A/N: Happy Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Winter Solstice!

I meant to post this last night but my boyfriend surprised me with a trip to Santa's Enchanted Forest. Every year Tropical Park undergoes a magical transformation replete with several hundred thousand twinkle lights, overly tacky animatronic displays, rickety theme park rides, crackhead carnies - basically it's all the skeeze of a low-budget carnival bedecked with all the trappings of holiday commercialism. Aside from the inhumane conditions they keep the animals in, it was a blast. Hope everyone else's holidays are as happy.

Renesmee

Friday Night

That evening I was the one to provide supper; an older coyote with resigned eyes that reminded me far more of Jake than I would have liked, to the point where the heart was the only part I could bear to consume. Fortunately Maya was more than happy to prepare the meat and perform her odd little burial ritual, leaving me to ruminate about my never-would-be lover in solitary reflection.

When she joined me after dinner, it was apparent she could see that something was bothering me. I fully expected her to pin me down and glean answers out of my reluctant mind like she had in the past. But she didn't.

Her taciturn companionship surprised me; at the very least I had expected her to try and distract me with some cheerful chatter. Instead she sat silently beside me, enjoying her after-dinner cigarette in quiet contemplation broken only when she offered me a puff. At any other time I might have been affronted by her trying to indoctrinate me into such a distasteful habit. But she extended it to me with no expectation in her gaze, like it was just a polite afterthought.

Perhaps that's why I took it. Or maybe I had wanted to reaffirm the sense of equality that our relationship was acquiring.

It seemed that the more time we spent together, the more our traits were reaching equilibrium with each other. As I advanced in my training, her shortcomings were becoming more apparent. I knew, beyond a doubt, that if I bolted on her she would never catch me. That her shorter limbs put her at a reach disadvantage when we sparred and that it was only her obvious experience and bottom-heavy center of gravity that enabled her to match me at this point. Her quick choppy movements would never possess my grace and my agility was equivocal to hers with less than a week of instruction. As I grew increasingly acclimated to the situation and opened myself up more, she became more reserved, less showy and dramatic.

Her countenance that evening had been remarkably different in the absence of her ever-present smile. It struck me then for the first time that she was much older than I was even pretending to be. Her outward appearance suggested she was in her early twenties but the world-weariness seeping into her eyes spoke of years beyond those she wore visibly.

I took a slow pull off the cigarette and felt it roll expansively in my throat. The secondhand exposure I had been subjected to had permeated my pulmonary capability, allowing me to inhale deeply with only a miniscule amount of coughing. However it was still enough to sanguinate my face and incite dizziness.

She didn't laugh. When she apathetically accepted the fruit-flavored cigarette back I realized that I wouldn't have been surprised if she had. Or, at least, treated me to an explanation on proper smoking technique. But she didn't say a thing, taking a hit in introspective silence and passing it back without making eye contact or even turning her head. Moreover, she maintained physical distance; sitting close enough to hand the cigarette back and forth but not even a grazing touch as it passed between our hands.

We sat a while like that, lost in our respective thoughts. But as the silence grew between us my ruminations turned to pondering about her newest behavioral shift. Solemnity didn't suit her. On Maya that kind of quiet looked like depression.

I reached over and stroked her back, pressing on the tension coiling through her shoulders until I could almost hear the thoughts buzzing around her head that had put it there. Her back slipped away from beneath my fingers as she turned to hand me the cigarette once more. She gave me an endearingly open smile as I inhaled so I extended my arm around her to pull her into a half hug once with my free arm.

The effect was immediate, the inner voice of her thoughts focusing into sharp clarity as the length of my arm met the warm patch of mocha skin exposed by her low-necked blouse.

She had been reminiscing over a lover she had taken in her travels. Though the language eluded me, the tone was palpably axiomatic like the words were being translated for me as she thought them. The stream of pictures and accompanying emotions was easily decipherable; flashes of smooth chocolate skin covering long skinny limbs that had embraced her both in the gym and in the bedroom. And, in the back of her mind, buried deep in a pit of murky self-doubt and dark rage, I gleaned an image of her catching him embracing another.

