Wheeling Gull Isle that’s the loudest i become

“I know,” Coelacanth whispered meekly, her tufted ears folding guiltily as she dropped her carriage and inched forward on her belly. “Bad dog,” she breathed, wondering if this had been the last straw for her lamb. “Am sorry.” Her fox-fine muzzle dipped low and her tail beat a frenetic tattoo against her crouching hocks as she continued moving closer, Neptune eyes luminous and limpid with hangdog apology. She didn’t have the vocabulary or the wherewithal to make excuses for herself — “I thought I was sick! I thought something bad had happened to Catori!” — so she swallowed her frustration and her hurt and focused all of her effort into making amends.

“Stay island, sandbar,” she whisper-whined plaintively, “prrromise. Moorhen come — ” she forced her dumb tongue to shape the words as quickly as she dared “ — for all far.”

Moorhen was a seashell again, and Seelie her starved-for-love guardian. Please love me still, bespoke the desperate longing in her eyes as she tried to break through the distance and the anger. “Doe gone,” she offered on the wings of a timorous sigh, “Moorhen’s Shadow. Only Moorhen’s.” Isengrim and Julep had denounced the Groenendael; she couldn’t bear Moorhen doing the same.