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She sees them in the woods, when her heart is full with knowing. Knowing that someone is gone, knowing that she needs to wail but may never be able. She could harm the woods, the creatures, the natural order.
She never knows that the souls have left until after but her wail is supposed to be a harbinger, not an echo. Lydia never wants to know what would happened if she loosed it on her own time.
So, she goes into the woods and allows the wind and the spirits of the forest to be her wail. She screams inside her own head, more at ease with the sprites and nymphs than she is with the people in her modern world. The creatures and spirits in the forest understand what she is, what she represents to them. Humans never seem to know.
They are always there, though. They stalk her, looking at her with sad eyes and as though they understand her pain.
The coyote is more playful, dashing along but always mindful, and the fox shyly stays just-slightly in sight. Sometimes, she finds her voice enough to tell them about the people she grieves, those she never met but for whom she hurts. Other times, they walk along quietly while she tries to muffle the wail even in her own head.
One day, she walks into the woods, away from the road, to talk to them about a man down the highway with a farm and a widow. This routine is what she has when the need becomes too great. When the coyote and fox are nowhere to be seen, she panics.
There are poachers in the wood, there are larger animals and falling trees and-
A flash of something to her right causes her to spin, hair flying. To her left, another flash and she darts toward it. There are blurs and bits of colour out of the corner of her eye until she feels dizzy from turning toward them. Someone giggles from behind a tighter copse of trees, covered in vines, and Lydia tries to dart around to catch it.
No one is on the other side of the copse, but she spins around a few times and hopes for another flash of something. Then, she begins to walk around it with a hand trailing along the vines. On her fourth go around, a head pops out and a woman with brown hair and no clothes pops most of the way out from between two of the trees. With a raised eyebrow, she wonders, "Are you coming in or not? Dinner is almost done."
"Who are you?" Lydia wonders, perching her hands on her hips and pursing her mouth. "And…those are trees."
"Malia. Are you coming in or not?"
"Yeah, I'll just go into the trees with the naked girl in the woods." Lydia turns around again, looking around. "Why are you in the woods?"
When she turns back, the coyote steps out from where Malia was and noses at her hand. Jumping, Lydia claps a hand over her mouth to hold in her yell. She never knows what power it might have, after all.
Malia is gone when she tries to look further into the copse. When she turns back to the coyote, Malia looks up at her. The woman is sitting cross-legged on the ground, naked and a little dirty. "Where did the coyote go?"
Grinning, Malia gestures at herself. "I'm the coyote."
"Sure." Lydia agrees, throwing up her hands, as she looks around, trying to figure out in which direction the road lies. "You're the coyote. That's the obvious answer."
Standing up, Malia shrugs. She looks careless about if Lydia believes her and brushes past. "The road is left."
Knowing that is good enough for Lydia, for now. She can find her coyote and fox another time.
Lydia is smart, but not very creative. Coming up with a reason why there would be a naked girl in the woods, and her coyote and fox would be gone…
Well, none of that is hard. The hard part is finding something she believes. All of her options are realistic: her animals could have been off because of the unexpected stranger, or the stranger could be a witch or a hippie. Every possibility makes so much sense.
Malia smiled like the coyote.
Having to go through her day makes Lydia sick. She wants to go out to the woods and talk to the coyote and fox. She wants to tell them about Malia, about the trees that she appeared from, and into which she disappeared. There are many things she wants to tell them and none of those things is a scream caught in her throat. The realisation is exhilarating.
She finishes at work and stops home long enough to change into jeans and boots. By the time she parks along the scenic ramp, the rain that left in the morning has come back, but she pulls on a hat and tells herself that she has no need to have a good hair night. Her only friends here are animals in the woods.
Around where she usually finds the coyote and fox, a beautiful woman with dark hair and sparkling dark eyes is standing. She seems to be about as dirty as Malia was, but is wearing a pair of cut-off shorts and a flannel shirt.
