He managed to do a little exercise; some push-ups, sit-ups, even chin-ups on a bough above him, and he was shocked at how weak he still was. He was breathing hard and in a sweat after only half of what he could he could do just to maintain his build. It irritated him, which made him push himself a little harder, knowing it would make him sore tomorrow, and not caring.

"Back to my old Canucklehead self, so I must be better," he grunted, and wiped the sweat off his brow.

He had a chance to look over the platform, and blinked at how high up they were ... the ground, if it was down there, was hidden in shadows and tree-limbs below him. He glimpsed a few lemurs racing through the branches below, and a sloth swinging along upside down on its long arms, surveying him sleepily with large, incredibly mild eyes.

"How did she get me up here?" he marveled to himself. "I am not a light fellah. She is a lot stronger then she looks."

He scented her again, that fresh rain and leaf smell, bounding through the trees at a rapid rate, then slowing down as she approached. He noted now that the wildlife around him did not pause or miss a beat while she was in their midst. It was as if she was one of them; and he guessed she was.

She appeared on the platform and looked at him, her nostrils flaring once, she started, and then laughed her birdsong laugh at him.

"You get stronger by the minute. Good, " she nodded, then looked down over the edge of the platform. "Ready to go down? I want a bath."

Since Logan doubted he was April-fresh either, he nodded. At least it would be something to do; he was getting restless. The mere thought of Sabretooth around, maybe close-by, made his fingers twitch for something to strangle. "Sure, lead the way, Guiana."

She smiled, and stepped off the platform into thin air.

At first, alarm screamed in his ears as he made a move to catch her; the nearest branch was thirty feet down at least. As he moved forward, knowing he was going to be just a bit too late, he watched a limb of this massive tree bend slowly up and to the right. It moved rather quickly, but it seemed methodical at the same time, assuming an angle that a tree would have to be trained to achieve over years in a few seconds. She caught it casually with one hand, and swung herself with one arm forward and down, where another bough, just as slowly, bent up to meet her feet as the first limb kept its unnatural seeming bend as if (waiting for me) waiting for a command to move back into place. After recovering from the strangeness of it, Logan chuckled softly.

"Nice trick, Guiana." And he leapt after her, keeping an eye on where she moved last, and watching above him as the tree limbs as big around as his biceps slowly bent themselves forward and moved themselves back into place with nothing more than a rustle of leaves.

She moved silently, effortlessly, swinging and landing with such efficiency of movement that Logan, no stranger to traveling in forests himself, was quite impressed, and felt almost clumsy after his long illness. Her hair bounced and tossed like the mane of a horse in full gallop, the dappling of the dim light crossing her lithe form in striped shadow and light green skin. He almost had a hard time keeping up with her, and though he tried to be quick and silent, he terrified more than a few monkeys and birds as he went by, though they stirred not at all when Guiana passed by them.

They never actually came down to the forest floor, but sort of leveled out and traveled more horizontally, which he figured was just as well. In the rainforest, very few things walked on the forest floor, and what did usually wasn't anything you wanted to meet with if you could help it. The canopy was only marginally less dangerous, but at least you could smell something coming, and didn't have to worry about what might be getting ready to jump onto your head. He passed a spider that could have easily straddled a dinner plate, and shuddered. He still wasn't down with spiders. Travelling through the trees was a good strategy to keep their scent off the ground as well, which was probably why Guiana had managed to dwell here, undisturbed, for a while.

Undisturbed at least, until now. Until Sabretooth had come. That was gnawing at Logan's brain even as he allowed his instincts and sense of smell to keep up with Guiana ahead of him. What was Sabretooth here for? Was it the gold? He knew that the highlands of Guiana were rather rich with gold, but why did Sabretooth need gold? He was a greedy cuss, true, but to travel to South America for gold seemed strange to him. Could it be that - and this thought made Logan angry and concerned at the same time - that, after who knew how many years (or centuries, she is older than just the girl she looks to be) that maybe her game of hide and seek had run out? Was is possible that Magneto's bag of assorted fruits and nuts were here to take Guiana and figure out what made her tick, even make them one of their own, just as they had tried to do with Logan? The thought made Logan growl in the back of his throat, and he felt his anger build. No, no way, that was not gonna happen. And he knew that it wouldn't because if she was really such a part of the forest as he thought she was, leaving the rainforest would be impossible for her. And what Magneto couldn't have, he destroyed.

"And Sabretooth will just love that, he always has," Logan growled. Logan had his feral side, when the human part of him took a leave of absence and he went wild. That was one thing. But Sabretooth was a full on, no-holds-barred sadist. Logan could remember one too many times when his old buddy had just brawled for the fun of it; when he had whipped the other person - man, woman, it didn't matter - broken and bloody, he used to laugh, his head thrown back and a cruel glint in his eyes. He liked to hear people beg for mercy, almost as much as he loved to hear them scream, like Silver Fox-

"Not gonna happen," Logan muttered, feeling the battle rage begin to surge, and even though there was no focus, no outlet, it didn't stop him from getting angry. It was just they way he was; loner, fighter, berserker. (and sucker for damsels in distress, don't forget that one ... and it rhymes too)

He was brought up short by the fact that Guiana had stopped in front of him, standing on a bough close to the forest floor, which was almost entirely wreathed in darkness. His eyes adjusted quickly to the eternal twilight down here, and he stretched his limbs, feeling the pleasurable burn of exertion hit his muscles, feeling his immune system kicking into overdrive. The sound of water close-by was now in his ears, and he sniffed the air as she did, scenting for any danger ahead. She turned to look at him and smiled, her huge eyes glinting in the shadows.

