Page 27 of Love in the Wild

“Uncles love their family,” Eden said, her tone heavy with meaning. “Your uncle, the brother of your father—he would want to meet you.”

Thorne didn’t want to think about his human family. It was too much for him to understand. He tried to distract Eden by pointing at her black object.

“What is this?” he asked as the box clicked again.

Eden scooted closer to him and turned the object around. Something on its surface reflected his image back at him, like a lake but brighter. Only it wasn’t reflecting what he was currently doing, but rather it showed him pointing at himself. She pressed something, and then the box showed him wrestling with Akika. It was as though she had captured the past. He touched the image with one finger, only to find it had no depth. Its surface was hard.

“This is a camera. It takes pictures. Pictures are images of what you see.” She pointed to the screen and then touched the camera. Suddenly he could see grass moving beneath them.

“Here. Hold it like this and point it at me.” She helped him hold the camera so he could see her face in the hard surface.

“Then press this.” She touched the silver circle. “When you hear a click, it will take my picture.”

Thorne held the box in his hands, steady and quiet. Eden smiled, and he pressed the circle. A click sounded. He stared at the picture of her, frozen in place. He could have stared at it forever.

“Like my parents and me.” He was focusing hard on the language again. He spoke full sentences when he thought about it, and he was trying to use different words like Eden did. He wanted to sound like her.

“Yes, remember the picture we found in the white rock? A photograph. Someone took that of your parents and you.”

Thorne looked at her picture in the camera before handing it back to her. “You have picture of my family?”

“Oh, right. Yes.” She opened the dark animal skin pouch that she used to carry the camera. He saw his father’s journal tucked inside. She opened the journal and handed him the photograph. He gazed down in fresh wonder at his parents’ faces, and then he looked around at the gorillas resting in the shade.

Two families. Two different fates. The life he should have had, and the life he had been given. His throat tightened as he wondered what his life would have been like if he’d never met Keza and hadn’t been raised alongside Akika. Yet at the same time his heart burned with rage that he would never know his human parents or have a life with them.

He wiped angrily at the tears that coated his cheeks. He didn’t want to feel so helpless, so hurt by the knowledge of what he had lost. Eden gently took the photo from him and placed it back in the journal. She then curled her arms around him, resting her cheek against his shoulder. His arms went instantly around her in return, holding her close.

A shiver of need ran through him. Hewantedthis female, wanted her in ways he barely understood. The weight of her body leaning into his and the sweet scent of her skin and hair left him breathless.

Had she been a gorilla, he would have known how to show his interest in mating her. He would have held her gaze and stayed close to her, offering his interest and protection until she chose to accept or reject him. But Eden was from another world, one he understood only a little, and what little he knew frightened him.

She moved so she could sit across his stretched-out legs and tucked her face against his throat. Her warm breath fanned against his skin, and he was blissfully tortured by the need to touch her more. Perhaps she would kiss him again. But even if she didn’t, it felt good to simply hold her.

He caught his mother’s eyes. Keza hooted softly in approval. He hooted back, and Eden lifted her head, their eyes holding each other.

“You’re speaking to them, aren’t you?”

He nodded.

“But how? The noises you make, are they words like what we’re using?”

It took Thorne a moment to understand her meaning. He shook his head. “No. Not like us. Sounds, looks, moves all have meaning. Thorne understands.”

It was difficult to explain. He understood the animals of the jungle in a way that human words could never convey, and they in turn understood him. He did not know why, since the gorillas could not speak to the birds or elephants the way he could. He simply could.

“And what is she saying?” Eden asked.

“Keza is happy.”

“Is she happy because of me?” Eden’s lovely leaf-colored eyes seemed to glow.

“Yes. Keza has waited a long time for Thorne to find a mate.”

Eden’s face darkened to that pretty shade of red he saw so often. He reached up to brush the backs of his knuckles over her cheek.

“Why do you turn red?” he asked.

“What?”

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