Before. Always.
Lukas's thoughts stray that way too. More than once, as he walks the streets of this old, old city, he wonders if he's come this way before; not merely as a child but in a different life altogether. He wonders if she was with him then, too, and if she was his mate then. Or perhaps his pack-sister. Or perhaps his rival, whose struggle with him was so old and intimate and vicious that it had become a strange sort of love. For more than a thousand years, the city stood on this spot. For more than two thousand, there was some sort of settlement. For hundreds of thousands, millions, humans have lived here in the protected bend of the river. And wolves. And garou. And their kin.
They might have stood here before. Here, exactly. They might stand here again in different bodies, wearing different faces. Lukas wonders about that briefly. The Theurges and the Philodoxes disagreed about the true nature of reincarnation, and the degree of resemblance between two iterations of the same spirit. Lukas wonders if a man who looked just like him, who carried the same soul, stood on this spot in a different lifetime. He wonders if he looked quite different. He wonders if there's a system for this sort of thing in the afterlife; for soulmates to find each other and their assorted packmates, children, family, loved ones. He wonders if there's some sort of queue to be reborn, or some sort of lottery to determine the how and the when and --
Danicka directs him to the fountain and takes a picture of him. Lukas wants one of the both of them, is quite insistent about it, so they find a friendly passerby, who turns out not to be Czech at all but a tourist like them: an engineer from the Ukraine, he tells Danicka while Danicka shows him how to operate her phone-camera, on his way to Frankfurt for his post-doctorate. After he takes their picture they thank him, and Danicka wishes him good luck with his research. She sets the first picture as her phone background.
His hands are still bare, and they squeeze hers gently when she slips them into his. She has to raise herself on tiptoes in her flat-soled boots -- at least until he bends to her. After the kiss they stay together a while. Eventually he lets her hands go and wraps his arms around her, loving her more deeply than he can bear. He holds her until the moment passes, washes through him. And then,
then they wander away from that fountain. And the antiquity. And the subtle sense of history etched into the buildings, the cobblestones, the very layout of the city. The names of the districts, the run of the streets.
They end up eating at a restaurant older than the United States. U Mecenáse, it's called, and it has not changed for roughly four hundred years. By modern standards, it's small and rather humble. The building is narrow, white-washed, the name of the restaurant is painted over the entrance along with a fleur-de-lis; there's little other signage to be seen. Inside, the walls are the color of old parchment, the ceiling supported by numerous arches that would be extraneous in modern architecture. The windows are small and deep-set. Sabers, flintlock rifles, brass sconces and mounted animals decorate the walls. They are shown to a small huddle of couches in the corner, next to a rather ornate fireplace. Bottles of liquor stand atop the mantle. It feels a little like someone's -- some antique-lover's -- living room.
Lukas sits next to Danicka on the largest couch. Now they have a view of the rest of the restaurant, and whatever clientele has gathered on this pleasantly unremarkable spring day.
About half the menu is traditional, meaty, lots of beef and potatoes and cabbage. The rest is French-influenced; a lot of seafood. The stuffed duck comes highly recommended, so Lukas puts himself down for that, but then there's something called Executioner's Goulash, because apparently the executioner of Prague rather favored digging into that dish after his bloody work was done. They get that, too. And smoked salmon to start. And flambe ice cream to finish. Some good Czech beer on the side. It's a big meal, but then in Prague lunch is still the main meal of the day. Besides; whatever they don't finish they can bring back to the hotel. Eat later, when they're too tired to forage for food.
As they wait for their food, Lukas tips his head back and looks at the ceiling. Then he settles in, stretching his legs out under the table. He's reminded a little of Szalas, that little Polish restaurant they ate at so long ago. One of the first times they ate out somewhere not-fancy, not-sleek, not-modern. He ordered a ridiculous of food then, too. And a lot of wodka. They barely made it out with their clothing intact.
"When we have kids," he muses, "we should sit down together for dinner whenever we can. And you should teach them to make koláce. And I'll teach them to make grilled cheese."
DanickaShe is so far removed from those memories, if they exist. Dimly and rarely she thinks about other lives, about the possibility that she's known Lukas before. She may have known many people before. The thoughts spiral out and away from her, because she has never been to the homelands in this life. She can't cross over, run back there. For most of this life, she didn't even know she might have been a Garou in another lifetime, could reincarnate as one. She was lied to, deeply, told her soul would never see those places. Told: you don't belong.
Now, here in a city older than the country they live in, they hold hands and Danicka almost never lets go. To take his photo. To show the Ukrainian student how to use the camera on her phone. Lukas is looking around, thinking about their faces. Is she always golden-haired, looking nothing like a Shadow Lord until you understand the mutability of her eyes, the casual deceptions of every smile on her lips? Does he always have that thick black hair, and is he always so very tall?
Danicka stops speaking Russian to the man for a moment, a language they share, and calls out to Lukas for his attention. She brings him back. They pose together in front of the fountain, Lukas's arms around her from behind, sheltering her on all sides with at least some part of himself. Yet her hands cover his hands where they fold in front of her.
She's hungry then, and as insistent about that as he was about a photo with the two of them together. Truthfully, Danicka never has to be that insistent with Lukas when it comes to her hunger. More often she has to remind him, as gently as she can, that she cannot eat red meat twenty-one times a week, scarfing it down at every meal. So Lukas takes her to the big couch near the fireplace and he wants the duck and the goulash and salmon and that's about the point where Danicka tells him, in English so to not embarrass him as much, to slow down.
