Page 70 of Lagoon

Oh, he’d done it. She was back to normal, no strange, scaled skin, nothing.

She touched her human skin, tears forming in her eyes.

A knock at the door.

Her head jerked up. “Yes?”

“It’s me.” Luther’s voice.

“Come in,” she squeaked, tugging down her gown.

Luther was in a hospital gown too. He was pulling along an IV. And he was entirely human again.

She let out another squeak.

He gave her a half-smile. “I just woke up, too.”

She climbed out of bed—oh, she was hooked to an IV, too, could she take that along?

But he was there.

She put her hands on his chest, tentative.

He touched her face, searching her gaze.

She went up on tiptoe and captured his lips with her own.

He wrapped his arms around her and deepened the kiss.

Then, she pulled away. “We’re going to be okay.”

“I think so,” he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

IN THE MORNINGS, Riley liked to swim in the lagoon.

Sometimes, Jonathan joined her, and sometimes she swam alone. She liked it out here, in the morning, the sounds of the birds and the animals as the sun struggled into the air. From the moment she’d arrived here, she’d felt as if this was home.

They belonged here, her and Jonathan, in the depths of the deep tangles of nature, with their fingers right on the pulse of discovering its secrets.

They’d never been like other humans, not really. They’d always been this, she thought, strange and different, a little monstrous, flattened in their emotional responses, and eager for one thing—discovery.

The sex part had been distracting, but they’d managed an injection that had tamed their urges to the point where they were still quite prominent but not so prominent that they distracted them from study.

They’d had nearly viable eggs three times now.

One had matured for over two months before it had just stopped growing at one point.

They didn’t know why it wasn’t working.

The truth was, it had taken evolution a long time to figure out the ins and outs of creating a human being. It might take their whole lifetimes to figure it out, she supposed.

But when they did, she’d swim in this lagoon with her children—hers and Jonathan’s—and they’d finally have created something just like them, something new and perfect and wondrous.

For now, her life was nearly as perfect as it had ever been.

She woke and swam. She had this around her, all around her, nature. She felt connected to the trees and the sky and the water. To it all.

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