work. And builds three spits, in the end, because that's how many tries it takes before it quite... works. In the meantime Lukas butchers small animals. Gets to the muskrat and she raises her eyebrows. Of course he doesn't know how it would taste roasted, she says, since he's likely only had them raw. She shrugs, though. If he wants to cook it, she'll eat it. She's never eaten muskrat before.

Granted, Danicka doesn't sound terribly enthused about eating muskrat, either, but then she's tearing some string with her teeth because the knife is in use, and he's asking her what the string is for. And then she shows him.


Later on, before the scent of cooking meat quite begins to fill their nostrils, he begins to tell her about Istok. He lies down and she stretches out alongside him, resting her head against his arm and his chest, listening to his heartbeat. While he talks she idly unbuttons his shirt again, and lets it lie open, nuzzling it out of her way til her cheek rests against the skin of his chest instead of the soft, thin fabric she was feeling before.

Istok was so mean, she thinks, making him cut before he could hunt, hunt before he could kill. So mean, thinks the little deviant, but she never says it. Istok is a great part of why Lukas is how he is. But she will never, ever know that man the way she was able to meet and know his parents. She knows, just from what Lukas says, that the time where Istok could have become more like Lukas is now is gone. She would never be more to that Philodox than an honored kinswoman, the mate of his former fosterling. He would never know her. It's a passing thought, and not one she truly dwells on or sorrows over, but she thinks of how Lukas became the man he was when she met him. And how he's become the man he is now.

She knows he wouldn't be who he is now if he'd never met her. If he'd never let her in. So she turns her head as he finishes, kissing his chest, closing her eyes against him and breathing in the smell of him, all woods and smoke and sweat now. She says nothing, though, merely laying her arm over him and wrapping him up in it, holding him closer.

[Lukas] There's blood buried in a little hole nearby, a little grave that Lukas weighs down with a flat rock without needing to be reminded. No other marker or monument stands to the lives taken on solstice night, and no other is necessary.

There's a fire licking beneath the spit, and their dinner is turning slowly over it. They take turns pulling the string, a little at a time, keeping the heat even over the meat. He tells her a story, and she listens and thinks thoughts that are passing, not truly sorrowful, but true. She thinks of who taught Lukas to be Wyrmbreaker; she thinks of Wyrmbreaker becoming Lukas. Her Lukasek.

Her cheek is against his bare chest. It's warm out, and he doesn't mind the breeze soft over his skin. He doesn't mind her arm wrapping around him, sliding under the brushed-aside shirt to wrap around him. He puts his hand over her forearm after a moment, holding her back.

"Let's just stay out here tonight," he whispers. "I want to love you again before the sun comes up."

[Danicka] "Mm," she agrees softly, curled against his side, sleepy as well as hungry now, nuzzling him in a secondary answer. "I was thinking we were going to go home afterward," she tells him, while he turns the rabbit and muskrat on the spit, while she drapes one leg across one of his, entangling their lower halves. "Make love in the woods. Fall asleep in our bed. Feels like we should, somehow."

She breathes in deeply and snuggles closer, smiling against his skin. "It's all right if you want to stay out here, though. But then I'm getting a massage tomorrow."

[Lukas] A little huff of a laugh -- his chest moving beneath her arm, his hand stroking up that arm and down in a thoughtless caress. "Okay," he says, quite amenable, "we'll do that. We'll go home."

To their quiet little den with the trees in the front yard and the back. The concrete that's finally been broken up and moved out; the earth that's finally been plowed and topsoiled and planted with whatever they planted it with in the spring. The open rooms that could support parents or cubs or visiting relatives, though never septmates or even packmates. It's not a house for war. It's a house for their family-packs and, profoundly and indelibly, for them.

Their handprints are in the wall by the door. Like a marking of territory, a silent claim in and of itself.

Lukas nuzzles Danicka again where they lie. He shifts beneath her, encourages her to rise with the rolling of his shoulder, the lift of his arm. "Come on," he murmurs. "Let's eat."

