Epilogue FEELS LIKE LOVE #2
Genevieve is already in the gazebo. She turns leisurely, acting like she hadn’t heard me coming the moment I’d stepped foot in the forest. She’d quit her job back in the city, and now uses her skills on people in the village or nearby towns.
Every morning, most of the villagers join us for a jog and a brief exercise routine, before the farmers go off to their farms, the fishermen go off to the stream, and the traders head into the larger towns close by to trade.
That simple act of community in the mornings has made Ghenelo really feel like home.
I can feel myself settling into its soil, my roots sinking in deep.
Genevieve’s afro is dyed a deep green, and is in a fresh fade with two sharp partings on the right.
She no longer wears the face of my ancestor, at least, not entirely; her eyes, nose, and lips are a little bigger.
Her irises swallow half her sclera, and all her teeth are just a little pointed.
Her skin is a shade darker and warmer. Goddamn, she’s so fucking handsome.
Those full, unpainted lips quirk, her nostrils flaring. Even under the shade of the gazebo, her brown skin glows in the light of the sun. “Welcome home, omemi.”
I use the stairs on the left; the other is covered in gifts and offerings for my oerhwu ancestor below.
She laughs as I practically fly into the gazebo and jump into her arms, planting a smacking kiss on her lips. Her muscular arms go around my waist, holding me tight. I adjust my position, straddling her properly as we deepen the kiss.
“Hi,” I say when I need to breathe.
“Hey.” Her mouth tilts up in the corner. “Good day?”
“Yes.” I beam. “Chidinma finally asked me, by the way.”
“Oh yeah? You see what I said, abi?”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re always right; whatever.”
“I am always right,” Genevieve says, shoving her face into my neck and snuffling.
I giggle helplessly. She nips at my throat and I giggle again, shivering when the slightly sharp sting tells me her teeth are more pointed than normal.
I’m about to inquire about her own day when I notice she’s gone completely still.
Around us, the garden and the surrounding forest have gone deathly silent.
It’s a Pavlovian response at this point, the way my heart leaps into my throat and my stomach dips, then clenches.
She scrapes sharp claws down my back. I make an embarrassing noise, arching helplessly as they tear easily through my dress, leaving thin, stinging cuts in their wake.
“Do you think,” she begins, her voice a low growl, “if I tried hard enough this time, I could finally get you pregnant?”
Jesus Christ.
I pull back, slowly, stretching the moment out, my pulse thudding with lust and fear and excitement.
Her eyes are entirely black.
She grins, revealing two rows of sharpened, animal teeth.
“Run.”
I hiss in a soft breath, then I’m scrambling off her lap and darting toward the back gates, which swing noiselessly open at my approach.
My cheeks hurt with how hard and wide I’m grinning. I leap over roots and branches and rocks, using the eshé to simultaneously boost my movements as well as hide them.
I don’t look behind me, even though every snap of a twig, every crunch of a dry leaf has me biting back frightened gasps.
It doesn’t matter how fast or how far I run, though; I know Genevieve is always going to catch me.
Rosemary always grows quiet and withdrawn whenever we visit Maraya Forest. I don’t intrude on her silence, knowing its what she needs.
The trees we’d planted when we’d buried her father and mother respectively have fully matured, towering as tall as the rest of the forest around it, the only evidence of their ages in their barks and roots.
We stand solemnly before them, both of us dressed in dark green.
Rosemary has said her little greeting, and we’ve left our offerings.
Sometimes, we perform a proper ceremony to celebrate and remember them like we do for Rosemary’s other oerhwu ancestors, but I’d been able to tell, from the moment we’d woken up, that this was going to be one of the more sombre visits.
I still remember the last time her mother had come to see us; Christ, that had been what? A little over thirty years ago? Rosemary had hated her visits, especially toward the end there, though she’d never said nor done anything to indicate it.
Dominique Oronariode had still been strong and spry for someone nearly a hundred, but every single one of those years had shown on her face and her frame.
She’d clung heavily to a walking stick—a fancy, polished wooden thing I know must’ve been carved from one of the trees in this very forest, just like the beads at the end of Rosemary’s braids, and the new bangles circling her wrists.