As I reached into her memory with my consciousness trying to bring perspicuity to his face it contorted and became enshrouded in a deep scarlet haze. Almost immediately, she jerked against my probing, swishing the thoughts away like a flushing toilet.

"Men are dogs." She spoke so quietly I wasn't sure whether it was a thought or if she had said it out loud. But then she turned her head to me, eyes suspiciously shiny, and leaned further into my embrace.

A fitting double entendre of commiseration threatened to pop into my head before I tamped it down, rubbing supportive circles across Maya's rhomboids. "The problem is that God gives men two heads but only enough blood to run one at a time." I intoned sagely, willing myself not to recall the night I left. Only a week had lapsed yet it felt distant as another life in a dark damp universe light years from the colorful sun-drenched vistas I now roamed as freely as if I'd been reared amongst them.

Maya snorted in agreement with my comment, more resigned than amused. But I felt her appreciation of my sincerity, that I hadn't cloyed her with erroneous platitudes, as she snuggled subdued into my side, like a housecat settling into a lap for petting and recounted a tale of her childhood in Mexico.

"Once when I was a little girl, my mother met a traveler who spoke of a woman, living in the mountains to the southwest in Oaxaca. The man told her that María was a wise shamaness that would teach anyone her healing, even foreigners."

Maya turned and plucked the cigarette from my hand and inhaled sharply from it before continuing. "My mother was amazed to hear such a thing. A lady shaman teaching anyone who asked and so close? She knew at once she must go. I was young but we were alone in Mexico, everyone in mother's family lived in the Amazon and my father-"

Another deep drag punctuated her pause and I was inundated with a deluge of information that threatened to drown both of us. My hand moved automatically with practiced motions seeking to soothe her.

Quirking a grateful smirk up at me she launched back into the role of raconteur. "Though I was young, she did not know how long she would be gone. There was no one she could leave me with so she took me. It was not a long journey, only a few days by car. The Mazatec were very kind and gave us our own hut to stay in. During the day mamá would help the women do their work and at night she would study the ways of the shaman."

Her voice rose as she became more animated, the glow of the cigarette tip making orange trails against the backdrop of the night as she gesticulated with her hands. "One night my mother was to help with a velada, she was to be gone all night. She tucked me in and told me to stay inside. But I was not afraid of the dark. There was una gata with kittens living under the shed out back and after mama left I went outside to see them. Down the street I saw una vieja I had never seen before. Her skin was very white."

Playfully, Maya pinched my arm to illustrate her point. "Even whiter than you were when I first saw you. She was very beautiful and very quiet. Entonces I was almost inside when I heard the wind make a terrible noise. When I turned around, there she was at the fence, staring at me. I was so scared I hid in my mother's bed until she returned. That was when she told me the story of La Llorona, the crying woman looking for her lost children."

Though she was calm as she paused and extinguished the cigarette her emotions were tumultuous and her thoughts labyrinthine. There was a gravity to her gaze as she turned to me, "You see, when we asked the villagers no one had seen such a woman and the little boy down the street was gone." Everything in me went cold. "And I'll never forget the way she smelled."

Saturday

As I crested the peak, a blast of cold wind whipped around me, stirring my honey-toned locks like one of Uncle Em's more voracious greetings. At this altitude the air was decidedly thinner but the past few days of training and climbing had acclimated me enough that it was only a passing observation. I took a deep lungful of the sweet clean air, basking in the simple pleasure of a sunny day spent in the beautiful outdoors. From this elevation I could trace the waterfalls rushing into the expanse of lake swelling to fill the eastern horizon, reflecting the deep blue hues of the sky like a silvery mirror wreathed by the spectrum of blossoming spring foliage laid out in an Impressionist-worthy panorama.

And everywhere there was all manner of variegated avian and quadrupedal life sporadically emerging; from the Cheetos-colored teeth of the nutrias to the startlingly blue gape of the cormorants.

A few dozen yards back down the rocky trail Maya was still steadily making her way up to meet me.

