Into the Green by Rachel Bo

Author:Rachel Bo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ellora's Cave Publishing Inc.
Published: 2013-12-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Three

A light touch tickled her brow, and Tawny grunted, swatting the offending insect away. The tickle came again, and she forced her eyes open. Forrest squatted beside her, a palm frond in his hand. He teased the tip of her nose with its feathery edge and grinned. She shook her head as she brushed the frond aside. “So even men millions of years old are just boys at heart. That’s reassuring, in a way.”

Forrest settled the branch on the mossy carpet. “Billions.” He met her gaze, the look in his azure eyes as unfathomable as the deep blue sea.

“Okay. That’s…that’s not.” She’d been joking, but he wasn’t, and the fact that this wasn’t a game or a delusion hit her with such force she couldn’t breathe. She stared at the perfectly proportioned, seemingly young man before her and experienced disorientation so severe his head began to spin around her. Tawny closed her eyes, taking desperate, gasping breaths and fighting nausea. When she opened them again, the world remained blessedly still, though the sense of unreality remained. She was talking to a living myth, possibly the archetype of countless deities revered over the ages. He appeared so human, and yet so alien. Young and vital, and yet in his eyes she glimpsed the weight of ages, and a profound fatigue.

She reached out and stroked the birch-patterned skin of one arm. Soft as hers, yet stretched taut over firm, bulging muscles. Were they really muscles, or were they ancient limbs, scarred bark hidden away under a thin veneer of false humanity? And if they were, did it matter? Could she really love a man—a creature—like Forrest?

He caught her hand in his. The trees surrounding them rustled, soft echoes of her name carried in their whispers. He would let her go, she realized. If she chose to leave now, he would allow it, though it endangered everything that existed. Deep down inside, they were very much alike, yearning for love and life, experiencing hope, fear, vulnerability. She had reached out to him so many times over the years for comfort, for knowledge, for support. She tried to imagine living without his gentle humor, his calm concern, his constant presence, and couldn’t. She pulled him to her.

His lips, pale green and soft as moss, grazed hers lightly. “Come with me. Come see your home.” She allowed him to raise her to her feet and followed him into the forest.

He held her hand, and she felt him seeping into her. As they glided between the stout trunks of a thick stand of Patauá palms, she sensed the life surging around her. She stepped in a puddle, and had a sudden vision of a manatee, ponderous and slow, moving like a nymph in dark waters. Her hand brushed a trunk as they passed, and her perspective shifted again. Abruptly, she towered above the forest floor. Her graceful, feathery leaves spread out, fingering the wind. She tugged Forrest to a halt and grasped the nearest trunk, closing her eyes.

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