Stavanger Bay run doe run

Szymon placed the stone carefully upon the pile with the others, and when he returned to Doe’s side and regarded the fish she nosed toward him, he lifted a skeptical brow — but the teasing note in her voice rendered him helpless. “Doooooe,” he whine-howled softly, a lilting note that rose and fell like ocean waves but remained in the bass register he found most comfortable. He would work himself ragged for her and for Skellige, but there was something more pressing that he wanted to accomplish at this particular moment. He swallowed the sculpin with a snap and a gulp before attempting what he found nearly impossible, grinning at her observation of his own clamoring stomach, and hesitated only briefly before stepping forward, closing the distance between them with quiet purpose. Between them lay the safety zone Szymon usually enforced — about a foot of space that he didn’t dare cross over.

Swallowing hard, he inched forward upon legs that shook most unbecomingly, calling to mind the desperate dread he’d felt when he’d thought she was injured — the lightning rod that had nearly shattered his spine the day she’d broken through his defenses and nuzzled at his neck — the strange longing he’d felt to taste the feathers of her fur and the corners of her mouth — and he touched Doe for the first time of his own deliberate volition. Stretching his neck out, he searchingly brushed the fur of her shoulder with the bridge of his muzzle, noticing for the first time at this close proximity the dusky russet guard hairs. Without asking permission or giving himself the chance to question his decision, he furrowed a trench through her lovely grey fur and tucked his muzzle chastely against the nape of her neck. The base of her upright ear was very near to his muzzle — experimentally, he rumbled, the sound bubbling up through his throat and leaving his lips in a low undercurrent of sound.

“What are you doing?!” his body demanded then. Szymon’s first overtures of physical affection had, in truth, only lasted a few seconds — but each one felt prolonged; he had felt brilliantly languid, devoid of shame and rich with discovery, but the muscle memory of avoidance sent him reeling. He stepped back, breaking the spell, his sulphureous eyes settling dizzily on Doe’s face. Then, a bit woodenly, as though his body was moving against his will — and perhaps it was, for he dearly wanted to continue exploring the new experience of initiating physical contact — he shambled like a zombie to fetch another stone for the pile.