by White, Jade
“Oh! Do tell,” Kristen said.
Rodney flinched and made an effort to wrinkle his brow. “Well, let’s see… I think the other day I was quiet for some time and Mark, that’s my partner on the ambulance, he leaned over and asked me what I was thinking. And I told him I was trying to imagine what it would be like if the entire moon was covered in ice.”
Kristen hesitated. “The moon covered in ice…”
“Bear with me!” Rodney laughed, holding up a hand. “If you think about it, the full moon is quite bright, and that’s just the sun reflecting off of moon dust and rock. Can you imagine if the whole moon was covered in ice? It would be like having a second sun!”
For the first time, Kristen actually tilted her head back and laughed. It was just as much a surprise to her as it was to Rodney who was temporarily taken aback, and then joined her, even as some of the patrons in the café cast nervous glances at them. Kristen’s laughter finally subsided and she wiped at a tear.
“Oh, dear.”
“Well, now you have an idea of how my mind works,” Rodney warned, looking around embarrassed. He was a reserved sort of person, and Kristen’s blatant laughter had shattered the sort of bubble he was used to putting himself in. “Anyway, what do you say we go for a walk?”
Kristen nodded and finished off her cup.
Above the main street was a small lookout attached to a park. Rodney insisted on taking her up to show her. They entered into a dark cool grove of poplars and oaks, and a small wind rustled them, issuing an applause of leaves above. Arcs of light broke through the grey clouds and illuminated small patches of earth here and there in the forest.
Kristen unfastened the elastic and let her dark hair fall down again. It brushed against her shoulders and cascaded down her back; she caught Rodney looking at her out of the corner of her eye. In all, Kristen had never considered herself particularly beautiful, in her eyes, she was as normal as anyone else. But anyone who’d glimpsed her was immediately transfixed by her unique beauty. Today, Rodney was beginning to understand.
He watched the woman trundle up the steep path ahead of them, her boots clicking on the stones, and her unzipped leather jacket lifting with the effort of climbing. She kept looking back behind her to make sure he was following, and each time she did, he reveled in the energetic glint of womanhood he saw displayed. Kristen’s round face seemed to highlight her full cheeks, and her small petite nose nestled perfectly between. Each time she smiled, her full set of white teeth shined, and the small divot in her upper lip caught the shadows.
Kristen was so engaged with the hike that she seemed unaware of the fact she was wearing only a skirt, and each time she lifted herself onto a rock or took a high step, the soft fabric would sway to one side, revealing the pure white flesh of her thighs. Struggling below her, Rodney looked up at one moment as she was braced between two rocks and caught the blue wink of her panties, and quickly ducked his gaze.
“You’re a mountain goat,” Rodney wheezed.
“I thought you paramedic types were supposed to be fit?” she hollered back, oblivious to the fact she had nearly flashed him.
“Fit, but not goats!” Rodney barked up at her.
Kristen laughed and reached down, offering a hand. Rodney smiled and took it, and was surprised at her grip. The feel of her skin against his was like an electric connection, and for half a second they both froze and merely stared at each other. It was like one bottomless void staring into another bottomless void, without end. Or like those optical illusions with mirrors, where you see yourself stretching out forever, Kristen thought. But it was only a second, and they both quickly composed themselves as she helped him up the last big cleft of rock, and they both stood standing with their hands on their knees, catching their breath.
“My god,” Kristen finally said, looking up.
The lookout was aptly named. Below them, the entire lilting expanse of Nelson filled out below them. The city had been built on a small angle, which had prevented it from becoming a sprawl; it was perfectly self contained, nestled in a small pocket of land between two peaks, and arching down toward the blue mantle of the lake. But what caused her to gasp was how colorful it was. Walking around downtown and through small side streets, she had been able to appreciate the growing colors of autumn, which formed a red and yellow and orange canopy above her. But seen from above, it was an entirely different scene. It was as if all the trees in the city had suddenly exploded into a fireworks display, and then unanimously decided to hold the tableau.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Rodney asked softly, craning his head over the ledge.
“It’s spectacular.”
“I’ve lived my whole life here and it still never gets old.”
“You’ve never had a desire to move somewhere else?”
Rodney answered carefully, and grinned. “Well, sure. And, I have. I’ve lived in Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, hell, I even did a year down in San Francisco. I’ve been and lived plenty of places but… but this is home, y’know? Doesn’t matter where I go, I know I’ll always end up back here.”
“That must be comforting,” she said.
A silence fell between them. Kristen knew that they were both thinking the same thing – the weight of her real reason for coming here, for them even meeting, was starting to press down, and the longer either of them avoided the topic, the harder it would be to bring up later. Kristen took a deep breath and decided to break it.
“I guess we should talk,” she began.
Rodney merely nodded, and sat down on the stone bench behind them. “I suppose we should. I got all the information from the Enclave. To be honest, I was a bit surprised but the woman who works there, the Matron… she told me how important this was to you.”
“It is,” Kristen said, her eyes widening, “I don’t know. It’s important you know, this isn’t just some fancy, or some whim. I’ve wanted a child for… forever.”