[Danicka] That is the difference between the Brotherhood and the Loft, the Loft and their den, the den overall and their bedroom upstairs. Ever-tightening circles of privacy, of protection. For sept, for pack, for blood, for themselves alone. If there are cubs one day, they'll run rampant through that house, as wild and free as they could never be anywhere else, but even then that bedroom will be a place they only go sometimes. Even they will recognize, possibly easier than any adult, that their parents' room and their parents' bed is only for when they are at their most frightened, their most vulnerable, or when they are all together as a family, tumbling over one another with mock growls and playful wrestling. Tickles. That is the place where their parents' scenes permeate the space, the place where they are closest to the core of their family.

Danicka hopes so, at least, when she thinks of such potential futures. She hopes it's not a place they fear to tread because that is the place so closely associated with their father, who is so very terrifying. She hopes they can feel safe there. She hopes that when they are very small and know the world only through scent and blurred lights and strange sounds that they will learn their father's scent to the point that when they are older, some part of them will feel pangs of comfort, familiarity, and warmth no matter how scared they may be of him.

She knows better than anyone that even this will twist them a bit. To want to be close, to love, that which could kill them without a thought, in the blink of an eye. She knows what it is to live like that, to grow up with that conflict, and all she can do is hope that she can make it easier on them. Make sure they come out of it sane, and safe, and able to love and be loved.

Summer is at its height. She planted deep indigo irises outside their house and they bloomed for such a short time, as irises do. A neighbor passing by as she watered them said not to worry, they'll come in thicker next year, be stronger. Told Danicka a thing or two about rotating flower beds, at which point Danicka was both fascinated and considering hiring a gardener and also asking herself if, really, gardening is worth all the effort. Her mind goes a mile a minute. She thinks of children and their bed and the garden and that neighbor and rubbing her bare breasts on that chest of his all in the time it takes for her to give a soft, slow blink, drowsy and content.

Though hungry. The meat is sizzling, cooked through, and Lukas can smell something in that which she can't quite, even though she's a perfectly decent cook. He nuzzles her, shifting and rolling, and she resists -- almost childishly -- until she flumps gently to the blanket as he sits up without her. Danicka just grins at him from the blanket where she lies, complacent and yet defiant, the mix she's always carried swirling around in her.

So: Lukas cuts meat off the spit, tears it off in strips. He piles a plate with fruit and cheese and wine and bread from that overloaded basket, but mostly its meat. Even now he can't quite make his head wrap around the fact that his mate eats mostly vegetables and lean chicken or fish, and that her stomach is much smaller and her metabolism much slower than his. He thinks: this is meat, and it is good to eat now, and it will fill his mate's belly right up, and then she'll be strong and the days getting shorter won't matter, she won't get cold, she won't.

And he climbs back to her, his shirt still hanging open if he doesn't just shrug it off entirely, and shares his plate with her. She's lazy, won't even sit up at first, just opens her mouth and makes him feed her until it's bite after bite and she's trying not to laugh, covering her mouth with her hand and he's telling her that's what she gets.

But of course, she's hungry, and she sits up and pours wine for both of them. She all but force-feeds him green things, green plant-food and he insists, wrinkling his nose, that the rabbit ate plants, he's eating the rabbit, so clearly he doesn't have to eat his vegetables. Danicka isn't drunk anymore, isn't drunk again off the new wine, but she grins, and she says she can't argue with that logic, which only means she won't.

After a few glasses of wine though, they've eaten so much -- more than he usually ever sees her eat -- and Danicka is lazily stripping off her shirt, taking off her skirt, then (almost grumpily) peeling off her knee socks like they suddenly annoy her. She clambers over him, bare naked, like none of this was to awaken his lust or even grab his attention but just because there's really no point to having clothes on,

and she gets the chocolate bars and marshmallows out of the basket. "S'moooorrresss," Danicka all but purrs, though she's forgotten the box of graham crackers in the basket. With her naked, Lukas can even see the faint swell of her normally flat stomach from eating. Danicka almost never eats until she's 'full'. Now she seems like she rather intends to do so, adding dessert on top of it all. "S'mores," she says again, more insistently, pushing the candy into his hands and then bumping her head against his shoulder. "Make me s'mores."

