Swiftcurrent Creek I love you will still sound the same

Dignity fought to loosen its hold on her, to let loose her famous Kesuk temper and swallow him whole, but she had been raised better. She didn't sputter out in disbelief at his claim nor try to cover it up with lies. She was guilty of what he blamed, no matter that delirium had gripped her that night. She could not lie to him, knowing he would see right through it anyway, and she had found evidence of his witness in the trace scent of his paws on the ground near where she had met Haunter.

But there were some half-truths, and she was quick to seize upon them in hopes of dispelling them. "I did not choose another," she protested, certain that he wouldn't care what she said but needing to say it anyway. "I chose you. What you saw... I was ill, grieving and not myself. I allowed the loa to paint a false reality in my eyes and deceive me." Was it truly the loa who influenced visions? Perhaps not, but Jinx believed it.

"I smelled the ocean, and... Thought of you. I did not realize it was someone else until... His touch cleared my mind. I left immediately." She was mad, that was what it boiled down to. She had been mad with grief for their lost children, mad with her religious zeal and need to please Sos, and mad with the scent Lecter had once been most known for. Now, he carried the tang of old blood on him always, a smell that warded away others but drew her near. But once, when she was but a babe, he had carried with him the scent of the ocean, be it from the air or the sea itself... Or maybe nostalgia coloured her memories of that, as well.