8 – Leilani talks to Jaggar

Leilani sat in her “spot” at the entrance to the Path of the Catamount. The night had not progressed. It had sat at twilight for hours.

She was lonely, until the catamount came and sat next to her. A delicate pink butterfly fluttered too close and the catamount snatched it out of the air, crunching down on it, eating it with lots of mlem-mlem noises, as her tongue tried to work the small bug to the back of her throat.

Leilani looked away.

The catamount spoke, her clear, strong voice startling Leilani as it always did, still coming from everywhere. Why not ask for anything?

Leilani didn’t answer, not wanting to admit why she still hadn’t asked for books or food or a bed.

The catamount waited. Leilani shook her head, not knowing what to say.

Instead of making her answer, the catamount spoke again, another question. If you could have any one thing, what would you most want?

Leilani shifted her stance on the ground. That was even a harder question to answer.

There is no right answer, Lele. Tell me what wells up inside you when I ask you what you most want.

Ok then, she’d asked for it. Leilani told her, trying to keep herself under control as she did. “The impossible. I want it all. I want to be healthy, I want to be happy, I want to be able to see. I want to have the man and the good life, but I want to choose the man and the life. I want to have purpose, but not strife. I don’t want to have to fight the demon, but I don’t want him to win, either. I want to be powerful, but I don’t want to have this…” She held up her hands and looked at them, turning them over, searching for some sign of what she could do in or under her skin and the lines of her body. She knew what she was doing was impossible, traveling in time, changing the past and the future, and yet she’d done it so many times. “I don’t want to have this power. I want to be normal, I want to be ordinary. I want to know who I am and I want to be brave and sure, like Eventine.” She took a deep breath. “I want to be happy,” she said again. She’d had many hours to think about exactly what she wanted, although she’d never thought she would be breathing those words to a soul.

Leilani looked at the catamount, expecting her to be scowling. But she wasn’t, she was sitting next to Leilani on the end of the path, sleek tail curled around her haunches, nodding away. Yes, the catamount said. Life brings many wants, all of them good. Wants bring purpose and purpose played out brings wants. It is never-ending and always good.

Leilani could only stare for a few moments. Finally, when she spoke she could only say one word. “Purpose?”

The catamount had not stopped nodding, but then she did. She turned to face Leilani. Life gives up the opportunity for many things, some we want, some we need. So tell me, if you could have one thing, right now, what would it be?

Leilani couldn’t speak. She only stared. It made no sense to her. How could any of that possibly be assured for her?

The catamount lowered to her belly on the trail and surveyed her domain. I can’t wrap happiness up with a bow and give it to you, she said, her tone somber. What one thing do you think would make you the happiest right now?

Leilani couldn’t even believe this was a real question, but she knew the answer. “To be able to see,” she whispered, not daring to hope that her eyes could be fixed, knowing the catamount understood that she meant, “be able to see when I’m in my body.” Of course she could see in the meadow. It was heaven, right?

Not heaven, the catamount growled, then got to her feet and loped away without a good-bye, which was her way.

Leilani stared after her, wondering if she’d said the wrong thing. Perhaps she should have said something about Jaggar. Her mate. She thought about it for a long time, then decided to believe the catamount’s statement that there was no right answer.

Did she really believe in such things as mates? She imagined it was like a “soul mate”, but on a much more intense scale. If she said yes to her mate, she would be bitten and claimed by him. But would she be loved by him? Would she be adored? Would she want to be bitten, claimed, loved, and adored by him? She didn’t even know the guy, so how could she possibly know that?

She frowned, staring off over the edge, her mind whirring. Something Eventine had once said to her played through her mind. You can talk to him from up here, you know. He might not know it’s you, but you can soothe him, heal him, and even communicate a little in his dreams.

Did she want to? It would be an invitation to him, of sorts, and she wasn’t sure if she was ready for that. She wasn’t sure if she wanted that.

She didn’t think, didn’t let herself make a decision. She called up what she knew of him (Jaggar) in her mind, which wasn’t much. He was big, broad through the chest, with a hard face. The times she’d seen him in the Ula, her eyes and her mind hadn’t been working well and she hadn’t noticed much about him. From the meadow, however, she’d seen he had a military-short haircut and a neat, dark beard, and an obvious division down the center of him. His skin was light on one side and dark on the other, which she’d never seen before. He was handsome, but in a cruel way, because she’d only seen him scowl, never smile.

And she never would see his smile, not from the Ula.

Leilani gasped at the thought. It was so easy to forget reality from inside the meadow. But reality was that she was probably completely blind. The shifters have doctors, she thought. They have a dragen, too, and his blood has healing powers. That’s what saved Eventine. Maybe the blood would help Leilani, too. Maybe.