She tips her head back up, grinning at him, her eyes gleaming. "'Kay?"

[Lukas] Let's be honest. As much as Lukas pretends to grumble about his lazy mate and spoiled little brat, he's more than happy to feed her. Bite after bite after bite, until she's covering her mouth and her laughter is muffled with food and he's telling her that's what you get and passing her a glass of wine to wash it down with.

The rabbits are wild, which means they're rather skinny, the meat lean and juicy; the spices give them a kick that fits the cheese and wine, but doesn't really fit the way he took them. The muskrat is ... not terribly good, but Lukas eats it anyway, loathe to let a life go to waste. Danicka makes him eat some vegetables. He comes up with the same excuse he used years and years ago, though it works better on Danicka than it did on his mother. Then again, perhaps it's only because it's solstice night. Or perhaps Danicka knows he doesn't really need to eat as many vegetables as your average human. He isn't, after all, human. Or average.

And let's be honest here, too: when they're full, when they're lolling about and Lukas is lazily nibbling the last shreds of meat off a rabbit-bone -- when Danicka gets up and starts to undress, peeling off shirt and skirt and knee socks, Lukas's eyes flash with sudden attentiveness. Sudden interest. He watches her as fabric gives way to skin, as skin is lit by fire. Danicka can see him lick his lips, a quick unconscious motion.

But she doesn't push his shirt from his shoulders. She doesn't climb into his lap. She clambers over him, and his hands follow her, stroking up her thighs while she --

picks up chocolates. And marshmallows. Dumps them in his hands, bumps her head against his shoulder. S'mores, she demands, and Lukas snaps from quizzical to laughing in a second, throwing his head back, laughing so quick and bright and loud that somewhere birds are frightened from their rest.

"You're mean," he complains. And he kisses her as she looks at him, not on the mouth but square between the eyes, on the bridge of her nose. "You're lucky I'm so nice." And he gets up to grab graham crackers. And make s'mores.

[Danicka] Danicka eats like this normally at the end of finals weeks at school. She eats like this when storms have passed, when the stress has abated. There have been nights, a few, though it's occasional, when she goes from intense studying to climbing on top of him in bed,

fucking him almost like it hurts, like she's seeking relief from pain,

gripping the pillows beneath him so that she doesn't clutch at his scalp, her eyes closed as she comes in sweating, gasping orgasm,

and while he's lying there trying to put his head back together again, she collapses for a few moments only before going to the kitchen. Suddenly ravenous and infintely relaxed then, Danicka goes and eats hard-boiled eggs and apples and string cheese and crackers and one time she made a pot of pasta, munching on a handful of Peanut Butter Crunch while she waited for it to cook. Occasionally she is such an id-driven little thing -- in fact, most of the time she is an id-driven little thing -- that it's hard to imagine how she can exist so easily in the human world.

No one can blame Lukas for associated Danicka stuffing her face with Danicka feeling happy, Danicka feeling at ease, Danicka comfortable and Danicka close to him. It isn't that he's never seen her happy and calm otherwise, it's simply that on those very rare occasions when she fills her belly like this, she is without fail also very pleased with life and almost languid in her relaxation.

So of course later on she tosses off her clothes -- it's the summer solstice, it's hot and muggy out here and she's sticky from sweat and from sex earlier and from woodsmoke and, truthfully, they're both getting rather filthy. Of course she rolls around on their blanket naked and climbs over him, ignoring that flash in his eyes, that subtle moistening of his lips. She laughs as he's stroking her thighs, getting quite drunk now but fully aware that he wants her. That he wants to open her legs and wrap her in his arms and lay her body under his so he can fuck her again. She is drunk enough to be very torn between that and s'mores. And to choose s'mores.