Aunty Dominique’s limbs had trembled when she stood for too long.
Living with an oerhwu had made me more sensitive to the eshé, which meant I’d felt it every time she’d pulled at the current to keep herself upright, even when the effort left her panting, her heart beating hard. Rosemary had obviously felt it, too.
That final time, as she’d always done, Aunty Dominique had attempted to go to the back of the house, first thing, to pay her respects to her oerhwu ancestor.
The walls of the house had vibrated, attempting to part to let her through.
The house had only just been coming back to life, but slowly, it’s new eshé a combination of the spiritual current already seeped in from my ancestors over the years, along with Rosemary’s and I’s steady, lingering presence.
Aunty Dominique kissed her teeth, whacking the end of her walking stick on the floor.
“Ey. Did I ask for your help?”
“Mummy,” Rosemary complained.
Her mother scoffed. “I’m not an invalid. Help me take my things upstairs while I visit your great-aunt.” My lips twitched. “I saw that.” I flattened my expression.
Rosemary laughed.
I grinned, satisfied.
The sadness returned after we were done with dinner. Aunty Dominique had dozed off in front of the television, her hand, loosely clutching the remote, resting on her frail chest.
Rosemary had been staring, her own chest heaving. She’d watched her father just like this before he’d passed, drinking him in almost without blinking, wanting desperately to commit every inch of his final days to memory.
I could tell it wasn’t long before her mother would follow suit.
Those days had been a painful reminder of Rosemary’s immortality, had made her rage and curse at the gods and at her ancestors for blessing her with a curse.
That night, I’d told her to pad our walls with eshé—wrap it so tight not a single sound escaped.
Then I’d fucked her, hard. I’d make her come, over and over and over again, with my hands, my mouth, and my body, in as many shapes and forms as she could take.
I feasted on her until she forgot about anything but two of us inside that bed.
And when I was pulling the final orgasm from her, when she couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t stop pleading—I sank my fangs into her neck and drained her blood.
I didn’t stop until her body went soft and still.
Then I waited as she healed, as her blood quickly replenished itself, her heart pumping feverishly after that brief, delicious pause when it’d been still in death.
The eshé rushed to her form, as though, even unconscious, it still responded to her, filling her, aiding her recovery.
I kissed her when she’d taken her first breath, and she’d clutched me tight. We exchanged kisses as she strengthened up with her eshé-enchanted caramel.
She fell into a dead sleep immediately after, her head thankfully empty, and I smiled as I did the same.
I’d woken up a few hours later to find her missing from the bed.
My heart had leapt with fear. It’s a testament to how safe I feel around her that I hadn’t even noticed her leave.
She’d known it, somehow, when her father had been about to pass. He and Aunty Dominique had visited, just like this, and sometime in the night, he was gone.
My knees had nearly buckled when I sharpened my hearing and picked up the sound of their voices outside, in the gazebo.
Rosemary had just finished saying something when I tuned in, the silence warm and comfortable.
I was about to tune back out, to leave them to their privacy, when Aunty Dominique’s next words made me pause.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”
The responding silence felt weighty. “Mummy,” Rosemary began, but it sounded like, please, don’t.
Aunty Dominique kissed her teeth. “Eh, stop it. Enough of that. Let’s be frank, eh? We’re both adults here. We both know I’m not much longer for this world.”
“Mummy.” Rosemary’s voice was thick.
“I don’t want to have any regrets when I’m traversing the otherworld, or in my next life. So, I’m just going to say it. I’m sorry.” I frowned. “I don’t think you understood what I did back then.” Aunty Dominique swallowed. “When you were five—or was it six?—years old.”
Another weighty pause.
“I understood,” Rosemary whispered. “Eventually.”
I heard Aunty Dominique swallow again. “I’m sorry, edémi.
I wish—I made a mistake. It’s not an excuse, but I was panicking, and I needed to be sure, but I still shouldn’t have done it.
