Totoka River baby, when I whisper, can you hear?

She punishes herself so that he won’t have to. “See?” beseeches her psyche. “I am hurting myself so you do not have to waste effort doing it yourself.” Here’s the thing, though — every second that ticks by with his nose in her fur and his scent in her nose, his voice in her ears and his breath at her nape, she feels better. That’s his goal — to fix it, make it better — but it’s not her goal. See, her goal is to feel in this series of moments as badly as Moorhen and Stockholm must have felt every hour she’d been away — all that weeklong hurt and frustration and worry encapsulated in a poignant, agonizing mouthful of minutes. Her goal is to deny herself the comfort of his company.

“Tell me?” he begs, and his hurt is her own, and there it is again, that pang of pleasure-pain. Stockholm is so good to her — how can she ever hope to redeem herself? Her obsessive shepherd mind begins calculating and tabulating, trying to figure out how many acts of goodness she must perform in order to deserve this life and this man. Seelie shifts her weight to her right elbow so that she can turn and meet the whiskered chisel of his jaw with an apologetic flurry of kisses. In a whisper that is tiny and frail even by her standards, “I was bad,” she breathes finally, still trembling violently, though not entirely because she fears his response. She cannot deny the hormones driving the slow, serpentine lash of her tail in the water, stirring like a leviathan below the surface. “Bad dog.” She marvels at the broad, impressive span of his chest and tries not to.