She orders the most horrifying things. Broccoli au gratin. Turkey, which isn't even a real meat, stuffed with pear, and doesn't she know that is not even remotely anything like a meat? Will she at least share the salmon with him, and the ice cream? Of course. She kisses his temple after their server departs with their orders. She will even have a bite of the goulash.
He leans back, looking at the ceiling, and Danicka shifts her bag and coat to the side, leaning into his ribs and taking out her phone to look over some other things she's interested in. She finds herself quite comfortable and realizes that the only thing keeping her awake at the moment is hunger. Her eyes are closed when he starts musing about their children.
"We'll teach them to do many things," she says mildly, without opening her eyes. "I imagine when the rest of our family visits they'll learn a thing or two then, as well. We'll have to watch out for your sister."
LukasThey're in a rather comfortable corner. There's a fireplace nearby. There's no food on their table yet, but there will be. They share the couch, which means he can put his feet up on one of the chairs opposite -- surreptitiously sliding out of his shoes to avoid dirtying the cushion. She leans against his side. Elemental comfort, he thinks, that phrase from the second gift he ever gave her floating to mind.
No one ever told him about this. No mentor, no friend, no packmate; not even mass media. Everyone knows about the lust, the spark, the infatuation. But no one talks about the things that only come much later, with time. Bone-deep comfort. Warmth in one another's presence. Trust.
His arm is spread over the back of the sofa. Her eyes are closed, her tone perhaps just a little furred with exhaustion. His mouth moves silently, but she can hear the smile in his voice. "She could teach them to rollerblade. That's reasonably harmless." He shifts a little, cranes to look at her. She looks almost asleep, and so he falls quiet, the beat of his heart and the tide of his breath a slow steady rhythm beneath the quiet conversation of the restaurant.
The salmon appetizers arrive, and their beer. The poultry and the broccoli are coming, they're assured. Danicka's mate thanks the waiter and stirs, rolling his shoulder a little to rouse her. "Let's eat," he says. "Then let's just go back to the hotel and sleep. We've got plenty of time to see the castle and the clock tower and all that later."
Danicka"As long as they wear kneepads," she murmurs in response to the bit about rollerblading. She isn't working too hard in the conversation, content now to wait for food and rest against her mate. Even her state of relaxation is surprising; Danicka has always been hypervigilant, especially in public. Always watching how she acts, how she sounds, constantly aware of being observed -- by one thing or another. Now she reclines, not to the point of taking off her shoes and propping her feet up in a restaurant, but enough that Lukas falls quiet, as though he wouldn't mind much at all if she went to sleep right there.
That is trust.
The appetizers arrive, salmon and, in fact, the broccoli she ordered to start. Danicka smells the food before Lukas nudges her, and her eyes open. Even when he nudges her, though, she doesn't move. She mutters an ooph but refuses to move. Opens her mouth.
LukasShe can't really see his face from her vantage point. So she can't see the quirk of his eyebrow, the really? writ all over his face. He doesn't mind, though. Not really, and she knows it. Not even when he gives a great big exaggerated sigh, unwrapping their cutlery. Just for her, he spears a broccoli with his fork, ferries it to her mouth.
Then he sits up a little. She doesn't seem inclined to move, and that's all right with him. His right arm simply goes around her. He has enough reach in those long limbs to easily manage his utensils even with a sleepy mate half in the way. For the primal animal she knows he really is, his veneer of civility is rather convincing. He spreads butter expertly over a thin slice of toast, tops it with a roll of salmon, squeezes a dash of lemon atop. Every motion stirs or rocks her in some small, gentle way. With the first little hors d'oeuvre prepared, he hands it to her, then starts on a second for himself.
DanickaThe broccoli is hot, and so is the cheese. Danicka blows on it, peeking out of one eye opened just a slit, then opens her mouth and obediently takes a bite. Luckily that is all Lukas has to feed to her directly. She chews, getting in the way by leaning heavily against him until he puts his arm around her and sits up, starting to make a little arrangement of their food.
Danicka watches him in amusement, finally easing upright herself. She reaches for her water, spying on him, lifting up her fork. He hands her the toast and salmon; she smiles and kisses his cheek when she leans over to take it.
They eat. Danicka focuses primarily on the broccoli, but she nibbles on bites of salmon and toast that Lukas shares with her. She offers him some of her greenery, without quite expecting him to take it, but that isn't the point. Soon enough they're brought the goulash. Danicka sets the remainders of the appetizers aside and relaxes while Lukas attacks the dish and the potato pancakes that came with it; she tries a little but saves room for the turkey and duck that, yes
they also share. He is wary of the pear stuffing but discovers it goes excellently with the bird. Danicka has a small slice of his duck. They are sharing everything, finishing almost nothing. Except the ice cream. When that comes, when the fire dies down, they demolish it. They've already asked their server to box up the rest: the remaining goulash, the leftovers of duck and turkey and potato pancakes and even a bit of broccoli and salmon they didn't destroy.
The last bite of ice cream, Danicka can barely manage. She all but drops her spoon to the table and leans back on the couch after that, one hand loosely resting on her abdomen, and stares at the empty plate. After a while her eyes roll to the side and look over at Lukas.
"You can carry me back to the hotel, yes?"
