Sea Lion Shores 1957

Szymon listened without demur or demand as Olive offered the only explanation she could. He was angry, but his anger was not centered on the pale agouti sylph — she shared in it, certainly, but the brunt of it was focused inwardly. He was angry with himself — with Doe — with Skellige and Deirdre and the Sea. His attitude toward Olive was a byproduct of the desperation that honed the wolves of the bay to a tensile edginess. He opened his mouth to reply to her question, believing she was asking chiefly about Doe, but a soft and muzzy murmur — “Sy?” — stilled his tripping tongue. In talking about what bothered his wife, wouldn’t he exacerbate the situation? His ginger-laced tail flicked agitatedly as he bent his head to the creature who had taught him everything he knew about love and whose very existence had replaced everything he thought he knew about purpose and pride and religion. “Doe,” he uttered, the single syllable cracking at the corners as he began to groom her nape and shoulders, “stay with me.”

It was a plea — not an order. “Please” wasn’t in the black-banded Cairn’s dictionary, but when he spoke to his mate, the hard edges of his commands smoothed out. Szymon could never truly be considered soft, but something about the scrappy little female made him reach for the innate gentleness he’d been taught for most of his life to reject. He weighed his words carefully, not wanting to expound upon what he thought was bothering his wife. He didn’t fully understand the workings of her mind, but he inferred that it had something to do with the fire, with the Sea, and with their lost daughters. “Loss,” was what he settled on, and he turned to the stricken female with the severe lines of his face drawn into what he hoped was an expression of gratitude and entreaty but what felt like a grimace. In the end, he decided to keep their deity and their daughters to himself, stating only the facts that he and Doe would have to come to grips with whether they liked it or not — especially regarding Arturo and the Blackrock-Teaghlaigh alliance.

He spoke as clearly as he could, forcing the facts not only on Olive but on himself and Doe as well. His glorious bass timbre, sonorous and resonant, was ragged and worn but endured. Guided by the sea turtle, Szymon would endure. “My b-brother Skellige was Leviathan — but he is g-gone. Doe and I lead in his stead. His betrothed was D-Deirdre Stella Mayfair of D-Donnelaith, and s-s-she — ”

Unexpectedly, it hurt.

The usage of past tense hurt; the uncertainty of where the unlikely pair had disappeared to was fathomless; the unmentioned Qilaq, Whiskey, and nameless granddaughter of Hind took his breath away. Szymon clamped his jaws shut around the painful tension that caused his last few words to shudder and worked his limbs cautiously, fearing the clench of his own body lest it break him into jagged lines.