Expensive Love (but darn well worth it)

The rain began to fall in tiny whisps, hardly enough to be called droplets, yet not so fine as to be a misting rain but still, gaining momentum in the Singaporean jungle forrest.

Daggerfjord felt as rejuvenated as the drops of moisture rising up from the depths of distant seas and carried by winds on high to rinse the jungle peat from he and his jungle princess.

A small cuplet of water formed in the frond of a catacleiss plant just beside the pair and in an instant a voice broke the jungle silence.

"Daggerfjord. It is I, Platu. You've probably never heard of me, but I was with your father's father on San Juan hill"...

A look of confusion added to what is already a typically confused look and forced Daggerfjord's face to take on the likeness of a primate. A higher primate, to be sure (not like a Gibbon, but more, a lemur or ring-tailed monkey - with a little more effort he could have resembled, although not entirely as his lanky frame would not allow it, but of or like a silver-back Gorilla, or perhaps Orangutan, but again, it would have taken some effort, but, perhaps, not too much).

Hans began to wonder if there was more in her kiss than met the eye. It is not often he has heard voices coming from water collected in the fronds of a leaf and especially not of someone connected to his relative.

He had heard of Platu before. His father liked to talk of the times that his pop spent with Teddy Roosevelt during the war, and in later years in the Amazon. Platu had been an almost mythical figure that his father would relate as some paragon of higher reason and thought.

To hear his father tell it, Platu was solely responsible for all modern conveniences - or at least, his musings were the inspiration for the same.