Lydia looks around, hoping to see a flash of coppery fur or the coyote's glowing eyes. "Who are you?"
When she looks back, the woman is smiling. The action is sweet and shy looking. "I'm Kira. What's your name?"
"I'm Lydia." She looks around again. "Have you seen any animals out here?" She starts to look around again, turning in her spot. "A coyote or a fox?"
As she finishes turning, she realises that Kira has disappeared. Lydia whips her head back and forth, looking for Kira, before she looks down to see her fox, standing on a flannel shirt. Taking a step closer to it, she looks around again, hoping to catch sight of Kira.
Looking down at the fox, she wonders, "Why do people keep disappearing on me?" She lets out the smallest of a bitter laugh. She knows why most people metaphorically disappear: banshees tend not to do well around people and Lydia is far from an exception. The women in the woods are another story; people usually at least learn about her or her strangeness before they disappear into thin air.
With just that question, her fox turns into Kira and Lydia hurries back. Most things that can do that are far from her idea of good company. "What are you?"
Kira holds her hands up. "I'm a kitsune. You're a banshee, right?" She looks off into the woods, briefly, and smiles. "You met Malia yesterday."
Spinning around, Lydia has the perfect timing to see her coyote turn into Malia. Malia just grins at her, teeth saying 'I told you so'.
"Oh my God, you're really the coyote."
Lydia has a moment of actual, pure panic before she turns back to Kira. "My coyote and fox are skinwalkers."
"No!" Malia insists, wrenching Lydia back around by the arm. "We are not skinwalkers. We shapeshift. Kira is a kitsune, she told you that already. Pay attention."
"And what are you?" Lydia demands, pushing Malia's hand off but standing her ground.
Malia looks behind Lydia, at Kira, and then back. Before she can answer, Kira places a hand on Lydia's shoulder. "She's just a werewolf."
Looking at Kira over her shoulder, Lydia bites off, "Oh, fantastic. She's not a skinwalker, she's just a werecoyote." Shaking off Kira's hand, Lydia backs away from them and toward the direction of the road. "This is... Don't follow me," she demands, pointing between them. She has no faith they might listen, but asserting the demand is the best she can do on short notice. They have the upper hand, after all.
The rain is still the same persistent, light drizzle and the road is slick with it, but she makes it home without incident or the need to scream.
It takes her four days to put on her boots again, grab a pizza and hope the women are still in the woods. Mostly because, as it turns out, she was never exaggerating about them being her only friends here.
Conversations like this, she finds, always go better with pizza.
After five minutes of wandering through the woods and yelling for Kira and Malia, she stumbles back upon the copse of trees. She walks around it a few times, trying to remember from which two trees Malia had emerged. Lydia was invited in for dinner, so there must be something in there, even if it is just a bowl of grubs.
She shudders. Under no circumstances is she okay with that idea.
"Hello?" She calls, poking her head between two of the trees. "Malia? Kira?" She waits a minute before she goes on, "I want to talk to you both."
When no one responds, she adds, "I brought pizza."
Suddenly, Malia slides into view between two of the densely packed trees. "Pizza?" Her eyes hit the box and she reaches out to grab it. "This is a start, but if you ever want us to forgive you we also need-"
"Pizza is fine," Kira cuts in, from somewhere behind Malia. "Why don't you come in?"
Lydia looks around at nothing but densely packed trees. The pizza will probably squish to one side before Malia ever opens it. Behind her is the forest, woods that she has spent a lot of time wandering and talking to.
In the dark pit of trees that the copse actually is, are Kira and Malia.
She carefully wanders in, trying to get her eyes to adjust to the low light. She follows Malia by sound around a few more trees until a lamp lights the way to a stairwell. From down it, Kira calls up that they should hurry before the cheese completely congeals.
"I would eat this pizza if it had broccoli and gumdrops on it," Malia says, apparently more for Lydia than Kira by her tone, as she leads Lydia down the stairs. "I'm so tired of deer and wild berries."
