the werewolf convo
He opened his mouth to speak, but inhaled instead, and let it out as a sigh, the bottom of his lungs surprisingly wet. "Never mind."
"Or is it because you can't always save everyone, can only save yourself?"
Moone frowned, and bobbed his head into his pillow, settling it down onto one hand. “I said never mind. But, yes.” He sighed again. “Continue.”
"Here you are, talking about longing for missing excitement, but there’s something under that, isn’t there? It’s about putting others into the line of fire, and feeling guilty about that. When it’s just such a part of your life, and you forget that there can be collateral damage. And so you feel guilty about surviving, though anyone else failing to do the same, that logically isn’t your fault. And you’re afraid to go back into the world, or to lose my boon, because getting that action back into your life, it would bring up too much pain, meaning emotional pain.
“You lost a friend. It's fine. There’s nothing you could have done against it. It’s not your fault. Or is saying it’s not your fault, make you feel guiltier?"
Moone shook his head, staring up at the tent ceiling, expression blank and unreadable.
"Or was she... more than a friend? Did you... care for Cloud, at all? Romantically?"
Moone let something slip on his normally impassible face. "It wasn't like that between us. I would never have… not with her. She's not my type. Wasn’t my type, I guess. Though I still miss her."
There was a shadow that flitted over Pontifex's face. Moone wouldn’t know what it would mean for a long time. "So what is your type, then?" Pontifex asked.
Moone retreated back into himself slightly. "Not like Cloud."
"Like what, then? Men?"
Not like this. Exactly what he'd wanted just a minute earlier, but this seemed wrong, the wrong way to broach it. The Pontifex's body next to his suddenly felt uncomfortable, and Moone wanted to escape from every square inch pressing against his body in the cramped shelter. "I've never... Once. Once. A few years back. Friend of mine. We... I... well, I think I should keep silent on the matter. It's kind of a private deal."
The Pontifex nodded sagely. "And you're not, afraid of that?"
"It was... no. It's something different, something special. I'm not going to violate that. Not going to, go, swim off with a merman now, just because of one experience. I'm confident in my masculinity, and, what we did, I really have no regrets."
Pontifex lay back and looked up at the tent ceiling, buffeted at the moment by the weather outside, as if making an aside glance to God or performing the world's largest eye roll. He rolled to face Moone again. "Not afraid about that, afraid about..."
Moone all at once got it; AIDS was a huge concern, especially in such a community in such a time as Moone's encounter. He shrugged.
"Well, he had been a werewolf. Changed into a wolf form regularly... HIV only survives in a human host, and his DNA was altered, every, full moon or whatever. He'd probably contracted the virus in the past, yes probably, but then, just, turned into a wolf, and the virus died in him." The thought had never crossed his mind at all, to be afraid of that. As long as things worked the way he thought they did.
Pontifex chuckled. "That's not how werewolves work...."
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