Wheeling Gull Isle that’s the loudest i become

Coelacanth fawned over her lamb, doing her best to stand as tall as possible in the name of sheltering the banded girl. The concept of secrets was an intimately difficult one for the inkdark empath. She had so very many of them, owing to her largely nonverbal state, and while some of these secrets were innocuous — the songs she’d never be able to sing, the stories she’d never be able to tell, the poetry of her heart that could find no purchase in syllables and syntax — many of them were rooted in shame. She considered every wolf she’d loved and lost a deep personal failure, and despite the time that ticked inexorably by, she thought of them often. She had tried to let them go when she’d first washed up on the Strand in a bedraggled heap, and by the time the Hunter’s Moon had rolled around and she was reunited with so many members of her family, things had gotten better; but they still haunted her — vicious memories, nipping at her heels.

In the wake of what had happened with Komodo and Aditya, these memories seemed particularly bloodthirsty. Snuffling fondly, she nibbled at whatever part of the girl she could reach — nape, ears, cheek. She didn’t know how to phrase what had happened in the Labyrinth and she had such a guilty conscience that she couldn’t see the Angakkuq’s unwarranted advances for what they truly were. As for Aditya, the wounds were simply too fresh for even attempted discussion. She hoarded them obsessively within herself, constantly analyzing and reanalyzing their conversation in her mind’s eye to see what she could have done differently to achieve a happier result.

“Thank you, Moorhen,” she breathed to her lamb at last. “Strong wolf, brave wolf — good girl.” She nosed lovingly at the base of the girl’s ear. “Stockholm come home soon,” she promised, fiercely believing in it despite the countless times she’d been wrong about these things.

The Volkodav was different. Stockholm would come home.