"We had rabbit three times last week," Kira points out, sounding rather pained about it.
Lydia looks around and realises the place is an actual cave, not just something someone dug out. The stalagmites have been cut to height for furniture, like the couch covered in cushions or the counter. The stalactites are cut about head level, but have electrical wires strung through them. "You have electricity in your underground cave?" She can hear water babbling, somewhere deeper in the cave.
"Yeah, Kira's a thunder kitsune," Malia explains, with half a slice of pizza in her mouth.
Popping a mushroom in her mouth, Kira explains, "We have a power bank, I charge it up when it gets low. We have running water, sort of."
"No drains," Malia adds.
Lydia looks around as Kira hands her a piece of pizza, on a plate. "Why? And how?"
Sharing a long look, Kira and Malia seem to have an entire conversation before Malia sighs. "I found it when I first started shifting. I lived here for a long time, then Kira came and made it nice."
Leaning over, Kira kisses Malia on the cheek and Malia beams at her.
"It's nice. We get a lot of privacy; we can cook whatever we can hunt. We're trying to set up a garden but we both have black thumbs."
Lydia looks around. The place is warmer than she might expect but still a bit chilly. And vaguely damp. "What about people? Your families? Are you just missing or do you contact them?"
Kira smiles and it shines as friendly as every smile she gives, but it looks tight. "We aren't talking about that. It's nice down here."
"I have a house; that's nice, too."
"Yeah, but does your house turn into a swimming pool and death hazard during flood season?" Malia asks, a little cheeky. "No people, though. We like no people."
Lydia looks between them and takes a thoughtful bite of her pizza. She chews and swallows before she asks, "What about me?"
The smile Kira gives her does more than shine: it is radiant. "We like you, but you're not just people, either."
"So…" Lydia thinks about it as they eat, and the shapeshifters seem happy to give her that space.
When she finishes, Malia tells her, "It's getting dark; you should probably head back to your car before you lose the light."
"That's a really good idea." She hesitates, playing with the ends of her own hair. "Can I come back tomorrow?"
Sharing another look, Kira and Malia seem to have a much more heated discussion with no actual words and a lot of Kira's adorable eyebrow furrow.
Adorable. Lydia tugs on her own hair a little too hard, trying to banish the thought. This is the weirdest time to develop any kind of a thing for the underground fox shapeshifter, especially since she seems to maybe be with Malia.
"Take a few days," Kira tells her, tone cautious. "We'll be here, so take your time."
"What am I taking my time for?" Looking between them, Lydia tries to read the expressions they wear.
Malia bites her lip but Kira offers, softly, "Nothing yet, but just take it in. Us, and this." She waves at the cave. "Give it some thought."
Still not knowing what kind of thought she should be giving to what aspect of the evening, Lydia makes her way to her car in the dimming light.
Two days later, the rainy season kicks into high gear. Lydia steps into a puddle on her way out of work that The Little Mermaid could live in. She shakes it off, heading for her car and then home. She gets through choosing a menu for dinner before she remembers something Malia said.
The cave floods badly in the rain.
With determination, Lydia changes into new, dry clothes and her biggest boots before she hurries to the car with an armful of towels and a flashlight.
At the scenic ramp, she realises she has no idea how to get to the copse in the dark and that the rain will drown out her voice. Still, she pulls up the hood on her parka and clicks on her flashlight. It goes off before she finds anything, mostly because it reflects off the rain more than helping her see ahead of herself.
The woods themselves are a wet, swampy mess and the cracks of thunder followed strikes of lightning do not help Lydia feel reasonable about her choices.
In fact, by the time she finds the copse, the rain has lightened to a dull drizzle and Lydia is more wet than the trees. Still, she hurries in and wanders her way through the trees until she sees that guiding light near the staircase, calling out for Kira and Malia.
"Lydia?" Malia yells, as Lydia hurries down the stairs.
