fh_trips | Banyan Tree Resort, Saturday [Morning / Afternoon]

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fall break 2012: kruger park & seychelle

Banyan Tree Resort, Saturday [Morning / Afternoon]

Yesterday's clouds hadn't left the sky: in fact, visitors could expect the odd spot of rain today. Not that the temperature had dropped, rising one degree to 28 celsius - or 82 degrees Fahrenheit.

But don't let the rainclouds chase you off: there was still plenty to do, including an island-hopping cruise arranged especially for the school (Lovey Howell didn't do things by halves). Enjoy yourselves!

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Cade slanted his eyes at her. "Something you aren't supposed to be blabbing?" he guessed.

Mercy blushed a little. "Kind of. I guess I sort of have permission to talk about some of it, but I really haven't. I'm still trying to figure all that out."

"Huh," Cade said usefully. "Something big?"

She couldn't help but laugh. "You have no idea."

"Let me guess," Cade said. "Secret identity?"

Not that he knew about those. Really.

Mercy laughed. "In a way, but no, not really."

"Actually, here in Fandom it wouldn't be such a big deal, but where I'm from... Talking about it can get you severely punished or killed. People are only allowed to tell their spouses."

She sighed. "My guardian told me I can tell people here about me if I want, but I'm not sure if I can talk about the rest of it. And the rest of it is so tied up with who I am..."

"At home, I'd guess you were a Jedi," Cade said, frowning, "or part of the Empire in exile, but here I have no karking idea."

"A Jedi? Are you kidding?" She was a little wide-eyed at that. "I've seen some of them, I'm nothing as cool or important as they are!"

She'd certainly been told often enough by the werewolves just how unimportant and useless she was.

Cade snorted derisively at that. "The Jedi are pretty much exterminated at home. So much for cool and important."

That surprised her and her face undoubtedly showed it. "Wow. I guess that's not what I'd learned here, but if you're from the future... That's kind of sad."

"Still..." She shrugged. "I'm just... I..."

She looked around to see if anyone else was close enough to overhear her. "I can change into something else."

Cade was eager to change the subject away from Jedi anyway. "Into what?"

Now it felt kind of stupid to say it. "A coyote. I can shift into a coyote whenever I want."

She looked up at him nervously. "But you can't tell anyone okay?"

"Sure," Cade said easily. "What's a coyote?"

Mercy had to laugh. Of all the responses she might have considered, that had never been one she'd thought of. She pulled out her phone and called up a page on canis latrans.

"Here," she said, offering it to him. "It's a small animal, in the dog and wolf family."

"Oh, like the spirit animal things from a few weeks ago," Cade said. "Mine was a hyena."

She nodded. "Yeah. Not too different. So, anyway, yeah... It's why my mother didn't keep me. She walked in one day and found a coyote pup in the crib and... it was just too hard. So she found a safe place for me to live."

"Animal park?"

Beat.

"Or was that horribly insensitive?"

Probably the second thing, Cade.

"Yeah, that would have gone over well," Mercy said, half-laughing despite - or maybe because of - how horribly insensitive that was. "And then randomly there's a little naked toddler running around the animal park. I'd have lasted like 5 minutes."

She shook her head. "No, she found a great-uncle who was a were - um, who knew of a community where I wouldn't be as different and they found me foster parents there."

"That was a pretty nice abandonment, all things considered," Cade replied.

His mother hadn't even said goodbye.

"Yeah, it's not like she just dumped me and never came back," Mercy agreed. "We had those yearly vacations when she could get up to Aspen Creek."

"Next year you should ask to go to Africa," Cade said with a grin.

Her smile fell off a little. "Technically I live with her now. They made me leave Aspen Creek. And I'm not sure my mom's whole new secret family would be interested in going to Africa."

Cade's eyebrow quirked up. "Secret family?"

Mercy turned away slightly, staring out over the water for a moment before answering. "When they made me leave Aspen Creek - sent me back to my mother... Well, when I turned up on her doorstep, I found out that she was married with two kids. The oldest was only a couple years younger than me. She'd been coming to see me for 16 years and somehow forgotten to tell me she had a whole family back home?"

She sighed and turned back toward him. "The kicker is that they had no idea I even existed either till I showed up that day."

"Awkward," Cade said dryly.

Banyan Tree Resort, Saturday [Morning / Afternoon]

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