LukasFor two people who have been traveling for a cumulative twenty hours, and then walked around the oldest sectors of Prague for another two or three or four, they really do manage to do quite a number on their dinner. They share everything. They finish almost nothing, but they put a dent in everything. No wonder Danicka looks utterly exhausted by her food. No wonder she all but collapses like that, daze-eyed.
Lukas, it must be said, is still eating. Very slowly. And only a little bit. But he's eating: sneaking slivers of turkey and pear out of their carryout container, eating it ruminatively, luxuriously off his fingers.
He laughs at her request. Which is really more of an assumption. And also the truth: yes, yes he can. He sucks his fingers clean, wipes them on the napkin -- so much for civilized behavior -- and then drains the last of his beer. It's some label he's never had before, a local brewery.
"I'll carry you all the way to your father's vineyards if you want." The dregs slosh lightly in the bottle as he sets it down, and then he gets his wallet out. It takes him a moment to decipher the Czech bills, which he lays down along with a reasonably generous tip. When he gets up, he does it slowly, giving her time to shift her balance.
And then he drags their table back. Picks up their food in their carryout containers, their bags. Turns his back to her, looking expectantly, grinningly over his shoulder at her.
"Well, are you hopping on?"
DanickaShe doesn't mean it for a second, truthfully -- Danicka is not opposed to undignified behavior most days -- but she knows if she lets him carry her, she won't get to walk beside him. In Prague, back to their hotel, looking up at the sky together. She also knows that he means it: he will carry her everywhere, and could if she needed him to.
"Save your strength," she teases, nudging him with the toe of her boot when he asks if she's hopping on.
But he does help her up to her feet, and helps her into her coat, and lays down the Czech bills they got from the ATM at the airport when they landed. Danicka wiggles her hand into his as they depart, carrying only her purse now while Lukas manages the leftovers. It's cooled off while they were eating, and she buttons up her coat as they walk, thinking aloud about their plans for tomorrow.
She's never met her other half-sister. Nor the niece and nephews who have remained in the Czech Republic. She's never met any of her father's family. And, she admits as they walk, she's uneasy.
"They don't know me at all," she murmurs, using English now as they stroll back toward their hotel. "All they know is my father being handed from one mate to another, outliving them both. If they've even heard of my brother, all they know are the same stories everyone else does. They could be awful. Not Sarka and her son and Sabina's two eldest, but everyone else on the Musil side. I just... have no idea. And I don't even know where the find my mother's relatives. I think they're mostly in America now, anyway."
Her hand is tight on his. She looks at him. "I want to say it doesn't matter if they're awful or look down on me for not being born native or any of that, but it does. It didn't used to, but I care now."
LukasHis hand tightens on hers, too. It's a reciprocal response, natural. Walking beside his mate, Lukas's eyes are on the pavement; he's listening, processing, thinking.
It's getting cold outside. It's getting darker. The afternoon is approaching evening; it took them a very long time to eat. At the first gust of wind he starts to put her hand in his pocket with his, but then he remembers: he's wearing a sweater. No pockets. He shifts his hand on hers instead, unlacing their fingers, wrapping his hand wholesale around hers.
"If they're awful, condescending people, I'll bark at them until they shut it. And then we'll never visit them again, and be thankful for the nice family we do have." He means it: just like he meant it when he said he'd carry her to the hotel, or to the vineyards, or anywhere at all. "At least you know Sabina and her son and Sarka's kids will be good, decent people. So even if the rest of them are terrible, meeting the four of them counterbalances it a little."
DanickaSometimes the degree of protectiveness Lukas shows Danicka startles her. Sometimes it irritates her. Sometimes it hurts her heart, how exposed his is when it comes to her. She wants to tell him to put it away, hide it, lock it up. Doesn't he know what could happen?
His hand tightens on hers. Covers hers. The wind is cool and night is coming and they are in an unfamiliar place, though not a new or strange one. She is afraid of being rejected by her family. Of course she would be. For Danicka, it wouldn't be the first time. And she can almost feel the twist of his heart in response to all these things. She remembers the look in his eyes every time he learned something new, something painful, that he wasn't there to protect her against or comfort her after. She could almost hear him howling.
Lukas will bark at them. Her lips tighten into a sudden flush of a smile, despite herself. Then we'll never visit them again! he adds, like a child storming off, but he isn't, and he means it, and she leans into his side. At least, he says, it will be worth it to meet her other sister, the other niece and the nephews. She smiles, softer now. "Thank you," she says, rubbing her thumb on the outside of his hand.
They are approaching the Grand Bohemian again. She is thinking aloud, still, as the footman swings open the doors to the lobby in front of them: "I'm going to send them a text before I pass out upstairs. I imagine Sabina is at least partly nocturnal; we'll meet them for a late lunch."
She's texting in the elevator, and yawning. Yawning as she washes her makeup off in their room, while Lukas puts the leftovers in the minifridge. Her phone is nearby, buzzing at her when she receives a response as she's brushing her teeth: yes, a late lunch will do nicely. Danicka takes off her earrings. Keeps her wedding ring on.
Truthfully, there isn't much to say or do after that. Danicka hardly undresses before she's falling into the expansive bed, hardly laying down before she's asleep. It's to Lukas to cover her up, to pull her close. It isn't just the food, or the sight-seeing, or the sex. It isn't even just the travel and the two or so hours of sleep she had on the plane. It's the week of finals she finished not 24 hours before getting on a plane. Every quarter, it's the same: she works so very hard, is so very busy, drinks so much coffee, forgets to eat regular meals, and then
it's over, and she sleeps for hours and hours. She wakes up and eats enormous meals. She lies on the couch and watches movies while scritching Kando or her mate, whoever is available and will remain still long enough to be petted.