My ephemeral exposure to her tutelage had indurated me enough that I had been able to ascend with celerity, leaving Maya in the literal dust. Despite all her impressive physical prowess, my hostess was nowhere near able to match my land speed now that I had found my footing.

Truth be told, I took a perverse delight in the reversal of situation. Granted she was still quicker with her hands and feet, but, as long as I was out of arm's length, she couldn't touch me. And, quite ironically, now that I was certain that I could easily divest myself of her presence I found myself quite less inclined to do so. In fact, I found myself rather enjoying the whole excursion now that I had gotten the hang of it.

Not only was I besting her uphill ability, my capoeira talents were already at a comparable level to her own. During the second half of this morning's training I found that I was able to enter a state of automatism; reading her kinesics well enough to predict her movements and adjust to her accelerations with fluidity I hadn't known I possessed.

A fact which seemed to have her in a bit petulant este mañana. Even if she didn't voice a single corroboration, I could sense there was something stirring at her that, much to my chagrin, echoed my own initial reaction to her athleticism. It was unpleasant to think that I had harbored similar envy and I certainly felt no right to call her on it after she had brightly accepted my former petulance with such aplomb.

Nor did I tease her or offer falsely bright encouragements, just smiled and stood patiently. It's easy to be magnanimous when you're in the lead, I had found. And it was so nice to be feeling more like myself again.

The past couple nights of girl-talk and bonding had been a cathartic purging for both of us. To the point that Jake's name no longer invoked anything more for me than pleasant recollections and subdued yearning; the once throbbing ache of his absence obfuscated by Maya's unconditional acceptance and sympathy.

As much as I didn't want to trust her, it was hard not to divulge when every confession was met with understanding and reassurance. And now that I no longer felt physically inferior, it was hard not to view her helpful instruction and continued financing of this endeavor as selfless generosity.

And, as much as I'd prefer not to admit it, the steady diet of blood I was receiving from the local fauna had me feeling better than I had in months, setting my mood to rights and restoring my perkier side. Maya had encouragingly noted the amelioration of my mood, taking advantage with bad puns that provoked girly giggle fits.

She also, rather wisely, refrained from speculating, at least aloud, about what the impetus for my more genial sense of humor was. Though I had caught her appraising me visually more than once, she never tried to broach any uncomfortable mention of my overly evident idiosyncrasies; instead grinning widely at me whenever I caught her perusals, meeting my questioning gaze with a knowing one.

I mulled this over a moment or two before her sudden appearance at my side snapped me from my reverie. It was rather startling that she had been able to sneak up on me like that; she was a fount of noise, whistling, singing, and humming, that I was usually able to locate her solely by sonar.

"Esta noche dormiremos aquí." As she spoke she indicated an expanse of blue glacial valley. "Crossing the ice will be muy peligroso, better to wait for morning light to be safe."

The sun still hung at a steep angle above the snow-capped peaks. "There's another couple hours of daylight," I frowned, "Why wait?"

"Relax, mijita," she grinned at my impertinence like it was endearing, "The village is right on the other side of the next mountain. We'll be there by lunch tomorrow."

Endnote: Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow...

miztrez, I'm flattered that you think so :)

OAT, I wholeheartedly concur with MR - there's always room for zombies XD

Medicat, you're probably right, Jake's subconscious just isn't all that rational about somethings ;)

Summer, the title comes from an oldies song that I thought was rather appropriate. Glad you liked it. :)

Jenna, I just needed to vent a little, it took me two hours to get home that day and I was all kinds of worked up. I took it out on the punching bag and that helped quite a bit. ;)

WaK, crap on a crap cracker is, unfortunately, not mine. I stole it from SeaLab2021 because I thought it was hilarious and find myself saying it a lot. :D

Kyzyl, hopefully he won't mess it up... ;)

Bellita, I'm so glad you're back XD

sakura, I hope so too. If not, let me know :)

velada - all night vigil

gata - cat

vieja - old lady

entonces - then

la llorona - the weeping woman

este mañana - this morning

Esta noche dormiremos aquí - we will sleep here tonight

muy peligroso - very dangerous