Mystifying and crunchy-soiled, the rainforest had swallowed her up easily, and now her inconsequential, little boots were transporting her around the heaving, humid, green stomach of a massive living organism - an organism which had remained more or less constant while the world had undergone its cooling and warming climate changes millions of years before. To this being, she was just another tiny insect - her presence tolerated, more than welcomed. Certainly, Piper didn't feel that she was powerful enough to disturb the present order of things, but that was okay; she didn't find that thought unsettling at all. It was like Alex had stated the previous night, beer bottle in hand, lips wet and shiny, and pupils dilated: that nature should humble you - that was the natural thing.
It had been a while since she'd last seen the brunette, but it was impossible to know how long, since the backdrop had remained stubbornly and beautifully constant. Sometimes it made her feel as if she were stuck inside one of those old cartoons, where the background recycled itself over and over whenever one of the characters decided to run or drive a car. The straight trunks of those incredibly tall trees, covered in vines and lianas, were all one could see at eye-level. And above, the uneven canopies were like random puzzle pieces, leaving spaces of light-blue sky between them because they would never fit.
She paused before a strangler fig which was hugging a tree with everything it had, and realized that everything was extreme here, even interdependent relationships between plants. There was this violent struggle to flourish, to grow, to eat up as well as feed the other in a primordial cycle which had been preordained well before her existence, and would continue well after it. If she stood still among that floor of leaf litter for enough time, she too would be absorbed by the trees. The dripping rainforest was making her hands so wet that she didn't even need to wash them of any responsibility. It was being done for her.
So this was her life now, she figured, walking down that illusion of a path while wiping her soaked forehead with the green handkerchief she had wrapped around her wrist, although she didn't know which was wetter. This was her life now: the illusion of dryness, the illusion of having a path to walk. With Alex there was only wetness, -wherever they went, wherever they slept-, and the sensation of not being entirely lost, but of not being on civilized terrain either. This was her life now: being moved about blissfully by a happy-go-lucky tide.
Suddenly, she heard a shuffling noise to her left. Piper's eyes opened wide and she started running, completely ignorant of which predators might try to eat her up... maybe a tiger? However, she stopped when she identified a familiar, strident laughter. The brunette stepped into the shady light a second later, treading through the undergrowth and sufficiently feline in nature.
Piper, whose slim, tired legs hadn't taken her very far, felt her panic turn into irritation. "Alex! What the fuck?"
"Hey, I caught up with you."
"Yes, and you almost killed me," Piper said, pushing the brunette away with her forearm.
Alex laughed again, remaining at that small distance, and wrung her damp, messy ponytail. "What, you don't expect me to wear a little bell in the middle of the fucking jungle, do you?"
"You could've called out."
Yes, or she could've yelled "come to dinner" to all the animals out there, Alex retorted, offering her a one-shouldered shrug and no hint of the degree to which she was pulling her leg. The brunette would joke constantly, regardless of how dangerous or serious a situation could be. It was all the same to Alex, since it seemed that the main thing was to tease her, and so Piper had detected that her fears were lately beginning to take a backseat to the thrill of those first excursions. It was only normal, she guessed, in those abnormal circumstances. She was blindly following Alex around, and felt surprisingly safe submerged in that chaotic sea.
It was surprising, since for most of her life, it hadn't been like her to let go or get wild easily. Don't jump out of the back door of the school bus, not even when the driver condones the tradition and slows down almost to a complete stop, or you could get grounded. Don't do forbidden things like try to watch a grownup movie, for you could get caught and punished - or you could spot your own father kissing a woman who is not your mother. And then when you try to talk about it, your mother shuts down and grounds you and your grandmother basically tells you to bottle it up. Plenty of bottling up feelings and uncorking of other bottles in her family history.
The brunette dumped her backpack on the rich soil under their feet and extracted a red water bottle from the net-like side pocket. She then twisted it open and grasped Piper's wrist with her free hand. Unquestioningly, the blonde merely looked at the woman with the same expression of wonder she'd been wearing ever since they'd first met. She could feel it in her eyes, like a rush of warmth drawing her closer to Alex. No more than infatuated, silly teenagers the two of them, during those sweet, simple moments. And those moments were the most overwhelming of all. What Alex did for a living didn't affect her, didn't touch her at all, except diagonally - it was in the traveling, the luxurious hotels, the lavish food and drinks, and the intermittent company they shared. She'd been able to separate herself from it all too easily, box it away into the background of her life. Just like she'd done with her family; a phone call here and there, a simple fib with an infantile tone of voice saying that she wasn't taking any unnecessary risks and that she was being a good girl… the appearance of normalcy was all her daddy needed. No mention of Alex, of course, because like Alex, Piper was doing what was necessary to keep her modus vivendi. How was that for strength of character?
They were traveling from one place to the next with no final destination, not to get anywhere, not really, and being in that limbo was extremely satisfying. This way of life was beginning to train the blonde's mind to focus on the journey, to enjoy the present and to quit thinking like a tourist, always worried about the following location, the following picture. No photographs were really allowed in this life, in fact, but that didn't bother Piper in the slightest, since pictures were nothing but mementos for the future. All in all, it was still a big change for Piper, whose family had only ever ascribed value to the show and tell of things. But who cared about that, and about the future, when the present had so much to offer?