When she goes to sleep, it's not even late evening yet. It was only just getting dark outside. But Danicka sleeps without concern for what time of day it is, or what country they're in, or what is going on around her. That is trust, too; she sleeps without thinking or checking the locks because Lukas is there. Nothing is allowed to harm her when he's there, and he would never leave her unless he had to, and even then he would not leave her unprotected in some way. So she sleeps, heavy and long, until well past sunrise.
Until well past breakfast, even. It's brought to their hotel room door at nine, the latest delivery time the hotel allowed for the breakfast menu, and whether Lukas is awake after thirteen or fourteen hours of sleep to bring it in or not, Danicka just keeps sleeping. She stirs a couple of times: once around midnight, groggy and shifting, reaching for a bottle of water on the nightstand. Getting up to use the bathroom. Comes back and crashes again, using Lukas's chest as a pillow. The room is cool, the terrace doors closed but left open a crack so that the cool air is fresh air moving over them. It makes the room smell of springtime, and it makes Danicka sleep like she's hibernating. She wakes a second time when the door is knocked on, jerking slightly in her sleep. A hand on her arm or her back is all it takes. She settles again, exhales in a sigh, and doesn't wake again until the final time.
By then the sun is high in the sky, the city of Prague is bustling beneath them in its quiet Sunday fashion, and their breakfast is still warm. She's tousled and bleary, but he knows now not to take her silence personally. Danicka is, in the end, more of an introvert than he'll ever be. She doesn't need pack and sept and tribe the way he does; family is enough, and sometimes more than. So she's quiet as she crawls out of bed, letting him hold her and touch her, nuzzle her and hug her if he likes, but she's slow to wake completely from such a long sleep.
There are hot, steaming towels kept warm in a tin on their breakfast tray. Danicka uses one to press to her face until she wakes a bit, blinking repeatedly and inhaling. They're faintly scented of peppermint oil and it tightens the skin around her eyes, perks her up. So, too, does the food, which she ordered before they even got on the plane. There is coffee and juice, thick slices of bread with tiny steel ramikins of butter, jam, and honey. Lukas, of course, has a rasher of bacon and a pile of eggs, but he also has sausages. Danicka's actually involves meat this time as well as the bread and eggs, but she also asked for copious amounts of fruits and even some raw vegetables, and as she starts to sip her coffee and wake up and open up a bit more, she tells him that growing up, her father always made them traditional food at home. Breakfast was meats and cheeses with slices of tomato and bell pepper, yeast rolls with honey, hot chocolate and sometimes savory kolache or yogurt. She never had breakfast cereals. She was bewildered by buttermilk pancakes when she had her first sleepover at a friend's house. For breakfast, Danicka points out. I thought they were a dessert!
Not eating meat as much was a change as she became an adult, as she worked for the Sokolovs, and so on. But she eats a traditional breakfast this morning as heartily as she has eaten anything, and by the time she finishes, she has even shared some of Lukas's. It makes him happy. Sometimes she eats off of his plate for that sole reason: it makes him so happy.
He looks at her with such joy.
They wash after that. After sleeping for something like fifteen hours, Danicka is craving another shower. She doesn't linger overmuch this time, though, only long enough to get clean-feeling and to loosen her muscles up with the heat of the water. When she begins to dress for going out, it takes her longer than last night. She puts on a pair of gray slacks with a faint houndstooth pattern instead of jeans, a pair of matte black heels instead of boots or sneakers, and a dark green sweater with a v-neck and long sleeves that just barely cover the heels of her hands. Danicka doesn't put on a camisole this time, putting her earrings back in and donning her peacoat once more. Her hair is down today, blown dry and lightly curled. Her bag is the same, but when they leave the hotel Lukas is carrying the gifts for Sarka's two eldest children, who are closer to his and Danicka's ages, and Sabina's mate, and
Sabina herself, his elder. And, soon enough, an Elder of the tribe. And, since the death of Sarka's husband, the closest Garou relative to Milos. And Irena, who will be his student.
Danicka puts on a bit of lip gloss as they're descending in the elevator to go meet the rest of her family at Cafe Savoy. She looks in her little pocket mirror, pursing her lips and daubing the corner of her mouth with a fingertip. Puts it away, looking at Lukas and merely smiling.
LukasLukas is fiercely protective; so much so that in a way his own heart is so exposed when it comes to her. She's his mate. He can barely conceive of anyone not adoring her the way he does. How could anyone look down upon her, be cruel to her, speak harshly to her -- any of that?
Except, of course: he's seen such things happen. His own packmates. His own self. He's done these things, which he can't quite forgive himself for, no more than he can forgive Vladislav, or not being there when Vladislav was.
So maybe that's the aching undertone to his protectiveness. He would have always adored her, kept her close, kept her warm, kept her safe. But maybe he wouldn't have been quite so vicious in his defense against any imagined threat. Maybe he wouldn't have been quite so adamant on never failing her, ever, if he hadn't failed her before.
