Neither Sky Nor Water
A Valentine’s morning at Iguazu: a camp stove, a thundering wall of water, and the day we chose not to go anywhere.
Through the haze of half-sleep I could hear his footsteps on the grass outside the tent. I pictured him sitting there, facing that thundering wall of water while his thoughts settled into stillness. The image of him, unshaken and calm in the middle of all that roar, felt like the safest place in the world. Maybe tomorrow we would fly over this jungle and watch the rainbow in the spray from above, or wrestle the rapids until the adrenaline set our blood on fire again. But in that moment, with his calm keeping watch on the other side of the canvas, I allowed myself the luxury of forgetting everything.
I slipped out of my sleeping bag, careful to make no sound, though I knew the roar of the falls and his deep concentration had sealed him off from the world. The grass was soft and wet under my bare feet, and the chill of the morning ran through me, yet the warmth inside refused to fade. His back was steady and still, the mist rising behind him like a milky wall. He looked like part of the landscape itself.
I found the little burner, the metal pot and the precious bag of Brazilian coffee. The smell travelled faster than I expected, tangling with moss and damp air. All the while the water stirred, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Was he already in the cockpit of that helicopter in his mind, or feeling the strength of the river beneath his feet?
I carried two steaming cups over and sat down beside him without breaking his peace, only pressing the warm metal into his hands. “Coffee’s ready,” I whispered, our shoulders touching. “Tell me, captain… where does that restless plan of yours take us today? Do we watch the rainbow from above, or go straight into its heart, where the water hits hardest?”
He took a sip of the hot, bitter coffee. “Did you manage to sleep, my lioness?”
“I did.” I leaned my head on his shoulder. “I slept the way you only sleep when you know someone is awake, guarding the world while you’re gone.”
The sun found its way through the canopy and warmed my face. “A lioness, you know,” I said. “I love heat, I love the sun, and they say we’re stubborn once we’ve set our minds on something. Though with you I’ve learned that even a lioness sometimes sits still and lets her captain lead.”
He was drawing slow circles in the dust with his foot, that offhand gesture of his that always hides either a deeper thought or a very good joke.
He turned the cup in his hands and looked at me, steady and unhurried, the way a man looks when he is always at the helm, even when the sea turns wild. “Do you know why I love it when you say lioness?” he said. “Because whatever I plan, you meet it with fire. I say sky, and you’re already reaching for the harness. I say water, and you’re already laughing at the rapids. And I only ask out of curiosity, my lioness, because you change every day. I manage to define you only for a moment, and every new version of you sets me alight.”
“Define?” I laughed softly, my gaze drifting to the rainbow above the abyss. “Can a lioness even be defined? Or would you rather I were like the map you study before setting off, clear, fixed and predictable?” I lowered my head onto his knee and looked up at him, the sun warming my skin, letting a fingertip trace the rim of his cup, slowly, knowing exactly what that does to him. “Maybe I change because your restlessness keeps pushing me past the edge of the known. Today I’m calm with this coffee. Tomorrow I may be screaming with excitement on the river. But that part of me is the one you woke, isn’t it? So what’s your verdict? Who am I this morning?”
“Mysterious,” he said. “Wrapped in a veil of secrets. I find you hard to decipher.”
“Then I’m your hardest assignment yet?” I smiled the way I smile when I know I’m winning. “Admit it: if I were transparent and easy to read, that brilliant mind of yours would be bored by the third day. This way you have to win me over again with every sunrise.”
✍︎ The Only Rule We Follow“Secrets are there to keep you awake. They’re like these falls: you see the power, you hear the roar, but you never know what hides in the thickest mist until you jump straight into it.”
— somewhere above the roar ❦
He was quiet for a moment. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you need to be exactly who you are… but I wonder why everything around me has to be so complicated. Do I invite it? Do I manifest it?”
“You wouldn’t recognise simplicity if it sat in your lap,” I said gently, with that pinch of teasing that always brings him back to earth. “You’re a man who looks for a formula in the breath of the wind and a symphony in the roar of waterfalls. Of course you attract it. You don’t want a stroll in the park, you want Iguazu. You don’t want a woman you can read like an instruction manual, but one who surprises you every time you think you’ve understood everything.”
He smiled, that small quiet smile that appears only when he stops asking why. “Sometimes I surprise even myself,” he said, stroking my hand. That smile was the only answer I needed.
“My lioness,” he said then, in that calm, unhurried voice that settles every storm in me, “today is Valentine’s Day, and we’re going nowhere. Today I’m keeping you right here. No flights, no rapids, no maps. Just us. What do you say?”
He hadn’t asked so much as decided, and I loved that. I set my cup down on the grass and turned to him completely, taking his face in my hands. Valentine’s Day in the heart of the jungle, and he had chosen peace over adrenaline. “That might be your bravest plan yet,” I whispered. “I say it’s perfect. More than perfect.”
I kissed him at the corner of his mouth, exactly where he had smiled a moment before. “Promise that brilliant mind won’t dream up some ‘little expedition’ the moment we finish our coffee? Because I’ve already fallen completely for this idea of peace.”
“It won’t,” he said, and I knew he meant it. “Scented candles, those delicacies we keep for moments of happiness, something sparkling in two glasses. And you, my lioness.”
“Happy Valentine’s Day, my explorer. Shall we start with the candles, before the morning mist has fully withdrawn?”
Sometimes the greatest adventure is daring to do nothing at all, only to be beside each other, with no plan and no hurry.
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