This was her life, and she liked it a lot; the possibility of being this Piper. There'd been plenty of peering at risk from afar in her past, but this was a way of doing all the exciting things she'd only dared to dream about without relinquishing her safety, without getting in trouble. She only had to snuggle closer to Alex in bed, in the middle of the night, to feel the immediate, protective response of the woman's strong arms enclosing her. Nothing could really measure up to that sensation… Well, almost. With Alex, she had discovered a very fine line between affection and desire. It was as if the brunette had effectively built a bridge between the two, or provided a missing puzzle piece, or broke some kind of barrier between her mind and her body. They had jumped over rules, and roles, and all the stupid rituals she had undergone in the past with other people - which had been all for naught anyway. She hadn't considered herself a very sexual person before, but now… now, apparently, she couldn't get enough; the most insignificant touch would light her like a match.
This gesture was innocent enough. Alex untied the green handkerchief, uncoiled it from Piper's wrist, and poured water on it. Then, she pressed the handkerchief to the blonde's forehead. Feeling the rivulets of cool water run down her face and her neck, collecting in the little hollow between her clavicles before trickling into the collar of her shirt, Piper closed her eyes and smiled.
"Better?"
"Yeah…" Piper breathed out, her voice trailing off.
"You should carry this. After all, it's yours."
The blonde shook her head and stepped back. Earlier in the day, she had freaked out upon spotting a couple of shiny frogs stuck to that water bottle and, after unsuccessfully trying to shake them off, she had tossed the thing at Alex. How was she supposed to know that frogs were attracted to the color red?
"You are such a child…" The brunette sighed, but there was a tiny smirk on her lips, informing Piper that she nonetheless considered her cute. She returned the handkerchief to Piper's wrist, the water bottle to her backpack, and surrounded the blonde's shoulders with one arm.
As Piper reached up to grasp Alex's dangling hand, they continued making their way through the apparently boundless rainforest, with no notion of time whatsoever. The only interval which had mattered to her had been how long it had taken for her feet to get used to the increasingly long walks, combined with the shoes and the crushing humidity. Now she felt that she was part of her surroundings -that both of them were-, with their fingers entwined like the delicate but determined tendrils of a strangler fig.
Setting up camp was the quotidian prelude for the end of their day, which was the only existing urgency in their lives - at least that Piper was conscious of. It started slowly though, with them crawling inside the small tent and laying down the single sleeping bag, spreading it out. That was when their world, which already was pretty much a bubble, became a more reduced bubble within it. Piper had started to experience that sensation of having a secret back home -furthermore, of living inside one, like a cocoon, in Alex's place, in Alex's bed-, during the first months of their relationship.
Their movements were sluggish still when they peeled off their clothes, soaked to transparency as they often were. Alex's ponytail became undone, and her glossy, black hair flopped down her back, the rubber band lost. That was when Piper felt and identified the familiar hurry, the need. She climbed on top of Alex's lap and felt the woman's skin welcoming hers, recognizing it even though it had spent the entire day first getting wet, then dry, then wet again, and seemed to be covered in a somewhat clammy layer.
Alex's arms surrounded the small of her back and pressed their bodies closer together until their noses rubbed. Their mouths found each other between the two curtains of messy hair, and it immediately sent a jolt to the pit of Piper's stomach. She moaned when she felt the tip of Alex's tongue tracing her lips, and responded with her own tongue. Her lips closed around Alex's, pressing them, stroking them, grunting against them when the brunette's hands slid under her ass.
And then she was suddenly lying on her back, with the brunette's body pinning her to the sleeping bag. Her hips rose to meet Alex's; she wanted no space between them, none. She spread her legs and encircled Alex, causing them to gasp together, and start grinding in unison, with their fingers digging into each other's arms, and backs, and thighs, and wild manes. A cacophony of sounds filled their concave-shaped universe -their little tent firmly anchored to the earth- as they stubbornly held on to each other.
She sucked on Alex's shoulder, dragged her parted lips to her neck, and licked her way up to her earlobe. Then, she felt the brunette's previously wandering fingers on the inside of her thigh, surprisingly deliberate now as they drew small circles with her fingertips, and with every tiny stroke, Alex's knuckles grazed Piper's outer lips ever so slightly. Knowing Alex, the teasing couldn't be accidental, but that was beside the point, because the point was… Piper whined against Alex's skin and then smiled despite herself. The point was that she wanted more contact - needed more contact. She let her hand roam between their bodies, down Alex's middle, and below her belly button. It was all she could do with her own desperation, and to try to inspire the woman to go on. Her fingers caressed their way to Alex's center, and she felt the brunette's instant reaction, the husky moan next to her ear, the fist tightening on her hair, and finally, the pressure of Alex's hand, of Alex's thigh between her legs. Piper's own fingers were now coated in the brunette's wetness and, as she stroked between her lips, mapping out every fold, circling her clit, and briefly, teasingly dipping inside her, she had the single certainty that she was just as wet.
They rocked against each other in the dense, humid atmosphere of the little tent, with Alex's nipples grazing hers and their fingers moving faster, until their muffled cries got more frantic between their kisses. Piper felt her entire body turn increasingly light, as the ripples of pleasure radiated from her center, and listening to Alex's climaxing, delicious, choked up voice made her finally let go, shaking against the brunette's body.
With her head still cloudy and still seeing blinking, dancing, little lights behind her closed eyes, the blonde kissed the crook of Alex's neck, sloppily, licking her skin. Then, she brought her own fingers up to her mouth and sucked off the wetness from them, tasting what was inherently Alex, but also tasting the rainforest, the remnants of their day, as she'd done every previous night.
This was her life - this cocoon, this illusion of sorts, which nonetheless was the most authentic thing she had ever known. This was her life - and she could savor it on her tongue when she tilted up her head to kiss Alex, still tethered to her body.