They sleep. They sleep like mammals in winter; like the truly exhausted. She is out almost before she's undressed, almost before she's under the covers. He's the one, returning from the bathroom and clicking the lights off as he comes, who tugs her jeans off and her socks, rouses her to get up and undo her bra. He's the one that tucks her feet under the covers and then rolls them up to tuck her in. He's sleepy, too, and very tired -- but he stays up just a little bit. Reads an article from that tour book. Makes sure the doors are locked and the curtains closed, hangs their breakfast order out on the doorknob. Turns out the last light, crawls under the covers, finds his sleeping mate beneath the comforters and wraps himself around her.
Sometimes she feels so small and thin to him. He knows she's not. She's stronger now than she ever was before. Still: he wraps himself around her, because she's smaller than he is, and she'll never be as strong as he is, and it is right for him to do this.
Sleep comes. When she wakes around midnight, he's out like a light. Mumbles when she reaches for the water -- something indistinct and illogical, something like careful it's hot -- and rolls on his back. She comes back from the bathroom. She uses him as a pillow, which makes his eyes pop open briefly. Then his arm settles around her and
sometime in the morning room service knocks on the door and Lukas doesn't even bother to call through the door. He soothes his mate. She sleeps.
They still have leftovers. He's starved in the morning; his body has no idea what time it is. He eats everything, demolishes their breakfast, is pleased when she accepts some food off his plate before he inhales the rest. He eats the leftover goulash, too, which he heats up in the microwave in their suite. While Danicka showers, he checks the weather report, then calls the car rental agency to confirm that they had a vehicle waiting for them. We'll be there in about half an hour, he says.
He dresses with an eye toward what Danicka wears. A real shirt, with buttons. Slacks with a defined, pressed crease. He debates a tie; asks for Danicka's opinion. Not a coat, though, but a zipped jacket with well-tailored shoulders and an interesting off-center closure at the collar.
There's free coffee in the lobby. Lukas gets a cup as they're leaving, fitting a cap on as they step out into the brisk morning air. The car rental place is a couple blocks away, so they walk. He has pockets today. He tucks Danicka's hand into his pocket as they walk, which makes him walk the rest of the way smiling. A little later there's a lot of business about insurance and licenses and credit cards, and then they have a car. Not for the Cafe Savoy, really -- they could have hailed a cab. For the later trips, the drives out to the suburbs and the countryside. Her distant family. The family that lives where he grew up.
DanickaTheir car is not too small. It does mark them as being Americans, a bit, but Danicka wanted Lukas to have room inside, to be comfortable. She wanted space to put family members in the back if they went anywhere, just in case. Lukas drives them to the Cafe Savoy, an art deco arrangement in a corner building. The windows are all topped by half-circles, half moons in perpetual frowns. The round tables are topped with marble and the chandeliers overhead are dimly lit, despite the sunlight pouring in. Despite all this, it is reasonably casual.
Most diners have already had their midday meal and moved on, but a few are still scattered around. Walking inside, they could find Danicka's family by sheer process of elimination, but they wouldn't need to. For one thing, Sarka and Sabina are identical twins.
For another, there is an enormous berth of emptiness around the table where the five other adults wait for them. Even bearing his own, even with the day-hidden moon thinning to nothingness in the sky, they can feel the pulse of rage the moment they walk inside. Sabina does not have the rage of a Philodox just after her Firsting; Sabina's rage comes close to filling the high-ceilinged room, and it pulses like the heartbeat of a great beast. Even at her rank, it is an uncanny level of savagery to feel in such a place.
But then there is this:
She looks like Sarka, only with hair. It's kept short, but it is an image of what Sarka must have looked like before cancer, before chemo. Those wide, large hazel eyes. She looks younger than her twin, her body unravaged by an invasive disease and the equally invasive treatments. She is visibly stronger in body when she rises. Her athletic arms are bare, revealing the tattoo that covers the entirety of her inner left forearm, even wrapping around the sides a bit. It is a garish thing, all green and red, with swirls and knots that would look vaguely proto-Celtic to an untrained eye. It's a dragon, a great serpent with a viciously long tongue, ensnaring a man in its coils. The man, etched out in no more than a black outline, holds an axe.
Veles, stealing Perun's son from heaven. When she shakes Lukas's hand with her left, there's a reaction: a recognition. Their bodies, their blood, are tied to their respective totems, and those totems are forever in a cyclical war of changing seasons, death and rebirth, the making and keeping of oaths. He feels it like a dragon's bite straight to his artery. He can't tell this but by the slight constriction of her pupils, but Sarka feels it like a shock of lightning up her arm and straight into her heart.
Tadeas looks, quite startlingly, not unlike Lukas in some ways. He's tall, his shoulders broad and his eyes a piercing blue like his father's. His hair is black, darker than any of his siblings', and he has a seriousness about him that, over the course of lunch, reveals itself to simply be an almost unflappable steadiness, an ability to roll with just about anything that happens. He would need that: his younger sister Zdenka rivals Anezka for sheer goofiness. In fact, at least once Danicka looks at Lukas and meets his eyes, just knowing they must be thinking the same thing. Zdenka and Anezka would drive each other nuts. Or, even worse, they would end up merrily in jail together. Zdenka has wavy hair in a jaw-length bob that is a burnished gold. She looks the most like her mother. Their cousin Gabriel, Sabina's son, is about their age. He is not quite as tall as Tadeas, his hair not quite as golden as Zdenka's. He's more sly, his wit quick and usually a step or two ahead of the rest of them. It's obvious he has had to hold his own in debates with a Philodox at least a couple of times in his life.