He nodded. “Then I should tell you why I accepted, I guess. The truth is, my sister was very much like you, at least in that regard. All she could talk about was having a child. I was happy for her even though I knew it would be very hard for her to find another Tiger to mate with. But, somehow, luck was on her side, and she did. I was very happy for her.”
“Something happened?”
Rodney nodded silently, and his eyes floated into the distance and stayed there. “They tried for almost a year, without success. And then she finally went to a doctor – a specialist Shifter, who lives here in Nelson, actually – and he told her that she was infertile.” He shrugged helplessly, as if it would complement his story, but Kristen saw the pained look in his face. “Alas, even Shifters with our incredible regenerative powers are not completely immortal… or without our flaws and illnesses.”
“What happened to her?” Kristen asked quickly, and regretted it.
But Rodney merely shook his head. “Because she could not have children of her own, she decided to become a mother to as many as she could, who had no family. She runs an orphanage right now, overseas. But I digress. The point is… I understand how much this means to you.”
Kristen almost wanted to cry. When she had started this whole personal journey, there had been only one aim in mind, and she had dogged it tirelessly. Now she was starting to see the error of her ways and how callously selfish she had been. Reluctantly, she had to admit to herself that she had only really seen Rodney as a donor – a means to an end, an object.
But the more she talked to him now, the more she felt ashamed for having been so linear in her thinking. Rodney didn’t just understand why she was doing this; he was able to sympathize with her desperation, if only because he had witnessed the same sort of thing before. She turned away quickly with a quick inhalation, but the icy wind that wheeled up the cliffs stung her eyes and she felt tears coming down her cheeks.
“Hey.” She felt a heavy hand settle on her shoulders, and slowly turned to see his face scanning hers, and was stunned by their int
ensity. “Are you okay?”
She nodded twice in quick succession, and wiped at her face again. “Fine, I’m fine,” she managed in a soft voice. “Gah, sorry. Really though, thank you for taking me here. It is beautiful, I feel honored that you showed it to me.”
“Well, maybe we can come up here again. It’s actually even better during a storm,” he joked, trying to lighten the mood and she fondly placed her own hand over his.
Another silence spread over them, but this time it wasn’t awkward or unsettling. It was like a blanket, something warm they could wrap around themselves and be content to simply experience. Below them the slow revolving of the city seemed to unravel in a complacent narrative of different lives.
Kristen was about to ask him something when there was a loud crackling sound, and Rodney flinched, scrambling to pull a small black device out of his pocket. He held it to his ear, and she realized it was a kind of pager. He’s a paramedic, of course, she thought stupidly.
“Hello, yeah? Yeah, I’m here… alright, will do. I’ll be there in ten minutes. Yeah sure, bye,” he said succinctly, and pushed the pager back in his pocket and sighed.
“Duty calls?”
“Sometimes my job has perks, sometimes it doesn’t.” He grinned. “Want to walk down to the car with me? I’ve gotta take a call out on the north shore.”
“Nothing serious?”
He tilted his head left to right and frowned. “No casualties, if that’s what you mean. But it sounds like there was a bit of an incident at one of the local farms. Some cattle and a few goats were killed, but the farmer is confused, says he doesn’t know what could have caused it.”
Kristen shivered. No doubt in his career, Rodney had seen plenty of things, both awful and gruesome, and she wondered how it was possible to simply blank it out and act normal when you were exposed to so much suffering and death. “That’s horrible, but… not really a job for a paramedic is it?”
“Ah, you just want to spend more time with me, is that it?” he joked, and saw her blush and laughed again in spite of himself. “In all honesty, no… not really our specialty. But the coroner is two cities over, and they can’t get ahold of the main doctor, not that he’d be interested in such things. But the police want a ‘medical opinion’, so Mark and I are the next best option, I suppose.”
They had already descended from the lookout and Rodney regained his breath again, helping her jump over a rock.
“Sounds interesting, anyway,” she commented.
“Well, I hate to cut our first date short… but let me make it up to you?” he asked, and flashed her a boyish smile. His plaid shirt had come undone again, and he was sweating through the white shirt. The animal musk of him found its way to her nostrils, and she drank him in.
“You’d better,” she said.
Without warning he pulled her closer by the hand and before she could register what was happening his face was right next to hers, and she felt the warm touch of his lips press against hers. Reflexively she closed her eyes, and let him kiss her. It wasn’t an erotic kiss by any means, but it was long and sensuous, and time seemed to slow to a standstill as she maneuvered her own lips against his.
Dreamily, she opened her eyes, her lips still puckered, and saw him staring at her with an uncertain look on his face. “Was that okay?” he asked.
Kristen nodded, but couldn’t help smiling uncontrollably and tried to hide it with one hand. I’ve never been so shy before, why am I acting like a school girl now? she cursed herself. But the tension in Rodney’s face dispersed, and a new light came into it. He winked and turned toward his car.
“In that case, I recommend you explore Nelson a bit and then you can decide on the locale for our next date? Sound good?!”
Again, Kristen could only nod dumbly as he got in his truck and took off. She watched him until he turned the corner, and let out a breath without realizing she had been holding it. She flattened her skirt again, and sighed. Alright Gloria, she surmised, I’ll let you gloat about this one.
