Totoka River compose a poem, an honest verse of longing

When Olive nudged, Seelie nestled — her wounded heart was in desperate need of kindness, and the mist-shrouded druid had provided it in spades. Coelacanth kept her eyes fixed upon the stars, but the ear nearest Olive turned and cupped attentively as she began her tale. “Blindly goodhearted and capable of intense passions,” fit the tiny Groenendael like a glove, though she couldn’t always see it for herself. The idea that her star, or the story behind it, celebrated a peacemaking element was pleasing to the inky ingénue. She giggled, an airy flutter of breath, at the ticklish touch of Olive’s cold, damp nose against the aphotic feathering of her ear, and kept on laughing as the storyteller rose, pirouetted gracefully, and faced her audience.

“The night is getting late,” murmured the matriarch-to-be, and Coelacanth visibly drooped. She had lost track of time for the first time in weeks, but now it was being returned to her — and with it, all of her responsibilities. Olive’s offer was a sweet one, but the pull of her guilt was too strong to ignore. There was still hope that the Cairn children would come home to her. They had become god, king, and country to the little stray, despite giving her nothing back, and Seelie was in far too deep to realize that the relationship was a toxic one.

“Thank you, but I cannot,” bespoke the whisk of her tail, the tip of her finely-sculpted head, and the pointed sway of her brilliant Neptune gaze toward the coast that lay just over Olive’s shoulder.

With that, Coelacanth kissed the woman’s cheek and set off toward the bay.