Then there's Sabina's mate, Tomas. Her husband is jovial, but not in the energetic, almost manic way that Zdenka is. He is a storyteller and his stories end with rousing punchlines that reveal them to be utter fancy. And wouldn't you know, he says, leaning in as everyone waits, his voice gravely lowered, it was the dog. Right there on the stoop, holding the Bible in its mouth.
Danicka nearly cries at that one, she's laughing so hard.
'Lunch' goes on for hours in this way. They eat and they talk. They get coffees and talk more. They become Facebook friends -- the cousins and their same-age aunt Danicka, at least. Sabina herself does not talk much. She listens a great deal. Not all twins are polar opposites of one another; in this way, it is like sitting in the same room with Sarka again, only with that vibratory and severe rage. She is, like most Czechs, not overt about her affection, but her delight in her mate and her son is evident whenever she laughs at something one of them says, her tolerance, her inability to hold a frown when they talk, even if they are teasing. There is warmth there, but it is deeply buried under the stranglehold she must keep on her rage. Mostly, she talks to Danicka, when she talks at all. A couple of times she looks Lukas's way, thoughtful.
The sun is setting and they are ordering a second meal when Sabina excuses herself, rising, and says to her brother-in-law: You will join me outside for a moment? It's an offer, and a request, and -- only if necessary, and by now it is not -- a demand. Sabina brings one of the dark rye rolls they've been munching on during their talking. They stand outside in the cool air, her arms bared and heat radiating off of her even in this form. Sabina breaks the roll and hands one half of it to Lukas. They talk about things: she knows her half-brother is a wicked, twisted creature. She thanks him for Milos, and for Irena. She asks him what he means to happen to his mate, should he fall. As far as she is concerned, her father and her sister and all of those kin-children are her kin, her responsibility.
There is some formality in the breaking of bread, ritual in the verbalized passing-over of their guardianship. She is an ocean away, and even by moonbridge too far to be at their aid as fast as Lukas could be. She will take his mate back, if he dies before she does. And he, accepting a burden far greater, will take her entire family completely into his care. At least those in America. Tadeas and Zdenka don't want to move; they'd like to visit more. Sabina has an arrangement with a packmate.
They go inside some time after they finish the roll. Their food has come. Dark thoughts. That's their burden, though. The kin have their own. Danicka puts her hand on Lukas's leg when he sits back down, smiles gently at him. There's a question in the smile: is he okay? What was that about? Something like that. But she keeps her hand there and their food comes: a little wine, a lot of food. Tomas tells his stories. Zdenka and Danicka gossip about Renata and Irena. She warns them that they'd better practice their English or Emanek won't let them hear the end of it, now that his is so very fluid.
It is long into evening when they get their check, which is enormous. Danicka wants to pay. Sabina says the equivalent of the hell you will. Tadeas levelly insists that he can pay for he and Zdenka just fine; Zdenka looks sidelong at him. Gabriel says it's like the baby from the story of Solomon. And they do split it in half, right down the middle, with Danicka and Lukas on one side and Sabina and Tomas on the other.
There are embraces, long and tight, at the door. Mostly for Danicka, but Tomas insists on giving Lukas a hearty, back-thumping hug before he goes. Sabina clasps his hand again, and tells him quietly while Danicka is squeezing Zdenka: if you tire of your human skin, you are welcome to hunt with my pack while you are here. You will be welcomed as my brother.
And so he is, in a sense.
Getting back in the car, Danicka is not so much tired as she is brightly alive. She wants to see the city, the nightlife, anything. She wants to explore. With him.
LukasMeeting an almost-Elder of his Tribe should be a nervewracking experience, particularly for a Shadow Lord. Yet on the way there Lukas is curiously relaxed. He's heard of Sabina, her deeds, her nature. He's seen her reflected in her nieces and nephews, her sister, her father; or at least the environment she must have grown up in. When he meets her, he finds himself undisappointed. She's thoughtful. She's a listener, though not a follower. She controls her space the way she controls her immense rage, and Lukas -- so instinctive an alpha -- finds himself not unwilling to let it be. There are no facedowns, no subtle wars for power.
There's lunch, which extends so long into the dinner hour that eventually they order a second round of lighter dishes. There's a shared meal. There's a sense of family here, too. Like the other wolf at this table, Lukas listens more than he speaks. He follows the conversation with his eyes, smiling often, laughing quietly. When he gets full he leans back in his chair, lays his wrist over Danicka's. A few times he leans back and quietly signals the waiter for a refill on their water, or another basket of bread. When he tells them about Sarka and her younger children visiting, his eyes light up. He builds a little diagram on the tabletop with their napkins and utensils to show them the layout of the den he shares with Danicka. He doesn't mention that they're trying to have kids now, but --
they'd have to be fools not to guess. And they're not fools.
Lukas thinks he can see Danicka's father echoed in all of his descendants: his quiet strength, which bends but never quite yields. He wishes for a moment, achingly, that they were able to bring Miloslav with them. So he can see what he's sown. So he can see: not all his children are like Vladik.
It must be painful to be father to something like that, Lukas thinks. And a momentary chill grips him: I can't let my children grow up like that.
Sometime in the middle, he steps out with Sabina. There could be tension here, but there isn't. They break bread. They speak of very sad things, but they speak of them levelly, and calmly, and with a certain level of acceptance. They are Shadow Lords, after all. An agreement is reached, which was perhaps already assumed on both sides. And when they go in, Lukas feels a little lighter somehow.
