Ankyra Sound 별빛달빛

A low, guttural chuff struck the air, winging through the rain to the little Groenendael’s sensitive ears; they twisted sharply toward the shore, miniscule droplets springing from their tufted tips like silver sparks. Blinking moisture from her bright seablue eyes, she scanned the shoreline — and when her fawnlike gaze fell upon the platinum-furred berserker, her first, joyous thought was, “Kierkegaard!” On slender, supple legs she melted from the shallows, bioluminescent plankton yet clinging to her fur with a faint blue glow, but as she drew nearer the differences between this stranger and her serpentine protector became unmistakable. Instinctively she responded to the strength she saw — the heavy musculature laid across his tall, broad warrior’s frame; the three vicious-looking cicatrices that slashed across his muzzle; and his fierce, regal bearing made an intimidating, even fearsome impression. The little Groenendael felt as she thought Doe must have felt when first she saw her leviathan.

Tufted ears folded demurely against her finely-sculpted crown, and her sumi-e brush tail sketched an appealing note of eloquent greeting before its tip curved around her hock. His Caribbean blue eyes were piercingly, startlingly beautiful, even from a distance, and in their crosshairs she made herself small, her tiny body made tinier by her submissive posture. A soft, airy whine, the only sound she could manage, spilled from her shyly smiling lips as she tipped her head inquisitively to one side, then the other. “What is wrong?” she wondered, her gaze focused carefully on his sand-colored paws as she nestled in the sand at his feet. There was a storm living in the strange warrior, one that Coelacanth could feel churning at the edges of her sentience — and although this was their first meeting, the empathetic sheepdog longed to quiet it if she could.