Maybe it was just exhaustion, making him feel like like something was missing.
Travis leaned against the shower control to turn it off, and stood there a weary moment, dripping.
The empty house felt unexpectedly lonely.
It took a ridiculous amount of time to reach for a towel and give himself a cursory pat-down. Scarlet didn’t skimp on towels, so the thick, fluffy terrycloth absorbed most of the water even with halfhearted application. Travis barely got it back onto the towel hook before staggering back to his bedroom.
Even the fireworks couldn’t keep him awake after that.
Chapter 2
Jennavivianna Smith wasn’t floating.
For the first time in a very long time, she wasn’t floating.
She wasn’t all-Jenny, yet, but she wasn’t as not-Jenny as she had been, and she kept her eyes screwed shut for a while after she was actually awake, trying to process what had happened.
“You’re not sleeping anymore!”
At first, Jenny thought that it was her own thoughts. Her own, weirdly divided thoughts. The otter inside her that wasn’t her, but was, all at once.
“You can’t fool me,” the voice said firmly, and Jenny remembered.
She remembered Gizelle, the slight, salt-and-pepper-haired woman who had talked her back into human form, and remembered seeing Fred again and feeling the sting of his betrayal, and Laura, oh, Laura! Her twin was there in her head again, that unspoken connection they’d always had was back and as strong and comforting as it had always been, even when they were at odds, or miles apart.
She opened her eyes. She was in a little square of neat lawn near a white gravel path, tall, flowering jungle brush on all sides. She could hear the ocean, and smell it’s sharp, salty tang, but she couldn’t see anything past the dense foliage.
Gizelle was kneeling above her, hair wild around her face, big eyes earnest. “Come on, then, you’ve had a good sleep.”
Jenny opened her mouth to protest that the sleep had been restless, and full of floating dreams, but it came out as half-trill and half-purr, and she snapped otter jaws together again.
“It takes a little while, that’s all. Come and walk on two legs with me. See your sister!”
Jenny balked. The last time she had changed from otter to human, it had burned. She remembered the feeling of her bones cracking and resetting, the muscles stretching impossibly, the tendons snapping into new places.
“Don’t be afraid,” Gizelle said coaxingly.
“Don’t baby me,” Jenny wanted to tell her, but couldn’t, through otter teeth. Nothing frustrated her more than being patronized.
Don’t act like a baby, then, her otter told her. Its voice in her head was not scornful, exactly, but teasing, prodding.
Jenny felt more stung than she knew she ought to. I’m not being a baby.
Of course you aren’t, her otter mocked. You’re a ‘grown-up’ coward.
With an otter sigh of frustration, Jenny stretched.
At first, it was simply a stretch of otter limbs, then Jenny focused furiously, remembering human arms and human legs, and she reached and wrenched herself back into her own form.
Gizelle clapped her hands in delight as Jenny lay on the ground, naked and panting. “Good job!” she said enthusiastically.
“Don’t baby me,” Jenny was finally able to say, breathlessly.
Then don’t-
Shut up. Jenny was dismayed to see that her fingers were still slightly webbed, and tipped with sharp claws. She ran her tongue over teeth that were too sharp and grimaced.
Gizelle took no notice of Jenny’s crabbiness, simply offering her hands to stand up.