"Darling, I’m home!"

Alba hurried through the apartment, almost running, and without any effort lifted Ángeles, who met her at bedroom’s door, up in the air and danced with her around the room before collapsing on the bed – very carefully, so Ángeles would not be crushed under her but sit on top of her as a result instead. The latter leaned forward and gave Alba a long kiss, and the tiredness of 24-hour flight slowly melt away.
"How was Singapore, love?” Ángeles said when their lips finally parted.
“Good… I guess. But I haven’t much free time for sightseeing. We should go there together, shouldn’t we? I missed you terribly.”
“I watched live broadcast,” She always did, no matter what time difference was and no matter how many times Alba told her to have a good rest from her instead, because she would return hungry, and not for American food. “Awesome, as always.”
“Yeah, that girl was really good,” Alba admitted and grinned, remembering slim Asian who attacked her with the flexibility of a snake and all the determination of a petite tank before Alba knocked her out in the beginning of the second round. “It was a pity it had to end so quickly. She insisted on rematch on the same evening, though... And the next morning too. Not sure who won last time, but I’m pretty sure that nobody lost.”
“So that’s why you haven’t done any sightseeing? I knew it.”
Both women laughed. It was usual for them to have some adventures now and then, and the most important thing, of course, was to be honest with each other about it. Perhaps, that explained how they managed to keep the vigor that relatively small number of couples who had been married for ten years possessed. Maybe Alba’s work, often demanding her to be away from home, had its part in it too, for there is nothing like distance that kindles the fire in family’s hearth. (Has it really been only ten years? Feels like a whole life or maybe several lives already.)
“By the way, that’s Cristo, I mentioned him, remember?”
“Oh, hi, Cristo,” Alba said amiably, pulling out one hand which was already resting comfortably under Ángeles’ short silk nightgown and extending it in his direction, offering a handshake. “Alba, Ángeles’ wife”.

Alba had to admit that this was the most imaginative explanation she heard in similar situations, by far outshining all the pizza delivery, repairmen and babysitters (they don’t even have any babies! People watch too much porn nowadays, seriously.) A robotic snake took her by surprise too: she even tensed for a second before she could clearly see (and hear) that it wasn’t a real thing (because you never know what you could find in people’s bedroom. Alba once had a lover who had kept tarantulas that escaped on a regular basis, so she had always entered his apartment cautiously… but this was her own apartment and her own bedroom, so she was rather conservative about what kind of things could be there and what could not. Well, maybe conservative was not exactly the right word to describe it, but still, good-looking men with a good sense of humor were definitely in this range, and reptiles – not like she ever gave it a thought, but – generally, they were not what she would be glad to find in her bed.)
“Cero? I hope there are no Uno and Dos lurking around?” She glanced at the blanket suspiciously, but found nothing else except for Cristo, whose presence she didn’t mind so far. She was slowly realizing, though, what Ángeles meant when she described him like “err… a very interesting guy, yeah, really fun to be around… you’ll see”.
“And wow, Ángeles, I never knew you were into… that sort of things.”
Ángeles let out an indignant cry and tried to hit Alba with a pillow. That was to difficult to accomplish, because said pillow rested under Alba’s shoulders, and Ángeles had little chances to move her away if she didn’t want to move. And Alba felt too good to move now. She had really missed home.
“Well, this is very considerate of you, isn’t it? And what is Cero’s work?” Alba said to the new acquaintance, after a little fight over the pillow ended in Ángeles giving up, and Alba got one more kiss for a prize. Her small talk got an unexpected interruption, though, that caused Alba’s expression to change into mix of confusion and almost childish curiosity. “Hey! It’s… it’s crawling on me!” While finishing the phrase, she automatically caught a robo-snake (it immediately coiled around her wrist) and brought it to her face to have a better look.

Alba and Ángeles sometimes joked that it was easier to find a woman or a man to join them in bed than to choose a place for vacation that would suit them both. Alba had a great variety of hobbies, but grew bored very quickly if there was not even slightest risk involved, and Ángeles valued comfort more. Alba often complied: it’s not like she disliked comfort, after all, and Ángeles knew some ways to shake off her boredom; however, Alba too knew a couple of tricks to lure her wife far away from five-star hotels, museums and art galleries once in a while. For example, Ángeles liked nature, no, she loved it, and it was easy to convince her that wildlife parks were just nothing compared to the paths that, perhaps, had never been trodden by a human being before them. And think of all the photos you could take! Oh yes, Ángeles thought about her photos indeed. That was why, as always, their tent, clothes, food and other necessities were all tightly stuffed into Alba’s backpack, and Ángeles’ backpack, much lighter but almost of the same size, contained one of her cameras and the photography equipment of all sorts. She was going to use less than half of that, but she enjoyed being prepared for everything (that never stopped her from making Alba stand neck-level in river holding her while she takes the photo of some water snake that couldn’t be caught on camera other way).
“I’m not carrying that!” Alba protested when she saw a tripod, looking very stable, but heavy and barely folding, miraculously appearing from somewhere out of Ángeles’s suitcase as they were preparing to leave the town with airport and with it all the civilization behind and move to the real jungle.
“You’re not, he is!” Ángeles smiled innocently. “You promised to help me with my things, right, Cristó? Here you go!” He also got a smaller tripod, the one that Ángeles used usually (that is, when she had no spare hands to order around), and a couple of lamps. And as she, rather unceremoniously, checked Cristó’s backpack to see if some heavy lens would also fit in there, that was the moment when Cero chose to show himself.
“You found each other, you geeks,” Alba could only chuckle.

Something – common sense, perhaps – warned Alba that this might be not as good idea as it seemed, it really did warn her, but how could she refuse when Angeles looked at Cristobal with such shining eyes and was so curious about what the insides of the cave might hold? And – fine, perhaps Alba was curious too. And they were still far enough, and even had a mean to investigate before getting too close.
“I want to! Show me, how does it work?” Angeles snatched the phone from Cristo’s hands, returned to Alba and waved her hand, beckoning him closer. Alba was sitting on the ground, Angeles placed her head on Alba’s lap, and Cristobal had to sit (or lie) near to explain. It was all too fun for anything to go wrong. Cave was obviously empty, with a lots of picturesque bones scattered around, so first they took some selfies (what a pity we don’t have cellular here), laughing and making faces, and then Angeles started her serious photography with light, tripods and all that.
“Have patience, you two! I don’t want to post my photos in that cringy Facebook group again because of you, I want to do something good, okay?”
“Those photos were good too, love,” Alba laughed. “Just… in their own unique way. I liked the flying fish especially.”
“It was a bird!”
“Are you sure? It definitely looked like…”
“It looked like you should stop distracting me!”
“Okay, okay, just can I borrow this? Alas, poor Yorick! Do you think it can be covered in gold?” Alba asked Cristo. She picked up a clean skull of some little animal, contemplated it for a while (she knew someone who might have appreciated a gift of goblet made from a skull), but put it back on the ground (on the second thought, it would probably be too small to be of use for him, and he’d probably prefer human skull anyway, and unfortunately – fortunately, of course – no human skulls were seen around).

Alba was the first one to hear something… wrong.
“Do you hear it too?” she said.