Wheeling Gull Isle angry smol

“Seelie,” Stockholm murmurs, and a flicker beneath the lagoon’s surface betrays the instantaneous spurt of joy that dances through her every time he exists in her general direction. The brightness of her Neptune eyes is diminished still beneath the stormclouds of grief, but she looks upon him warmly as he approaches her —

— and shoots to her feet, each feathered limb ramrod straight, her flowing plume cracking skyward like a bold exclamation point with the popping of her tufted ears. “WAT HAPPEN?!” her body language cries, head cocking so far to the side that she appears borderline vestibular. She is drenched in the wave he creates, and blinks saline from her lashes. In the seasong she hears her grandmother’s voice:

“You did not fail, small one. You guided a lost lamb home.”

It will be weeks before this reassurance really begins to sink in (and there’s a stronghold of guilt within the Aralez that no external force can touch) but she needs to shed the tension in her thin musculature so badly that she can’t deny her goofy, stalwart, idiotic, perfect mate. “Ooh,” bespeaks the quick, decisive shake of her head and a soft, kittenish sneeze, “you are in so much trouble right now.”

Velveteen flews arch and ripple, displaying every tooth in her mouth as she crouches down low and weaves toward him with an eellike wriggle. Slim jaws fling impossibly wide as she flings herself upon her mate, forelimbs perched atop his back as she, well…bites him a few bajillion times. To an onlooker, the display might appear violent — especially given the warbling growls that dance up and down the hollow column of her throat and the hackles that go from the base of her skull to her fluffy butt — but she isn’t breaking skin or even chomping hard enough to bruise.