Wheeling Gull Isle sea fever

The sheepdog’s first reaction was involuntary. Tufted ears folded against her skull like a pair of paper fans snapping shut, moving in tandem with a swift, reactive duck of her head. The flinch turned full body, and her carriage dipped low so that a bough of the ginger fell across the tapered slope of her muzzle. She shrank into the fragrant cloud of green and white, Neptune eyes half-wild as she peered around, lips pulled taut in a nervous grimace.

Oh! It’s you!

Recognition bloomed in the tiny Groenendael’s bright cerulean gaze as she peeked through a cluster of viridian leaves and ivory blossoms and hesitantly made her approach. The scent of food had preceded King’s announcement, but out of politeness and genuine curiosity she pinned her eyes upon the shallowly breathing bird he’d placed upon the ground. “Pookie” was an odd name — as odd as “Big Ears” — but she accepted it as she’d accepted him, with a hastily sketched wag of her feathered tail and a nervous whine that wheedled from her in a whuffling undertone. Oddly, she trusted him. The green-eyed girl had deemed him trustworthy through her acceptance of him, and Seelie found it easy to follow suit.

The food was almost forgotten in the face of the giver himself, and Coelacanth tiptoed fully from the foliage to stand in the sun a few feet away from him while the rain pattered softly down and the sky filled with kaleidoscopic color. “Isn’t this nice?” she seemed to say, tipping her muzzle rhapsodically toward the sky as she shook the tension from her muscles and the leaves from her fur. There was something healing about the island, and whether that was due to Komodo’s shamanism or Axolotl’s fanatic devotion was anybody’s guess.