Malia and Kira are in the bed on the far cave wall, hewn from the stone itself and topped with more pillows than Lydia would know what to do with. The water is in, a couple of inches, but not something that they seem to think is an emergency.
Kira pushes back the covers, naked and tired-looking. "What are you doing? It's so late, did you get lost in the woods?"
"It's raining." When they look at her, Lydia clarifies, "It was raining, and you said this place flooded. I wanted to see that you were okay." After all, they are her only friends. She can worry about her coyote and fox.
"Yeah, fine," Malia offers, eyeing the water on the floor distastefully. "It recedes, eventually."
Lydia looks around, finally feeling like she can catch her breath. "Well, you could still…come with me. And not be in a cave full of water. And electricity." She feels the electricity point can hardly be overstated. "I have a house."
"You told us that," Malia points out, looking at Kira for confirmation.
When Kira nods, Lydia sighs. "I know. I just. Water and electricity really don't mix. And I have a nice, dry house and a drawer full of delivery menus."
Malia lights up at that and turns to Kira. "She has a point, Kir."
"You just want pizza."
"I forgot how good pizza is."
"We can go, but just for tonight. We need to get back and dry this out before another storm hits.
Lydia breathes a sigh of relief. "Thank you. I'll be a lot saner if-" She squeezes her eyes closed and bites back the wail because a woman name Lois just died in town. When she reassociates, feels her limbs heavy and wet, Kira and Malia are next to her. "If I know you're both safe," she finishes, feeling weak about it.
They let it pass and lead her up the stairs. The walk to the car is long, but much shorter than trying to find the copse was in the dark. Having Malia and Kira probably helps, as well.
The rain sticks around steadily, in drizzle or downpour, for three days. Despite Kira's insistence that they need to dry out the cave, Malia is apparently practiced in the art of making Kira do what she wants.
What Malia wants is to curl up with Kira and eat whatever food she can have delivered.
When the rain does stop, Kira says the water level in the cave will be too high to do anything about it after not being handled for so many days.
Then, it starts to rain again. While they never talk about it, Lydia thinks they want to wait until the worst of the torrents have passed before they go home.
Then, the worst of the torrents pass and Lydia comes home from work to find Malia and Kira sitting at the table looking very serious, and wearing clothes. Both are weird.
"This isn't about pizza," Malia tells her, first thing. "Though, I'm not against it."
Kira grabs Malia's hand and they squeeze at one another before Kira takes a deep breath. "We have lived out there for a while. Malia found the cave when she was eleven, and had been shifted for two years. Then, when we met, I brought electricity and power tools and we tried to make it into a real home." She looks at Malia and smiles gently, a small one that Lydia only ever sees directed at the werecoyote. "But our home is with each other."
"And now," Malia adds, "with you, if you're okay with that."
Lydia freezes because she does not want to live in the cave. Being with Kira and Malia is the best her life has ever been; when she wakes up to bite off a wail in the middle of the night, Malia is already rushing in the room with Kira hot on her heels.
Kira cooks breakfast because they probably need to live on more than delivery food but Lydia likes that, not the idea of living in a cave and eating rabbit three nights a week.
"We think we could maybe go back to the cave when we clean it up," Kira offers softly, dejectedly. "But we really want to be with you."
"And a den of skunks moved in," Malia offers. "We ran out there today and it's wrecked."
Rubbing her thumb along Malia's, Kira goes on, "But even if that wasn't true, we want to stay here. With you."
Lydia sags with relief. "I thought you wanted me to move into the cave and I was going to have to draw a line. You both staying here is all I want. Having you…" She presses her lips together thoughtfully. "Having you both here has been good."
Nothing is ever that simple, but just for the rest of the day it sure feels like it could be. They refuse to worry about anything because Lydia is finally sure they want to stay with her.
They can worry later, she figures, when she finally kisses Kira as Malia nips along her jaw. One last storm for the season starts outside and Lydia is just happy her girls are inside, with her.