Wheeling Gull Isle below her mouth

Coelacanth met him in the middle, placing herself at his mercy as she, too, humbled herself before him. Her proud, if diminutive, carriage dipped; her graceful neck craned; and her muzzle tucked submissively against her décolletage. Tufted ears pressed forward upon her skull with mute eloquence in the wake of her prayerful obeisance — she was ready to talk, but she was also ready to actively listen to any concerns he might have. She had practiced her testimony so many times that she thought she knew the words by heart, but as her eyes traced the much beloved planes and lines of his face, every syllable fell away. “Modo,” she breathed softly, or perhaps she merely mouthed the word, the glow of the sea illuminating her inkdark silhouette in ghostly blue. Beneath the scent of brine, she tasted `Io on his scent — but she was not stupid enough anymore to believe that what they had and what they felt was the same as what she and Stockholm had and felt. Every wolf was different.

“I love you, Modo,” she whispered without preamble. “I love you ever — my friend, my family — but for mate,” she stamped a paw against the sea bottom and clicked her teeth together to place visible and aural emphasis on the word, barred the ability to do so verbally, “my heart sleep.” Maybe that sounded insulting; the flutter of her tufted ears as they slicked nervously against her skull said she hoped not. “Stockholm wake, all otter sleep.” She meant “all other” but she would never really achieve fluency of the spoken word. “I think…” she ventured, “kiss, hold, play, for all love.” For Coelacanth, the invisible RESTRICTED line was drawn literally at sex. All other forms of affection were to be freely shared — and if Stockholm had been wired the way she was, she would have equally condoned this freely loving trait in him. He wasn’t, though, and so the double standard wasn’t as unfair as it may have seemed.