Candy lands in his lap and she beams at him like she does, biting playfully at his bared chest while he laughs, nomfing one of his pectoral muscles affectionately. "I'm not," she retorts, when he claims she's mean, lifting her head abruptly. He kisses her between her eyes and she wrinkles her nose again. Lets him go, so he can get new skewers.

They argue about how to properly cook a marshmallow. Whether it's simply best to let them catch fire and blow it out, or if you should slowly turn it over the heat til it roasts golden brown. It always takes too long, Danicka complains, and lays on his lap, asking him to make it go faster. But not burn it. But stop wiggling so much.

[Lukas] There was a flicker there when this might have descended into something more serious. When he playfully called her mean; when she reacted immediately, abruptly. He almost stopped. He almost told her, no, she's not mean. He knows that now. There was a time when he didn't, but he knows now.

He doesn't tell her that. He kisses her instead, on that little indent where brow meets bridge of nose, and it's warm and gentle and, yes, playful -- and she wrinkles her nose and he tries to remember if once upon a time she did that as a little girl,

and that makes him mull over how different they were as children, and how different they are from their childhood selves. One would have never thought, watching the two of them play together as small children, that the boy would grow up to be the more restrained of the two. The more cautious. The less -- ironic as it is -- wild, at heart.

They argue about marshmallow roasting. Lukas says it's like roasting meat: slow and easy, turning on a spit. Danicka thinks maybe it's easier just to let it catch fire and then blow it out, but in the end Lukas is the one holding the stick and Danicka doesn't really want to eat burnt marshmallows, anyway. It takes forever, even with four or five of them on one stick, watching them slowly puff larger and larger, waiting until their skins begin to turn crispy and golden-brown.

And then Lukas is handing the stick to Danicka, and he's preparing graham crackers and hershey's chocolate, and he's telling her to bring the marshmallows over, quick quick, now smush! and they have s'mores, suddenly, hot and gooey and so very sweet.

"Don't let me eat until I throw up, okay?" he says, handing her hers, picking up his own. "If I start saying 'what harm could one more do,' that's your cue to intervene."

[Danicka] Of course for Danicka, there wasn't a serious bit of it. Not a whiff of real displeasure, real hurt. Not that it would need to be real -- phantoms of feelings have hurt them both in the past, and they both know better than to ignore the teeth of ghosts. So Lukas, at least marginally more sober or feeling particularly protective tonight, almost stops to assure her no, no, he'd never think she was mean anymore, not cruel or cold or heartless, and it was so long ago that he did. He learned that lesson so quickly that the length of time they've been together when he's felt her warmth far eclipses the few weeks when he thought her to be a stone egg.

So funny, that his own spirit and mind thought Danicka would use that as inspiration for a name for a son. Even if he doesn't like the name, doesn't want the boy to get teased, this boy that exists only in memory and perhaps the spirit world: he'd give in, if that's what Danicka wanted, and if she explained why the name appealed to her. Even if now, outside of that realm, he knows that all those names came from him, came from his perception of her and her powers of perception, her ability to close herself off so completely, her beauty all but blinding him.

In truth, those three children in the underworld were all his. He gave them Danicka's eyes and hair and chin and backbone and smile here and there, but in every speck of their imaginary existence, they were his children alone. She knows that, feels it instinctively -- will not want to use those names for the cubs they may one day have, because those names belong to Lukas's spirit-children. Those names are taken.

Sacred, like the solstice and the equinox. And this. And them.


"Ack!" she says, being handed a skewer. "You can't make me do things, I'm drunk!" she says, looking genuinely startled and concerned about managing this highly difficult task he's given her. She clutches the skewer in both hands, staring wide-eyed at the marshmallows, and she looks ridiculous doing this with tousled hair and naked flesh, but thankfully Lukas relieves her soon enough and smoosh, smush,

s'mores.

