Wheeling Gull Isle maybe it’s not the moon at all

Coelacanth loved the Labyrinth. She immersed herself into its endless soundscape of singing water and dancing light, her eyes on the northern seas and the pale luminescence of the stars. The tension began to melt from her lithe musculature — but it gathered up again at the sound of Komodo’s voice, balling in her gut like a bad case of indigestion and closing vicelike around her lungs. She hopped to her feet and whirled around, pinning him with a pained and pensive stare. She must have walked right past him, which wasn’t altogether surprising; she liked sometimes to walk the Rainsong blind, particularly when she was troubled. All the confusion and distress she felt mingled and tangled with the discontent Komodo felt; he spoke softly but his body language screamed it in the disgruntled grind of his teeth, the brusque gesture of his head as he flung the useless shard of bone away, the heavy slap of his paw as he drew another bone toward him, and most of all, the clash of his fiery eyes against her own. For the first time, Seelie feared the Earthstalker — and though logically she had every right to assert herself, she froze.

The Aralez was an intelligent creature, but she was not typically classed as cunning or calculating. She knew immediately that Komodo was speaking of Stockholm, not Driftwood; and she did not cut her stare even as her Neptune eyes glossed with tears from the effort of holding it. She watched him like a rabbit in the yellow spotlight of an oncoming car, like a deer in the crosshairs of a hunter’s rifle. Her spine straightened. “D-Driftwood?” she whispered, her tongue tripping on the first syllable and its myriad of difficult consonants, playing dumb, a strange, hot miasma roiling in her breast. If the Angakkuq was going to speak ill of her mate or her marriage — even in a roundabout way — she wanted to hear him do so by name. This was also the only “out” Komodo would receive. He had the chance to drop the blazing coal of a topic — but if Coelacanth knew him as well as she thought she did, he wouldn’t. The Earthstalker had always been plain-speaking and blunt; it was one of the things she liked about him, and one of the reasons she sought his council.

All the irritation she’d felt during the awkward meeting between herself, Driftwood, and Komodo came rushing back to the forefront. She understood that some of the seawolves would be more possessive and headstrong when meeting new wolves, but she deeply resented Komodo’s proclamation that she was “head honcho” — that the flotsam upon her shores didn’t get to ask questions. She didn’t want to be perceived that way! Naively, she wanted to be loved, not feared.