The Drive Home

13: plunge

Muphrid hasn't really touched me all day. I don't blame him.

I hadn't really noticed just how much he'd been touching me until he stopped. All of those small touches... those skids and brushes of skin... those glitters of electricity. I miss them. I miss us.

And I detest myself.

We didn't utter anything else between us last night. Not a single word. He held me, I cried, and when my tears had dried down to salty tracks on my cheeks I wiped the sand from my clothes and the side of my mouth and went and curled into the ute, and left Muphrid crouching next to the grave of the fire.

The sun rose and since, we've been driving. Nothing happened at lunch. We ate, we cleaned up, we moved on. He said a couple words, tight smiles and forced jokes, and I made him chuckle once or twice - this terrible, dry, fake chuckle - and his face didn't split open like it usually does. Everything we do feels cautious. My fault, it is. I've made him build a wall behind his own face. Or, maybe it's me with the walls behind their face.

The road swirls closer and closer to the ranges, until we slip through a nook and out to the inverse side of them. They're real high, in this section. I can hardly see the tops through the car window unless I stick my head out. They're bright orange, too. Magnificent. The silence is deafening on the two-way, where Muphrid would usually be telling me all about them: their history, their names, their stories. I miss his banter. My head swims in the white noise. I try to let that orange glow melt into me the best I can, but it doesn't penetrate the same. Just bounces off and makes my head sore.

We pull up to the next place on his agenda. A clearing right on the edge of a beautiful big waterhole, in another nook of the ranges. Blue-green water too, clear as. I stand with my feet in the water as Muphrid sets up his shit. Little fish nibble my toes. It's cold as fuck but I want the wash, I want last night's fire away from my skin. I want everything away from my skin.

Muphrid comes up beside me and wordlessly we wade in together. The fish dart away and the reflection of the water ripples upon the rocks.

It's a big-ass proper gorge, this one. The still water snakes around the cliffside and continues a way down. We swim through, and with every stroke I feel cleaner, better. Like it's washing everything off, not just the ash. My lungs feel cleaner too. It's so cold that my chest buzzes with adrenaline and my laugh comes easier when Muphrid squeals at something that touches his leg. We swim through a chasm in the gorge with walls so steep they overhang and peer over us. Then it opens out, with one side forming a bit of a beach filled with fruiting pandanus and kabunge weed. We find a rock on the shore to sit on, and we pant. Archer fish scour the surface around us.

"Give me one of your rings."

"Hm?" He hums.

I tip my head at the fish, and Muphrid doesn't ask any further questions. He's still stiff, guarded, but he twists one of the rings from his fingers and places it in my palm. I dangle the ring above the circling fish, tempting them to squirt. None do.

"Usually they uh, they flick water up at shiny things," I mumble as I drop the ring back into his hold.

"Ah."

I leave him to sunbake as I swim over back to the cliff face side of the gorge. I climb up the cliff a bit. The river looks like it goes on endlessly, and the walls open up wide with all manners of trees climbing down it as it gets less steep. I don't reckon we'll explore any further, not with how puffed we are. Maybe we'll go out again tomorrow.

I find a nice foothold on the cliff, survey the below for a little bit, then pin drop off the side. There's a couple of milliseconds where my stomach floats inside me, and then that icy water slaps me and I'm submerged and water roars past my ears as I sink. I swim to the surface and bubbles froth around me and I've got this big grin on my face and water laps through my teeth as I swim back to the cliff. I'm going again, higher this time, and when Muphrid sees me climb past my last point his smile falls and he scolds me from across the river but I don't listen. I go a step higher every time, and each time my head is filled with air and foaming water, it's like my head is carbonated, it's addicting, I can't stop. I get to a height so high that when I hit the water the balls of my feet start to sting, my stomach nearly has enough time to lurch from my throat, but I keep going higher, higher, just a step at a time, and the path I take gets wetter and wetter and I nearly slip a dozen times, and Muphrid kinda looks mad and he doesn't even watch me now, doesn't watch me climb, doesn't watch me fall, but every time my head breaks the surface I catch his eyes flicking away.

I dunno how many times I do it. Enough times that Muphrid mutters in a tired tone "Don't, Pavo." But I keep going. He begs for me to stop, threatens to swim away and leave, but he doesn't. The water stops feeling cold when I land, I'm not even thinking about it anymore. I just keep climbing, keep falling, wondering how high I can go.

"Pavo, please stop it. You're being stupid." He calls across the water. He looks cold and miserable out there on the beach. I promise that I'm just gonna do one more, and I reach where I jumped from last and I keep going, skip a couple metres, and my heart gets all fluttery every time I glance down. Muphrid's looking at me this time, but I can't make out his features. I don't care that he's scared. Maybe I like it. I want to torture him like he's tortured me all day. I gingerly continue, till I can't see the fish, can't make out the rocks waiting beneath the water's surface.

It's really fucking high up here. Higher than I've ever jumped, I reckon. It's high enough that I get stuck looking down, get dizzy and all caught up in what can go wrong. Feels like a finger into my shoulder will send me plummeting to my death. So I stop thinking. I turn around, my back to the water.

I just jump.

I keep my eyes open as I fall, watch rocks skate past me and I even have time to think that fuck, I might've done it this time, I think I've gone too high, I could actually die, my gut is going to choke me, and my shadow gets biggers and bigger until I collide with it and it's like the biggest whiplash I've ever got as that water roars in by eardrums, like a big explosion. Everything stings and I'm filled with a different flavour of adrenaline this time, one that's in disbelief that I'm even alive.

I simmer under the water for a bit, toes pointed and sinking, sinking through that fizz of air bubbles I've created, until the white wash clears and all I can see is an endless cloudy blue. I hope Muphrid is scared. I hope he's mad. My feet touch the ground, this slimy slate of rock, and I'm so deep that the water pressure is cutting into my brain, the backs of my eyes, and I wait until the air in my lungs feels stale before I push off and glide upwards.

I'm further down than I thought and I wanna breathe in so bad, and I'm starting to think that I might actually die here, too, - would I mind that? But then I break the surface and take in those gulps, swipe the water from my eyes and the first thing I see is Muphrid waist deep in the water with his jaw clenched, eyes glistening with rage. He looks like he wants to swear at me but he doesn't say a word.

We swim back. My left ankle hurts, and I swim with it straightened out. It makes me lag behind. When Muphrid reaches the shore he turns back to sight me, and then he walks out of view, back to camp.

I feel rotten.