Wheeling Gull Isle i must go down to the seas again

“Coelacanth.”

The leviathan’s low, sonorous timbre pulled Seelie back to earth with startling alacrity; it had the effect of a colossally oversized anchor being thrown from the bow of a speedy little sailboat. As though her wings had been clipped, she cut her second grand jeté short, dropping neatly to the sand in a controlled fall. Her recollection of their reunion was spotty at best, but she remembered that she had done something to warrant a stern, clipped tone from Axolotl — and for a creature as sensitive as Coelacanth, that could be as painful as a physical reprimand. She made herself low, whining apologies, her ink-feathered form etched in low sloping lines of shame and hangdog submission. When she approached Axolotl, she felt as though part of her was walking backward through time — and by the time she’d met him halfway, leaving ample room for him to depart if he wished, she was six months old again and wondering,

Just who is this solemn-faced boy?

She had met Axolotl only briefly before he and his littermate Cipactli had followed their older sister Ixchel in support of Taern, but the three of them had made a strong impression on Crosscurrent’s motherless twins. Now Coelacanth sought to right whatever wrong she had unwittingly committed toward the Atlanian. When he was still a few feet away, she lay sphinxlike and symmetrical on her belly in the sand, placing her chin flat on the ground between her carefully placed forelimbs. She looked up at the wolf she had once known and whined beseechingly, Neptune eyes fixed upon his face — and she only altered her gaze to glance meaningfully out at the water. If anybody could assure Axolotl of her intentions, surely Atlan could; and although the water was not safe for wading now, perhaps the leviathan could still find some way to commune with Them and read what she could not say.

Komodo’s jovial greeting drew Coelacanth’s attention, and she turned to look coquettishly over her shoulder at the Earthstalker with mournful eyes and a feeble flicker of her feathered tail. She was happy to see him, but she was worried — if she had been cruel to Axolotl, enough to warrant his ire, perhaps she had also been cruel to Komodo. As the two males began to speak to one another, exchanging greetings albeit a little stiffly as befitted their twinned dominant natures, Coelacanth quietly slipped away.