Stavanger Bay we gather in shadow and ash

In an unexpected turn of events, Coelacanth was the first to answer Doe’s summons.

The atramentous sheepdog cross had not been invited — it was the sorrow in Doe’s familiar cry that drew her reluctantly past the ring of obsidian, crawling on her belly, patently apologetic. Her ink-feathered tail stirred the glittering granules in her wake, conjuring a miniature sandstorm as she crept to the edge of the lapping water. Glimmering seablue eyes darted shyly toward the black-banded Leviathan before settling on the siren of Tara with feverish intensity. In her mouth, the little Groenendael clutched a glittering moonstone that seemed to glow from within with cerulean and turquoise light. She laid it reverently at the queen’s blood-spattered paws, timorously stretching forth her tapered muzzle to make her offering, and in a continuation of that motion she rested her pert chin in delicate homage upon Doe’s singed toes.

Though the inky ingénue looked a little worse for the wear — her sprightly framework had been whittled down to a waiflike fragility and was consumed by intermittent fits of trembling — she seemed in relatively good health. Szymon ghosted forward to investigate, his scarred muzzle boldly pushing the silky fur against the grain as his nose and lips traced upward along her spine and nape, and the tiny wolfdog resolutely maintained her submissive posture. Airy whines and whimpers fluttered from her lips and nostrils, making little patterns in the sand as she turned her head to pillow her cheek upon Doe’s compact paws, her sumi-e brush tail beating with uncontainable excitement against her hocks. Abruptly Szymon claimed her; his maw parted and he bent to mouth at her nape and the bridge of her slender muzzle — for although she was eloquent in her submission, authority was new to the golden-eyed Cairn and he felt the need to forcibly assert himself at every opportunity — and Coelacanth closed her eyes, tufted ears folding demurely against her streamlined skull. Mollified, the Leviathan stepped back — and Seelie turned her Neptune gaze worshipfully upon the friend, sister, and mother who had saved her so many times before.