Wheeling Gull Isle a place called kokomo

Delighted, “Peash,” Coelacanth parroted in a breathlike whisper, the bridge of her muzzle furrowing in a funny little expression of displeasure at her inability to copy him more accurately. “Peash?” She mouthed the word a few times to herself, but resigned herself to failure — for now. She didn’t want to lose the morning hours, as the surprise she’d prepared for him would look magnificent in the soft, muted colors of the rising sun.

Slim legs flowed into a graceful, fluid lope as the atramentous sheepdog made her way to the coast, frequently checking over her shoulder or double backing to encourage @Komodo onward. Now and again, her excitement got the better of her and she was forced to spin a quick circle or dance a ring around the Earthstalker — and when they reached the shoreline at last, she sprang into the air for the sheer joy of it, kicking up her feathered heels and bouncing about like an overexuberant baby goat. Dipping her toes in the lapping wavelets, Seelie blew out a soft, snuffling sigh. “Modo,” she whispered shyly, though her voice was likely drowned out by even the hushed murmur of low tide.

After a moment of wordless rhapsodizing about the beauty of the morning and the ocean and Komodo’s fiery eyes, she turned abruptly and veered inland, angling westward. She led the angakkuq to a hollow log, then wedged herself inside — it was too small for the medicine man to fit, but she shimmied out easily with a pearl-and-citrine nautilus shell grasped carefully between her incisors. She tucked it against one silky flank, then repeated the process several more times. All in all, she stood and backed away to reveal a collection of gifts for the medicine man: the nautilus shell, a few pristine steel-and-white gull feathers, and a sizable rib bone of unknown origin. Then she sat beside them, her cerulean eyes alight with love as she waited, clearly, to be praised.

As he always did, the Earthstalker indulged her — and she basked in the attention he showered her with before the capricious whims of her heart drew her up and away.