Smooching

They lounged that way a while, breathing and grasping, and when they kissed one more time, Naomi ran her tongue against those sharp canines to prove it was as strange as it all felt. And it was.
Not slaked, but tired from their day and perhaps too afraid of what it all meant, they both went still and listened to the chirping of frogs and indistinct chatter from the campsite. Naomi savored the pads of her friend’s fingertips stroking her face.
When Ryn yawned, it displayed her pointed canines like a cat’s, but the contentedness of the yawn dissipated and the deva was aghast. “What did I just do?”
“That’s a yawn.” And it’s adorable.
“It felt like my spirit stretching out of my throat.”
“You’ve never yawned before?”
She shook her head.
Naomi grinned. “Looks like when we, um… ‘share breath,’ it does more than crank my senses to eleven. Maybe it’s a two-way street. Is my sleepiness rubbing off on you?”
She stifled the next yawn. “It feels like the new moon. Strange.” Her face nuzzled into Naomi’s shoulder, voice muffled: “It feels right, though.”
Stroking her hair, she had to admit it did. “You don’t sleep?”
“Not like you. Not with dreams. What if I dream?”
“I’ll be nearby.” She relaxed into her pillow, appreciating Ryn’s warmth and the fact she didn’t push for words to define what they shared. Were they still friends? More? Naomi had no clue, but there was a rightness to this moment.
For a stretch, they were silent and she drifted, asking a question that floated through her foggy mind. “What’s your coolest superpower?”
Ryn murmured something that tickled her ear with breath. It sounded like, “…out here, away from concrete… the weather obeys my heart…”
“Clear skies from now on, you think?”
“Probably not.”
Folded into each other, they drifted off, and in their dreams Naomi sprinted through a strange vertical forest of sharp stone and birdsong. It smelled of clean rock, wind, and wet roots. Ryn sprinted beside her. In the wilds of their dreamscape, though, the monster’s unearthly eyes were at home.


Chapter 21, Page 329-330