Desperate for something else to think about, she cast about for something, anything. Family? No, she hadn’t seen or wanted to see her mother for years, she had no siblings, she had nothing but the nurses at the Roosevelt, and her roommates over the years. What about… her mate?

Jaggar, she thought. I want to see Jaggar. She didn’t know where he was and her sightline in the Ula only wavered on the forest at VF, it didn’t actually go anywhere and she did not see him. She saw a male, tall and dark, with short wavy hair, up on a ladder installing cameras in trees at one corner of the forest though, and she looked closer for a moment, scared for her sisters. But she could tell right away that he was a wolfen. She wasn’t sure how she knew, except she’d absorbed some of Eventine’s knowing about such things when they’d shared Leilani’s body. Leilani watched him for a second, then turned back to her own issues.

Eventine had said Leilani could talk to Jaggar. She wanted to talk to Jaggar. She wasn’t sure how, so she spoke out loud, like he was sitting right there next to her, hoping her words would carry to him. “Jaggar, um, hi. It’s me, Leilani. We ah, we haven’t met yet, not um, not formally.” She trailed off, her words fading, thinking she sounded like a complete idiot. It was all so awkward like this. Mates weren’t supposed to be hard. She’d definitely gotten that impression from Eventine that finding your mate, talking to your mate, being with your mate, and mating were the most natural things in the world, that the feelings came up from deep inside and there was nothing you could do to stop it and why would you want to stop it anyway?

But maybe that was Eventine’s experience. Maybe that wasn’t how it was for everyone. Leilani thought about her… her sisters. Ella. Cerise. Dahlia. Heather. Rogue. Willow. She’d only watched Ella, Cerise, Dahlia, and Heather for any length of time because Willow was out of the country with her mate, and Rogue was usually only around at night. Leilani could imagine for them it might have been different, but even if there was awkwardness at times, the desire to connect with their mate still led them to find ways around it. To keep trying.

But this wasn’t even awkward. This was hard. Halting. Rough. Maybe someone was wrong about her and Jaggar. Maybe she was too broken to be paired with him. Maybe he’d already decided he didn’t want her. The thought made her feel like crying, but she held it inside. She would try again.

“I ah, Jaggar, I wanted to tell you that, um, that Harlan is ok, and that, I ah.”

She held very still, her words bringing the image of her mate savaging Eventine’s mate to her mind. She’d been in the meadow. How many days ago had it been? She had no idea. Maybe a week, but no more than that. She’d felt good, really good for the first time in her life, maybe. Rhen had said she could stay and she could have anything she wanted. She’d asked for a chair and a blanket and cute clothes and potato chips and nutella to eat out of the jar. She’d sat and eaten her food and just… enjoyed. After a bit, she wanted something to do. So she’d said she wanted to draw and paint and read, and all sorts of books showed up and even an easel and paints and papers. She’d thought she could be happy forever.

But then the catamount had come to her and said she had to return, even if only for a moment. She had to return to the Ula and stop Jaggar from killing Harlan. Only she could do it. So she’d run for it, terrified she’d be too late. An image had flashed in front of her. The catamount had shown her the picture of what was happening in the Ula, but all she had really seen was the confusion, a big animal, and lots and lots of blood.

The stark fear of the moment returned to her even though it was over and done with. It flooded her with fresh anxiety about her situation. Her resolve to communicate with Jaggar disappeared, so she spoke quickly, pushing out words that were stuck inside her, getting it over with.

“I don’t know who I am, but I know I’m scared of just about everything, and, right now, I think what I’m scared of most of all is you.”

Leilani felt no response in return, and she was glad. She lay back on the path and stared at the sky.

***

Take me to church, Jaggar whispered to himself, repeating the mantra he’d used again and again over the years, when the pain got to be too much, or when he needed to utilize that intense and deep concentration that he was known for. He didn’t know why the words worked, and he’d never been inside a church in his life, but he knew they were the doorway to his inner strength. At that very moment, he had no pain. It seemed that when the beast was in charge of their body, he was the one who carried the pain of their existence, not Jaggar.

Jaggar might have no pain, but he had a lot to think about, and his mantra was one mind-training trick that helped him focus. He repeated it, worrying his most pressing problem. He had to either convince or force the beast to let him shift back into human form.

While he was concentrating, an overwhelming urge filled him. Stop. Turn around. Suddenly, he wanted to head home after all. Serenity was the place he needed to be. The beast must have gotten the same urge, because the big body turned and everyone trapped inside it loped the opposite way down the path.

This time, Jaggar did not fight.