He takes his seat beside Danicka gain. And when she looks at him, smiling that gentle, questioning smile, he takes her hand and kisses it. Everything's fine, he says. Everything's wonderful.
Hours later, it's dark outside, and it's time to say goodbye. Danicka and Lukas brought gifts, which had been given before the food arrived. Nothing embarrassingly huge. Just remembrances, tokens; throwbacks to an older time, perhaps, when meetings between distant relatives were so few and far between, and when life was so short and dangerous, that whatever mementos were traded might be the only thing one has of one's family for the rest of one's life. They're all holding little paper gift-bags now, which thump against coats and jackets as they hug.
Same to you, Lukas says to Sabina as they share a semiprivate farewell, if you find yourself passing through Chicago.
Then the welcome is extended to them all. Come visit, Lukas urges them. It's a great city; he'll show them around. Another round of goodbyes, another round of hugs -- quicker this time, as though they were stealing each and every one -- and then waving, farewells, a dissipation to their cars.
They're not tired. It's still early. Or perhaps late. He doesn't know what time it is -- not by the Prague clocks, not by his own body time. His mate wants to explore, though, and so does he, and so
they find themselves driving the streets, following maps on their cellphones to the younger, livelier part of town. It's Sunday, but there's still nightlife. This is Europe, after all. They park their rental in a lot, which is quite cheap at night. They get out and walk, and the sound of music, voices, draws them to a street lined by bars and clubs and coffeehouses, record shops.
A lot of students here. A lot of foreigners, young tourists backpacking across the continent. They get drinks. Danicka strikes up a conversation with the trio next to them at the bar: two exchange students from England and their local friend. The local friend asks Danicka to dance, and Lukas doesn't mind; the English lads ask him what college was like in the States, so he makes up something reasonably entertaining. Later on his mate comes back. Danicka's hand slips into his. They drift apart from their temporary friends,
drift out of that bar into the proper club next door, multi-leveled, the bass bonecrushing, hours flitting quickly past. They dance until they're sweaty, until they're kissing amidst the lasers and the strobes, the jets of cold white vapor blasting down from the ceiling. It's too hot on the dance floor, and Lukas doesn't know where he left his jacket, and Danicka pulls him upstairs and up and up and they find a secret door to a tiny rooftop terrace, where they can look over the low, lovely buildings of Prague. The river is a gleaming, glittering snake in the night. The ground beneath their feet vibrates with distance basslines. Some guy with blond dreadlocks is up here smoking a joint, and he's too stoned out to care that Lukas feels like a beast, feels like a monster. He shares, obligingly. Lukas coughs on his first hit, passes it to Danicka, leans over and hacks up a lung while the dreadlocked guy laughs.
They go back down. They're at the bar again, they're slamming down vodka, they're on the dance floor and there's been a changing of the guard; the new DJ is spinning something heavy and hard, and Danicka has her back to Lukas, and the way she moves has him putting her against a wall in a matter of minutes, has him kissing her neck and tugging at her clothes until she catches his hands and whispers
(and maybe she's shouting)
not here, so:
they stumble out of the club laughing. It's getting near dawn. They're a little too drunk to drive safely so they leave the car where it is. Cabs trawl this street, waiting for customers just like them. They pile into one, tell the cabbie where they're going, spend the rest of the drive trying not to be too shameless. There's lipstick on Lukas's collar, literally, when they get back to the hotel. He still hasn't found his coat. He doesn't care. They laugh all the way to the elevator, kiss breathlessly and furiously in that small motile box; shush each other all the way to their room, slam the door.
He slams her against the door. She reels him in by the tie. He strips out of his shirt but he leaves his tie on; he rather likes it when she grabs him by it. Kinky, he laughs, whispering, which is a joke because this,
this is not kinky for them. She drops his pants. He drops hers. She starts to undo her shirt, but he tells her to leave it on, he tells her to pull it aside when she gets to her panties. He has his hands under her thighs. The door is rattling in its frame. He hides his moans under her tongue. Her heels are low-key, are rather demure, but they still press against the small of his back; leave welts down his flank when sweat and the sheer vigor of their fuck makes her legs slip. He grabs her, he slides her up higher, he hammers her relentlessly against the door.
We should sleep, he whispers, much later. They're a tangled heap on the ground: half-sprawled, half-sitting, half-kneeling. The eastern sky is growing brighter. He kisses her neck. We're driving tomorrow.
Lukas[note to self: edit post later!]
DanickaClubbing. She means clubbing, though of course she would have been perfectly happy just walking the streets for a while. Instead they stay out almost all night. She makes him drive back to the hotel briefly, changes out of her sweater and into something lighter -- quick enough that he only has to get out of the car if he absolutely can't bear to let her out of his sight for five minutes -- before running back down.
They get drinks. And then Danicka is dancing, Lukas talking to people who are just grateful to find others that speak English. When she comes back to him she's only a little fuzzy, looping her arms around his neck and kissing his temple, telling him he's awful, he didn't dance with her at all, you're the worst husband I've ever had, even as she lays her head on his shoulder. His hand covers hers. He'll dance with her. They go next door. They do something similar to dancing, something certainly cardio.
Up on the roof a while later, Danicka uses Lukas as her jacket, curled into his arms. He chokes on the smoke; Danicka watches him fondly, and when he recovers, exhales soft smoke rings into the night sky. The dreadlocked guy is happy, he laughs and he smiles without rancor or even mockery. The smoke rings and the coughing are good. It's all good. He talks about their love, about the problem with Czech people not showing their love, and he asks them to come home with him and everyone will be love and Danicka laughs: Znamena to, ze nekdy fungovat? He grins and shakes his head: Ty by se divit.