"Okay," she tells him very seriously, nodding to his request. She has seen this before. She was there on Thanksgiving. With the kolaches. And in the common room of the Brotherhood. And her kitchen in her mother's house in Queens, where no one knew how many of the things Lukasek was stealing until they heard him throw up and Danicka was standing there looking pale and wide-eyed and Lukas was standing there looking glassy-eyed and wobbly, oh and his father hollered and her father was trying so hard not to laugh and Anezka just laughed anyway and Marjeta, Marjeta was just horrified.

All of which Danicka says aloud. "She clapped her hand -- whap! -- right over your sister's mouth and half-dragged her out of there because I think if she hadn't your father would have gone after little miss 'you-have-to-share-your-crayons-we're-your-guests' too. Oh, your dad could yell. What made him so quiet? You'd never know to meet him now that he has one of those forehead-veins that bulges."

She taps her forehead as she describes this, and leaves a smudge of chocolate.

[Lukas] It's a funny story to begin with. After quite a few glasses of wine and a s'more -- a large one -- already stuffed into his stomach, it's an absolutely hilarious one. Lukas laughs; he can't seem to stop, laughs at hearing him throw up and glassy-eyed and wobbly and at how horrified his mom was and the whap! and the yelling and --

then there's a smear of chocolate on Danicka's forehead, and now he's laughing so hard he can't even look at her, it just makes him laugh harder, he puts his hand over his eyes and half-hides his face, shoulders shaking, trying to say something but all that comes out before he bursts out laughing again is:

"There's choc-- there's ch-- baby, okay, okay, I'm gonna stop laughing, baby, there's a big blob of -- there's a big -- "

And he's gone again.

[Danicka] "There's chocolate on my forehead," Danicka says peevishly, leveling a flat stare across at him. She's kneeling on the blanket now, her bum on her heels, her hands on her legs, and she's just as unruffled as you please except for the fact that he's giggling at her. The nerve. "I don't see what's so funny about it!"

[Lukas] Now it's even more impossible for him to say anything. He tries to explain why it's so funny, but of course he can't because, A, he can barely speak, and B, it just is funny. So after several fruitless, laughing attempts, he simply takes her head gently between his hands and -- well. Licks the chocolate off, plants a sound smooch in its place, and then flops down on his back.

A little later, his guffawing dies down to chuckles, then the sort of contented sigh a person lets out after a bout of truly side-splitting laughter. He waves their little marshmallow-skewering stick at Danicka, handing it to her. "More s'mores," he says. "And to tell you the truth," sobering a little, "I don't know what made my dad quiet. I think he mellowed out a little as he got older. But I think maybe it's also because ... well. Me. I changed."

A bit of a pause. Then he amends: "Changed."

[Danicka] "Ack," she says again, flapping her hands -- which are chocolatey, as is the smudge on her leg where she put her hands -- at his chest to get him away as he leans over and licks her forehead. She wrinkles her nose. She rubs at the spot with her forearm, which is blessedly chocolate-free. "Now my forehead is wet," she complains, as he's flopping down to laugh at her, and then he quiets.

She realizes the chocolate is coming from her hands as Lukas is settling down, and gets a towel and some water to wipe it -- and her leg -- off, waving off the skewer he tries to hand her. Five s'mores -- meaning two to her and three to Lukas -- and she doesn't seem willing to do any more work. She looks full. She is full. So instead of cooking another marshmallow, she tosses the towel away and crawls over to Lukas's side.

Curls up against it, as she was before they got up to eat, only now she's naked. She nuzzles against his chest as he tells her about his father getting quieter over the years, of his father no longer being the head of household, his father doing what every bit of Shadow Lord upbringing told him to do and submitting to the Garou he was related to.

Even if the Garou was his son. Even if he was older and more experienced, older and stronger, what-have-you. In a way, Danicka wonders why some Kinfolk don't understand that. Why other tribes aren't more like the Shadow Lords in this respect -- however much the Shadow Lords, many of them, have warped it. She wonders what is so wrong in the end with accepting that you will never be as strong, as powerful, held as accountable. There is so much sorrow and loneliness in fighting it.