Perhaps if I hadn’t, you wouldn’t have thought that was the only way to please those useless girls in your school, to get them to befriend you—”
“Mummy—”
I’d tuned out then, choking down the rage I still sometimes felt for those girls. Rosemary no longer woke with nightmares of that time, but still. I used to fantasise about going to Maraya to track them all down, give them a taste of their own medicine. Except, of course, they’d never wake again.
That night, as I’d predicted, and Rosemary had feared, Aunty Dominique had taken her final breath.
In the present, Rosemary presses a kiss to the tips of her fingers, then touches them to each tree, her final gesture of “farewell” and “see you soon”.
She turns to look at the village in the distance, as she always does.
“Thinking about visiting?” Everyone who’d ever known her is probably either really old, or already dead and gone.
Rosemary shakes her head. She turns to smile at me. “Let’s go home.”
That night, when the tide of grief inevitably comes, devastating and inescapable, I turn a needy and willing Rosemary onto her back, then gently and thoroughly take her apart.
“I’m still here, do you hear me?”
“Yes, yes—”
“I’m not leaving. I’m never going to leave you. Are you hearing me, Rosemary?”
“Yes, yes, oh please,” and she comes, arching into my mouth.
When we’re completely wrung out, the sheets still covered in a mess of sticky, drying blood and other bodily fluids, I lean up one elbow.
She’s lying beneath me, breathing softly and deeply, a small smile of contentment curving her mouth. It makes me smile, too.
“Do you want to do something?” I ask, stroking my hand down her plump breast and soft stomach, smearing a few trails of blood where they haven’t completely dried.
It’s a shame her favourite colour’s green; she looks stunning in red.
“Travel somewhere new, maybe? We can go tomorrow, if you’re up to it.
” She’s learned how to master the eshé enough to let her bend space and time, as easy as breathing.
There’d been a sense of urgency after her mother had died, where she’d made a bucket list in an attempt to live life to the fullest. She hadn’t wanted her parents—or her ancestors—to think she was taking their gift for granted. Everywhere we went, she used her abilities to help.
She blinks, looking at me. “I don’t know.” She frowns, then smiles. “Actually, you know what? No. I think I want to stay right here, if you don’t mind.”
“Whatever you want, magical girl.” I smile, rolling over until I’m properly on top of her, pressing her into the bed. “We have time.”
Her entire being lights up as it does every time I say it, like the words are a vow. She’s no longer afraid of the future, not when I’m still here. Not when she knows, now, as surely as she knows her name, that she’s not alone, and she never will be; not as long as I have anything to do about it.
“Yes, omemi.” She sighs, melting into bed underneath me. “I believe we do.”
She moans when my tongue changes shape, lengthening and thickening, trying to fill her mouth and slither down her throat.
“Already?” she gasps when I pull back to let her breathe, but she’s arching into me, her scent wickedly hot. “Didn’t you eat this morning?”
“Who says I’m hungry?” I murmur huskily, nipping at her earlobe with sharp teeth.
She shivers. “Lie again.”
I laugh breathlessly. Then I turn serious. I’m speaking before I’ve thought it through, words I’ve been trying desperately to suppress for weeks—months, bursting from my mouth like confetti.
“What’ll happen if I swallow you whole, Rosemary?
” My voice comes out inhuman despite my efforts, scraping through my throat like rocks.
Her breath hitches. My mouth floods with saliva, my gut clenching with how badly I want it.
It’s terrifying and exhilarating, how my love for her, so all-consuming, makes my hunger such an insatiable thing. “Will you still come back to me?”
“Yes.” She’s panting. “Yes. Always.”
Her scent is rich with fear. I drink it in hungrily, with a fear of my own. Because I know she’s not afraid that I’ll do it—at least not without her consent. No, she’s afraid she’ll say yes.
She’s afraid she’ll beg for it.
Fuck.
I keep my face buried in her throat when I whisper, “But, is it—?”—Am I—“too much? Do you want me to stop?” Terrified she’ll say yes. Even more terrified she’ll say no.
“Don’t stop,” she whispers, kissing my cheek. My jaw. Arching her back and pressing her breasts against mine. “Don’t you ever stop, Genevieve.”
I kiss her hard.
And when she dies for me, that too, feels a lot like love.