They go back, they drink, they grind against each other until she can feel him hard against her, gripping her hips, heedless of the people around them, his mouth open by her ear, teeth about to graze her flesh. He wants her against the wall. He wants her breasts bared, her pants down, cunt on his cock --
not here, baby she whispers to him, and then NOT HERE, BABY because he can't hear her even as close as they are. She is laughing the second time instead of gasping. He laughs, too, brought back to where they are, what is happening, that there is a whole world outside of the two of them. So: they stumble out laughing together, Danicka shivering as they climb into a cab, batting at his hands while he tries to make love to her right in the back seat. Well: off and on. They settle down intermittently before reaching for each other again. At least a few of those times it's Danicka stirring shit up once more, running her hands up his sides and climbing onto his lap while the drivers swears under his breath.
Lukas does end up carrying her tonight. Out of the cab and into the lobby, where she doesn't even pretend to walk to the elevator. The lobby is abandoned, anyway, at this hour. Only the footman sees the two of them enter, Danicka wrapped around Lukas, blinding him with her kisses, her ankles crossed behind his back. No one cares. He has her against the wall of the elevator, feeling her through her blouse. She asks him if he remembers that night in her car on the way back from Kate's, going up to her place, shielding him from the cameras while she jerked him off until he was quite losing his mind, couldn't wait, couldn't even get her dress all the way off, nearly tore it in shreds from her shoulders.
He remembers.
The first thing Danicka tries to undo is his tie; he stops her. She pulls open his shirt instead, runs her hands over him without taking it off completely; he can do that if he likes. They get the bare minimum of clothing off. Truthfully, Danicka isn't trying that hard to take it any further. She has forgotten her panties, forgotten her bra, rakes her nails harshly across one of his shoulderblades in flat-out demand as she snarls at him to fuck her. She doesn't even mask the curse in Czech. The word is a threat, a growl, when she says it. And he does.
Her heels fall off. Halfway through she pulls her shirt off anyway, sweating, trying to dissipate some of the heat building in her. She grabs his shoulder, holds onto the doorjamb, holds her head back when she comes, every cry catching in her throat.
Much later, he says they should sleep. Danicka mutters against his kiss to her neck, her head on his shoulder like before, her arms draped over his body, her eyes closed. She doesn't even tease him, doesn't even play. She could say she's already sleeping. She says, instead: But I need to drink twenty ounces of water and eat a banana.
Maybe he gets that for her. There is fruit in the room, after all, and plenty of water. Danicka ends up eating the banana while she sits in a bath, still drunk and worn out but drifting happily from one moment to the next. She doesn't want to go to bed sweaty or without brushing her teeth, she insists. She shows him, leaning over the edge of the tub, a picture on her phone of him laughing with the dreadlocked guy on the roof. Lukas takes her phone away before she drops it in the water. She grins at him, her lips closed and her cheek full of banana.
He takes her to bed with her hair still wet; no matter. She is safer from a hangover than she was before. She is sleepy as dawn comes, curling up into his side and hiding her face against his chest. Sleepy, and then: sleeping.
Danicka[Translations: Danicka asks him if that ever works, he responds that she'd be amazed.]
LukasDanicka always submitted so prettily when they met. Lukas always thought it was a lie. He couldn't say why; had no proof, didn't even have a whiff of a hint of proof. Doubted that lovely softness, though. Circled it, gnawed at it, wondered where the catch was, the hidden release that would reveal --
well. This. The woman that snarls, that demands, that tells him to fuck her like a threat. He's not the only alpha wolf here. She is, after all, his mate. Like calls to like.
Later on she eats a banana. He eats an orange. She takes a bath and he waits for her to soak, brushing his teeth; afterward he jumps into the shower with her and gets clean. They go to bed a little damp, but smelling of the hotel shampoo or whatever Danicka might have brought from home.
She sleeps the way she did last night: deeply, thoroughly, abidingly.
Morning comes; it passes them by. It's noon when they wake, and then they're in a great hurry. Or Lukas is, until Danicka tells him it's all right, they're not expected to be anywhere by any time. They forgot to fill out a room service breakfast order last night, so they finish off the very last of their lunch the day before. It's a warmer day than it was yesterday, the rain gone, the road bright. The car is large for just the two of them, which affords them room to stretch out.
It's lovely country that they drive through: green, hilly, dotted with copses of trees and, occasionally, small, old forests. The city becomes the suburbs; the suburbs become farmland. They stop an hour out of Prague at a small roadside restaurant, where they get a couple orders of meat'n'veggie skewers to go -- a portable lunch. A little after that they stop at a railway crossing to watch an enormous train going by, bound for Russia or the Balkans or the Baltic States.
It's early afternoon when they reach the vineyards Danicka's father used to own. Their highway has become narrow and winding, and their turnoff is smaller still: a single paved road so narrow that opposing traffic would have to yield. There isn't much in the way of traffic, though. There's a sign, perhaps marked with the name of whatever label these vineyards claim. A gate. A couple mailboxes. And, of course, acres of those low, green vines that would, by the end of summer, bear fruit.
Mountains shadow the distance. Parking the car to walk the last few hundred feet, Lukas thinks again of the dichotomy, Veles and Perun, the endless cycle of seasons, earth, sky.
