The Heartwood beneath the cedars all my love i gave

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the full, fertile spring night was not without its music — crickets buzzed and the wind whispered a thoughtful melody between the leaves.  moonlight filtered in from the cloudless sky above.  ava christine blackwood's eyelids fluttered as she craned her head to gaze at the full moon.  

the pink moon, the sprouting grass moon.  the moon of fertility, of love.  it settled heavily in her chest; her paws drawled across the ground like anchors but her spirit was gone from her earthly tether — it meandered in the heavens alongside one of her two lost loves.

tonight was for morgan.

 

 

 

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together they collapsed in the grass, breathlessly holding onto one another.  sometimes she looked into morgan's eyes and saw the whole world reflected back at her — something she thought she'd had with hawthorne in the beginning.  

only now it was more; morgan's fertile scent washed over her in waves.  it stirred something inside of her that felt both wrong and enticing and normally she was able to smash it down with effort but now it was becoming too much.  it was strange, considering she never thought she could love the woman who had slept with her husband.

"morgan," she began —

"shh." morgan rolled onto her back, looked at the stars.

so sava took to tending to the scratches on morgan's forelegs and dematting the fur on her chest.  before she knew her nose had trailed down the gamine tuck of morgan's abdomen to the tender swell of her —

 

 

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every now and again something brass or blonde would strike her peripheral vision that made her breath catch but when she turned to look they were gone, and ava was left with both shame and a want that could not be fulfilled.