Wheeling Gull Isle you've still got a little lightning in you

The atramentous sheepdog’s expression was quizzical — and more than a little anxious — when Doe slipped away from her; a whine of protest immediately fissured the silence as her Neptune eyes flew wide. Please don’t go away again! Please stay! Her worries were far from assuaged when Doe angled her body between Coelacanth and the sea, urging the Shadow closer and closer to Stockholm. It wasn’t that Seelie had any qualms about snuggling with the Gampr; he was, after all, hers. She just didn’t understand why Doe wanted her to do it, and her neurotic sheepdog’s mind forced her to stutter-step and look curiously over her shoulder at the flop-eared female to see if she could glean any knowledge from those yellow eyes.

She couldn’t.

Tufted ears fanned forward upon the tiny Groenendael’s finely-tapered skull as she watched Doe’s posture shift into a submissive slink. She, like Seelie, sought the larger animal’s protection — and, by extension, supported Stockholm’s ascension to leadership. It gave the atramentous female pause; she tilted her head to one side, then the other, looking at her Gampr in a new light. He could do it. His desires, like Seelie and Doe’s, were simple. He lacked the ritualistic relationship with the sea that had driven Doe’s leviathan to madness and that so commanded Axolotl — and for Coelacanth, that made him an ideal leader. He would be the shepherd — and Seelie? She’d simply be herself, protector of the protector, ever at his heel.

In a splendidly ironic display, Coelacanth was the first to break the silence: “Doe,” she whispered, the susurrus of her timbre barely audible — or perhaps inaudible — amongst the roll of the waves and the roil of Doe’s thoughts. “Stay,” she begged.