"You travel very well, forest-child," she said, impressed, as she dropped softly down onto the forest floor below.

"Thanks," Logan grunted, but he felt a little bit of pride at the compliment, and followed after her.

Logan heard running water, and smelled it just a few moments before they came to a clearing, a pool and small underground stream that surfaced here and was rocked into a small waterfall, draining away to their right. One bank was muddy and scored with the prints of tapirs and deer - and one cat print which looked about the size of his fist - while the other bank was a bit more rocky, and blanketed in plants that almost looked like ferns, but weren't. She stepped forward to these, and sang to them sweetly, notes rising and falling all over themselves so quickly that it sounded like two voices coming out of her throat. He shrugged to himself and then removed his clothes, since modesty seemed a moot point, and sank into the water.

After the constant heat of the rainforest, the cool of the water was wonderful. He looked over at Guiana, who was picking the plants and moistening them in water with one three-fingered hand. She flipped her hair away from her face absently in a gesture that Logan felt slightly uncomfortable about, and then began kneading and crushing the plants between her palms. They began to foam, and a pleasant, earthy smell came from the lather she was making. She began applying this to her arms and face, and he realized that it was some sort of soap.

"Here, Lo-gan," she lilted, handing him a handful of the stuff with a smile. He took a handful of the glop, which looked and felt weird, but didn't feel so bad once it was on his skin, and watched her blow bubbles between her cupped hands with a bit of amusement.

"You have forest smell on you, but it is different," she said as she began the process of pounding more of the plant leaves together. "I can see your forests a little bit through your smell, but tell me about them, please?"

Normally he might grunt off a few sentences, but there was something in the way she had asked, as if she was really curious, and might be able to understand, that made him more talkative. He found himself telling her about pine forests, and the smell of the sap. He told her of his favorite places to go and think, or just to run, and of the way the pine needles sounded when you stepped on them. He found himself explaining what a woodpecker was, and what daisies looked like, and how the wind that blew the spring breezes through the trees felt through his hair. And the whole time she nodded and smiled and knew exactly what he was talking about, every scent description, color and image made perfect sense to her, even when he fumbled with the words a bit.

He found himself talking about the Den as well, and the Prof and Cyclops, Storm and Nightshade and the Cajun, though he didn't say anything about Jane, or Silver Fox, or the memories that he wasn't so sure were memories anymore. He also told her about the humans who hated and feared mutants, and the Sentinels.

"These things hunt you? Why?" She worked some more of the suds in her hair dexterously and studied him.

" 'Cause we're mutants. They don't like that. And some of the mutants don't like the humans either."

And that is when he filled her in on Magneto, and his wish to "study" Logan's skeleton when it had been augmented with adamantium, thinking to somehow adapt it to make his mutant legions more impervious to harm, to beat the humans down.

"He sounds worse," she sniffed as she began to rinse out her hair, and her brow furrowed more. "And are there many mu-tants, or just a few?"

Logan shrugged and leaned back into the small waterfall behind him. "Seems to be more than there used ta be, but some of them are not being born, but made." He closed his eyes and tried not to think about that too much, and felt the prick on the back of his hands that meant he was starting to get angry again. "Whoever has the most pieces wins, I guess."

She shook her head, water dripping over her shoulders. "It is foolish. I have no time for such stuff." She waved a hand dismissively. "I am sorry for you, Logan. Too bad you couldn't just go back to the trees and be the forest-born that you are. Ground people have gotten stupid." She raised her head proudly. "We forest born know how to be and live, yes?"

"Got that right," Logan grunted in agreement, and allowed himself a small smile. He realized that he liked her: she knew about the forest and moved in it perfectly, actually putting him to shame; she seemed to think like him in certain ways. Yeah, she was all right.

He also realized that he had been staring at her for some time now, watching her too-long arms move with incredible grace, belying their strength, as she crouched with her coiled locks of hair framing her angular face. She looked so foreign to anything he had ever seen, even the mutants below the city who lived in the tunnels and sewers, too mutated to ever pass for human. She looked so at peace here, even though he knew like most people on the planet that the rainforests of South America were in deep trouble. This was home, and she knew it and was secure in it. She didn't ask herself how she could do the things she did, and she didn't seem sad that there was no-one else like her around that she could talk to or be with. She was complete, she was whole.

Yeah, Magneto would kill to get his hands on her. And she would never understand what he was talking about. Not because she was ignorant, but because the idea that anyone should be ashamed or shunned for what they were was completely foreign to her. What good did megalomania do her forests? What good was elitism? And even though Magneto could talk a good line, and would probably promise her that he would save her forests while the humans could not, she wouldn't forget that Sabretooth had tramped through her land and uprooted her trees, killing whatever happened to be close-by because it was fun. She wouldn't believe Magneto at all. It might get her killed, but she wouldn't listen, he knew that. She wouldn't hear what the old Prof would have to say either, and the Den would be foreign to her with its cold walls and controlled air and humidity. No, she was a loner too, but not an aloof one.