CHAPTER TWO
Thankfully, Gloria kept her self-assuredness to herself over the next week. If she suspected that Kristen was taken with Rodney, she gave no indication; instead, the chubby girl made herself at home in the small loft, turning it into a private sanctum. It was another reason that Kristen was so endeared to her; Gloria was in many ways the polar opposite. She was rambunctious, confident, outgoing. In fact, it was Gloria who suggested the next place for Kristen and Rodney’s date, as she had already managed to seek out the best places in town.
Kristen found herself adapting to the new small-town life without actually trying, and by the end of the second week it was as if she had been living in Nelson for years. As promised, Rodney had managed to introduce her to one of the editors for the local newspaper, a small skinny man in his sixties who walked with a terminable hunch and always rubbed his chin before he spoke. He’d been impressed with her resume, and had hired her on a part time basis.
It wasn’t glamorous, not like the sorts of leading events she’d been covering in Seattle, but for once she was glad. It wasn’t stressful, and it gave her plenty of time to explore the city and meet its locals. The sufficiency of the mundane, her editor had called it, and she had had to agree.
On top of that, her relationship with Rodney had progressed without her realizing it, and she unashamedly told Gloria one evening.
“I think it’s difficult,” the brunette said, chopping cucumbers in the kitchen and adding them to a strainer with carrots and leeks and other vegetables. It was Gloria’s turn to make dinner, and somehow she always excelled at it. “In the wild, we would be unaccustomed to the emotions of mating… but we’re not totally animals, are we? We’re part human,” she said over her shoulder.
“I know,” Kristen said. She had confessed as much about her fears in the past few days. Her and Rodney hadn’t slept together yet, and she suspected it had as much to do with both of their nervous natures as it did with her own subconscious reasons for stalling.
“You never expected this, did you?” Gloria asked wistfully.
“Expected what?” Kristen replied, innocently enough.
Gloria wrinkled her pug-nose and didn’t respond. “You are such a ditz, sometimes,” she mused to herself. “Sometimes you’re the smartest person I know, but when it comes to matters of the heart, you’re as clueless as this cucumber.”
“What does this have to do with the heart?” Kristen asked brashly, and it came out harsher than she had intended. She’s seen through me, she thought. What other reason could there have been for her stalling having intercourse with Rodney. She blushed, thinking about it. “Rodney is a really nice guy… I just want to take it slow. To get to know each other – you don’t think it’s important to get to know the father of my child-to-be?”
“I think it is,” Gloria licked a spoon, but her voice was bored, “but it’s not like you’re marrying him. This is a sanctioned coupling. Maybe that sounds informal and cold, but there it is.”
It did sound informal. Like there was no joy attached to the actual process. Kristen had always had a complicated relationship with sex. Sure, she’d had a few boyfriends here and there, but nothing that had ever really equated with a strong lasting relationship. She preferred the company of her female companions more. And, quite frankly, most of the males that had been available to her had been selfish, shallow, pig-headed brutes anyway.
But not Rodney, she thought. He deserved more respect than that – that’s why she’d been taking it slow, she wanted to convince herself. “You’re right,” she finally conceded, and Gloria turned with a surprised look. It wasn’t often that Kristen submitted to Gloria’s perspective so easily, even if deep down she knew it to be true. “You’re right, in that this is a coupling, a sanctioned Enclave event. And there is a formality to it. But I think Rodney has every right to get to know me. But it’s more than that… you were right when I said I was scared. I still am. I think I’ll always be a little sca
red, and maybe that’s a good thing, it keeps you alert, awake.”
Gloria looked like she had something else to say, but dropped it. She shook the vegetables in the strainer and rubbed her eyes. “In that case, when can I expect to be an aunt… if ever?” she joked.
***
Gloria’s off-color humor followed Kristen, even when she left that night on one of her rendezvous to meet Rodney. The two had become more or less boyfriend and girlfriend, even though she had done her best to try and keep the relationship as professional as possible. But when she’d realized how impossible it was to keep something as intimate as conceiving a child as professional, she had begrudgingly let him hold her hand, or put an arm around her waist, and even kiss her occasionally in public.
Tonight, her stomach was a knot, though. She realized that Gloria’s comment had brought full circle the fact that she was here for a reason. She had let herself be consumed and seduced by the idea of having a proper and normal relationship, but she was a Shifter. How could she ever expect to live a normal life? Absently, she wondered if her desire to have a child wasn’t tied to that dream of normalcy, of reclaiming some sort of domestic simplicity in her life that eluded most others in her Tribe.
Rodney seemed to sense her discomfort when they met at the Outer Clove, a small nook of a restaurant off the main street that had angular walls and colorful paintings by locals pinned to them. A soft vibrato music, Spanish fado, issued through speakers, more like an afterthought than anything perceivable. The lights were low, and the candles on the table between them flickered.
He reached out and touched her hand. He had let the bristles on his cheeks fill in again, and his hair crept across his face like the narrow sharpened claws of some black beast. His eyes were stern, and it frightened Kristen to stare into them directly.
