Wheeling Gull Isle let my imagination run away with you gladly

“Mere dost,” Aditya murmured, his breath tangling warmly with Seelie’s. Her tail drummed a joyous, anxious tattoo against the curve of her hip, and her eyes were soft and intent with worry at the sadness she saw in his burnished sungold eyes. The pain in them warred with the mirthful curve of his mouth, and she understood the incongruence all too well. What she couldn’t understand was his language. Its gilded lilt and otherworldly allure appealed to her keen ears, and they strained forward in unfeigned attentiveness, popping skyward at the sound of her own name. In truth, she didn’t even really know what “mere dost” meant. She’d never asked. Now it seemed important to understand what those words had meant, though, because with them came a string of other unfamiliar lyrics that fell dumbly into silence and cracked and bled upon her waiting paws.

The atramentous Aralez could not glean much from what she knew empathically, either — she felt love and fury, sadness and joy, pain and pleasure, all tangled together, and it was impossible to tell what emotions belonged to Aditya and which ones were hers in. Mistakenly, she wondered whether he was thinking of Nando, his sealost friend — but she didn’t dare hazard a guess.

She was startled, but not alarmed, when he pressed his muzzle into the aphotic silk at her nape. Rising to her tiptoes, “Adi,” she breathed worriedly, leaning up to nibble at his withers, the plush feathering of her décolletage pressed seamlessly against his broad chest. She hooked the heel of one dainty forepaw around the instep of his carpus to keep them locked together, as though by anchoring him this way she could assuage some of the turmoil she thought she felt.

“Adi,” her breath winnowed through his guard hairs, “sad? Nando?”