Wheeling Gull Isle if you look away, the stars will know, and they will not be able to help you.

Coelacanth had taken to feverishly bathing the Border Collie’s face, her pert pink tongue flashing again and again to pull at the cold, unmoving flews — the lashes of her wide, sightless chestnut eyes — the soft origami triangles of her plush, folded over ears. She displayed a misplaced possessiveness over the gravid female’s cooling body and regarded Komodo’s approach with a wild-eyed flinch that was equal parts past trauma and present trauma. Tears filled her Neptune eyes as she hovered over the chocolate-cloaked body that had once housed a kindred spirit — a dog, just like her; just like Stockholm! — and dropped soundlessly into Poppy’s gore-streaked fur. “N-N-Not s-safe! P-P-Poppy — ” she retorted through chattering teeth, her fox-fine muzzle wrinkling as she tried to warn him away — but she did not want to fight with him again! Not here, not ever!

She yielded to him abjectly, gaze crashing awry, ears slicking anxiously.

The Groenendael shrunk back in defeat, crumpling once more at Poppy’s side, and nearly succeeded in making herself smaller than the soul-spent corpse they gathered around. “She chose you; entrusted them to you,” drawled the medicine man in his familiar burr, and Seelie tried to force herself to her paws but found that there was no strength in her bones to hold her up. Only when Komodo crossed the invisible threshold of her comfort zone did she stir in earnest, the gentle invasion of his nose both comforting and terrifying; she jerked to her paws and, avoiding his eyes, stumbled to `Io’s side to look at Poppy’s children. “Mur,” she proclaimed in a hiccupping whisper, touching her nose to the boychild. It had been Poppy’s last word — and surely, that was significant.

The tiny girl tugged at Seelie’s heartstrings in a way she could not explain. Surely this was Fawn — a gift to Doe, or better yet, Doe’s soul renewed! — and the tongue-tripping sheepdog spoke with soft surety: “Fern.” It wasn’t the word she’d meant to say, but she didn’t realize it — the similar vowel sound between Mur and Fern had thrown her utterly. “All Undersea’s puppies.”