Some motion caught his attention, and he looked up to see Malina staring at him, her eyes wide.
‘What happened to your neck, Rowf?’ Her tone was a mixture of anger and fear.
He told her.
She sat on a small nearby divan, looking like a worried child.
‘No,’ he thought, realizing that his impressions of her were changing. In the same breath, he realized that it was she that was changing. She was growing, emotionally, and in other ways he couldn’t readily define. It suddenly dawned on him that he, too, was changing, or rather, that their relationship to each other was changing, growing, as well. His judgements of her were clouded by what she had been, that a matter of months ago she would have been sitting as she was, watching him with simple worry. Now, however, her concerns were definitely more mature, more complex.
This revelation caused him discomfort for a number of reasons; not only was their relationship deepening, but it dawned on him that she was more than the child or adolescent creature she had been. Much more. But his very life had become entwined with that process of maturing, and he suddenly felt, with a feeling like surprise or recognition, that their lives had become merged in some way.