Wheeling Gull Isle a place called kokomo

A small sigh gusted from Coelacanth’s lips. There was a sticky-sweet gloss upon them and a lightly fruity scent to her breath that suggested she’d been eating fresh strawberries; and this became more apparent as she nosed insistently at the corner of the Earthstalker’s mouth to feel his smile. An answering one danced in her eyes, though the set of her mouth was solemn, as she burrowed still closer and nosed at the hollow of his axilla. “Wake up!” she begged him inwardly, tiptoeing her dainty paws up the great barrel of his chest until she almost lay atop him. Her elbows drew even with his sternum, the very tips of her toes tangling in the thick fur of his withers to pillow the pert curve of her chin.

He spoke to her, sending a shiver of delight through her gamine musculature, and she opened her mouth to close the very tips of her incisors over the tip of his ear. Playfully, she tugged, her grip controlled and her touch as fragile as a promise. A kittenish growl fluttered in her throat, utterly playful and completely without rancor. She, too, stretched; her inky toes splayed and her finely sculpted head tipped back into the feathered ruff of her neck that had grown glossy and soft once more. “Sleepyhead!” she thought, and tried to fit speech to her fond teasing: “S-S-S — ” Her encounter with Atshen, however painful and distressing, had given her the idea that she could learn how to communicate verbally in time.

To be able to speak to Komodo, Axolotl, Cascada, and King instead of having them guess what she meant — it was somehow both exciting and terrifying. “S-S-S — ahh — eee — ” she whispered to him, brow furrowing as she worked out the vowel sounds.