Of course, she is different. The Garou she's lying so very close to is different. Her hand resting on his chest shifts slightly, moving to just below his pectoral muscle. She covers his heartbeat, instinctively and silently protective at hearing the note in his voice. "Yeah," she says quietly, in agreement and understanding. "I think you're right."

She rubs her face into his side. "Now I'm sleepy," she tells him, as earlier she informed him that she was hungry, it was time to hunt. There's a beat. "And I have to pee."

[Lukas] So much would be different if they both weren't who they are. If he were the sort of Garou to abuse the strength and power and responsibility given to him by their society and, in truth, by the universe itself. If she were the sort of kin to abuse the sort of influence and sway she held over him by the simple fact that she is his mate, his beloved.

Look at how easily his mood changes when she covers his heartbeat like that. When she rubs her face against him and tells him that she's sleepy, she needs to pee. Look at how that soberness dispels like a vapor in the wind, leaving his face to break into a grin again, leaving his ribcage to contract under her cheek as he laughs. She could have anything she wants from him. All she would have to is put her hand out and ask. Except -- she's not like that. And that's precisely what allows him to trust her so, adore her so.

He wraps his arm around her for a while. She's naked, he's halfnaked, they're both full to bursting but he's still contemplating another s'more. "I changed my mind," he murmurs, the lower registers of his voice radiating through his chest wall. "You go pee. I'll pack our stuff up. And then we should go home and get clean and make love in our nice, soft bed.

"And then," he finishes, sitting up, "we should sleep roughly forever."

[Danicka] "You always say that," Danicka informs him, "but we never really do," as though this is news.

"Also," she says, wrapping herself around him from behind as he sits up and nuzzling his back, "when we go home I want to take a shower and then make love in our nice, soft bed. Just so you know. There's a process here. There's a --"

Danicka yawns

"-- set order of things."

He tries to move. She grumbles, hugging him tighter around the middle, and wraps her legs around his waist as well. So for a bit, Lukas is made to just sit there, asking her lightly if she's going to take a nap first. She, of course, informs him that his back is not as comfy as he seems to think it is, mister.

Fondly, he covers her hand and calls her missus and that just makes her laugh, holding his hand. It's the sort of sentimentality they never, ever would have shown each other even a year ago. All those soft, tender, silly thoughts they held back are allowed to be said now. So they say them, easily, and without being afraid of being laughed at, because they've learned that making the other laugh is actually.. rather pleasant.


Everything in between is filler. Danicka traipsing off into the woods with laughter, her form slender and golden and flashing in the dark. Lukas putting out the fire, mixing water and ash til it's safe to bury the pit again, til not even a drought would make the embers come to life again and risk the woods. He buries what remains of the animals they devoured, and Danicka is coming back then, tugging on her shirt and her skirt and helping him pack up the basket and everything else. She tells him, looking up at the sky again before she puts away the telescope,

"You know, the night after Fritz Houtermans discovered the thermonuclear process necessary for the stability of stars, he went on a walk with his girlfriend. And she looked at the stars and said, 'don't they shine so very beautifully?' and he said, 'yes, and right now, I'm the only one who knows how.' That always seemed so very sad to me. And lovely, all at once."

And in a way it is: sad and lovely, to be the only one looking at the stars who understands how they even exist. She puts the telescope away so gently for such a tipsy woman, and slips her feet into her shoes. Lukas shakes out the blanket and wraps it around her, because she shivered and he noticed and she smiles at him, before he leans over and kisses her.

They walk back through the woods, leaving behind a grave for blood and a grave for bones and a grave for ashes, the area marred by their noise and their scent but healing already, as soon as their part-human footsteps walk away. The world, when left alone, can heal, like all the human bodies that echo it. Not perfectly, but in a sort of reparative evolution.


Wrapped in a blanket, driving through the dark, Danicka falls asleep in the passenger seat. She wakes before the car stops, sensing the change when it slows, when it turns into a driveway. Their driveway. She breathes in deep, looking over at Lukas.

"Home?"

Yeah.