Then she was thinking about grazing and leaping and sun on her flanks, and was walking forward as a deer.
Chapter Eighteen
Mary as a deer was a beautiful as she was as a human. Her brown coat was smooth and glossy, and her big ears were expressive and mobile.
She came over and touched Neal with her whiskered muzzle, then pranced away, limping only slightly.
Neal was glad when she disappeared through the brush towards the base of the waterfall, because he knew he’d done a dismal job of holding himself together in front of her, and he didn’t want to admit just how much agony he was in. The leg that had been cut was like a throbbing fire, but the pain in his chest worried him much more.
Every breath caused a stabbing pain, and there was a tightness to his chest and dizziness that Neal strongly suspected was a collapsed lung—if not fully, at least partially. They had no sort of catheter to release the pressure he was feeling, so he saw no reason to admit it to Mary. Let her keep believing it was just a few broken ribs and a concussion. He couldn’t bear to see her worry, and there was no treatment here that could fix an injury like that.
You could shift, his brain betrayed him. Deep inside, Neal could feel his red maned wolf stir.
Neal snarled and refused to think of it any further. He drew himself slowly into a sitting position, verifying with each dry cough and agonizing breath that his diagnosis was correct.
There was an old piece of driftwood that had been flung up high on the beach, and it had a root piece that was exactly the angle of an easy chair. Neal manage to drag himself over to it and prop himself into the crook, just as the deer returned and shifted seamlessly into Mary.
“You shouldn’t be moving!” she said in alarm.
Neal grunted. “Got tired of the view there. This one is better.”
The sun was fighting through the clouds and fog, and blue sky was beginning to show above the mist. Late afternoon sunlight made the little cove glow, and in truth, Neal would have been hard pressed to pick a more lovely scene. Golden-white sand in a perfect semi-circle met gentle ocean, lapping at its edges. Emerald jungle plants fringed the bottom of dark cliffs on all sides, and the waterfall they had hiked to see made a silver ribbon that fell down the cliff and crawled to the ocean like a bit of discarded Christmas wrapping on the sand.
“I’m beginning to reconsider what I said about the view being worth the hike,” Mary said. “But it does seem to be doing its best to be picturesque.”
She frowned at him and felt his forehead, and then carefully untied the raincoat. She didn’t pull off the shirt bandage, but seemed satisfied that it hadn’t soaked through with blood, and re-tied the raincoat.
“I guess we’ll want a fire,” she suggested, leaning back on her ankles without wincing. She moved more easily now, and the raw vine whips on her face had faded significantly, even more than Neal would have expected from a shifter's ability to self-heal. “And some food? I have two granola bars left.”
“Water,” Neal suggested, concentrating on not coughing. His lungs were crying for more air that he couldn’t get, and it was making him dizzy.
“I can fill the bottles at the waterfall,” Mary said dubiously. “I had a good drink as a deer, but we ought to boil it for you.”
She said it without being pointed, but Neal still winced and set his teeth, ready for a fight about shifting again.
Mary stood up and walked to where she’d left her clothing. She held up the soggy garments, clearly decided not to put them back on, and spread them on the driftwood to dry instead. The fog was burning off quickly, and the heat of the sun was drying a halo of gold from the hair that had escaped her braid.
Watching her gather up the contents of her bag and sort them neatly for inventory was a treat when she was nude, and she seemed to lack self-consciousness about it for the first time.
“The wood is too wet to use friction to start a fire,” Neal said. He didn’t think it mattered if he drank contaminated water given state of the rest of him, but building a fire would give Mary something to do. “Do you have any lenses?”
“I have sunglasses,” Mary suggested.
“No good, they have to be clear.” Neal looked at the odd selection of things. “You brought condoms?”
Mary blushed. “I thought this was going to be a romantic hike, not a death march through the rain completed by falling down a cliff,” she said tartly.
Neal laughed and gritted his teeth at the pain of it. When the wave of dizziness had passed, he explained, “We can use that to start a fire.”
Mary blinked at him. “A condom?”
“A condom full of water,” Neal added.
“This is why I like math,” Mary complained. “Math makes sense.”
Neal smiled but didn’t attempt another laugh. “I’ll show you. We’ll need dry tinder, and good kindling, and water.”
Mary stood. “I can get those.”