Robbin

34. Skin Changing

Terra led the way like an adventurer, and felt proud. She grasped her necklace feeling as though she was wandering perpetually closer to the answers she was looking for. Or maybe she was leading them all to their doom. Either one.

Jake woke her in the middle of his watch that night, after Robbin had retired to bed.

"I'm sorry to wake you, are you mad?"

"No," she yawned.

He asked her how she felt not being home in a while. She told him she didn't feel any different and he said, "I have something to show you."

She followed tiredly as he led her to the base of a particularly large tree among the others, not far from their camp. Terra inspected it, finally suspecting what Jake intended.

"You don't think I'm going to climb this thing, do—"

But it was too late; he had already lifted her onto the first branch so fast, she barely knew what was happening. He came up beside her with ease, wearing an uncanny smile. "You didn't think you could get out of it that easy, did you?" He lifted her by her knees once more, just high enough for her to grapple onto another branch reluctantly.

Before she knew it, they were much higher than she felt comfortable with. "Can we stop here?" she asked.

"Of course." He plopped down next to her and she resented his insistence until she looked around at the plethora of trees, surely more than stars in the sky, each glowing in one way or another and realized that it was beautiful.

"Thank you for showing me this," she said. She looked over to him and realized he might kiss her and looked away, embarrassed. She had never been kissed before and wasn't sure if she wanted to be kissed.

"Thanks for coming with me, Terra," he said lamely.

"I didn't really have a choice," she grumbled.

"No," he disagreed. "I don't mean into the tree."

An ant crawled closer to her fingers on the bark. "Oh." She hadn't forgotten what Robbin had done for her, bringing her back to Parantium. It had been him who had tracked Jake down, not her. "We had best go back down." She squinted at Robbin's sleeping figure, as small far away as the ant up close.

The second day they came upon the towers. She shivered, reminded of the night the wolves had come to retrieve her in the clearing. Not able to escape it, her sight went blurry.

Antoinette wandered through the abandoned alleyway, searching in vain for what she could not find. A shadow flew across her forehead and then she dropped down to the ground. She was suffocating!

Her hand had fallen upon the cold stone of one particular tower and she pulled it back to her chest quickly, as if bitten.

Robbin didn't have the same aversion to the towers as she had, and felt perfectly safe setting up camp just outside the tower's borders. Terra convinced them to build the fire a little farther away than they had wanted. The shadows of the towers grew with the setting moon until there was nothing but their darkness between spaces and Terra stared at them, hardly able to sleep until Robbin's watch had ended and Jake's started. She didn't know why she bothered because two hours later Jake woke her, inspired anew, and enticed her to stand, as he had the previous night.

"I hope you don't think this nightly charade is going to continue," she grumbled as he pulled her away from the fire. She stared forlornly at Robbin's shrinking figure. She didn't know he intended for her to pass through the tower's border until they were right upon them, hulking as they were.