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

The Earthstalker lurched to his feet and drew near with a seething, leonine tread; the roll of shoulder and hip beneath his agouti pelt, limned by the soft blue glow of the Labyrinth, seemed at once languid and electrically charged. The nearer he got, the smaller Coelacanth seemed by comparison, but she held her ground, drawing her tiny body up as straight as she could, a simmering growl undulating in her throat. In Seelie the sound was muted, but it echoed upon the labradorite walls and redoubled, and inwardly she found herself impressed by the acoustics. Velveteen flews twitched and quivered spasmodically as she defiantly ground out, “I am Aralez. I dare.”

His nearness was both alluring and off-putting to her in her hormonal state; she saw him differently now, in a light she could not un-see — a virile, dominant male the likes of which had always won her loyalties before. Beneath the veneer of power, though, there was Komodo — her Komodo, gentle and nurturing and kind. Roughhewn, sure, but a good wolf at the core.

Mindful of her love and respect for him, Coelacanth, wrapped in the tendrils of the Angakkuq’s fury and feverish with the embers of her own discontent, tried to soften the vicious clench of her tightly wound musculature — to settle her curling lips into a neutral mien — but then he spoke.

“Ah claimed yah th’day yah washed up’on the beach.”

Even the sound of singing water seemed to pause for a prolonged beat. Only when the sheepdog recovered from her shock and started to breathe again at an accelerated rate did the surrounding soundscape seem to resume its lyrical pitter-patter. “No,” she said before he could utter his next statement, but even the insinuation that Komodo might have been a better, fairer choice than Stockholm went unmentioned. This was about Seelie now. She ghosted forward a pace or two until they were only inches apart, and threw her Neptune gaze out like a fishing net; she dared his fiery eyes to surface and be ensnared, and she breathed with fierce finality:

“Never.”