Otter Creek My love, she keeps me warm

I'm sitting out on my porch while writing this, listening to the crickets and cicadas. Lovely summer night... OMG TYLER JUST APPEARED OUT OF THE NIGHT AND SCARED THE BEJEEZUS OUTTA ME. *clutches heart*

When Rivet answered, Turq flashed her a devilish grin, then refocused her attention upon the creek. The waters were calm here, though she could hear rapids further downstream. She pondered what this might mean for her chances, then decided she wouldn't find out until she gave it a try. "Here goes nothing," she said to Rivet, casting her lover another impish grin before she perched on the water's edge and craned her neck close to the water's calmly rippling surface.

"Here, fishy, fishy, fishy," Turquoise muttered quietly under her breath, clicking her tongue as her smudged snout hovered just an inch from the water, her turquoise eyes plumbing the depths. She thought she saw movement, so she shifted her tawny bulk and crooked a blackened foreleg as if ready to strike.

She hovered like that for several long moments, then saw a shadow flicking nearer. It took on the general contours of a fish, so Turquoise readied to scoop her dark paw into the water and fling it onto the bank once it came within reach. She leaned as far forward as she dared, teetering precariously on three legs while the fourth dangled there like a waiting hook, itching and quivering with anticipation...

In the next moment, Turquoise was struggling to roll over, sputtering as she lifted her anterior end out of the shallows where she'd tipped forward and fallen. Shaking water out of her ears, which fell back, she glanced toward Rivet. She thought she saw laughter in her partner's eyes and, despite the loving words exchanged just moments before, she did not laugh along. Instead, she felt a blitz of irritation. Unaware that her exhaustion was making her cranky, she picked herself up, shook her golden pelt and slogged onshore, stamping her feet more roughly than was really necessary and making a gruff, wordless sound in the back of her throat.