Wheeling Gull Isle kiss me like that

The Aralez was keenly aware of `Io’s distress, though she did not remove her Neptune eyes from the Earthstalker’s fiery ones to look upon her friend. Slowly, an answering smile arched her eyes and softened the taut line of her mouth. The momentary freeze that occurred somewhere deep within the medicine man was invisible to Seelie, buried somewhere so deep within his soul she might never touch it; she was simply grateful that things weren’t as weird as they could have been. The splitting of her jaws as she loosed a chipper “bark” answered his rollicking rivers of speech with a cheerful, “Boy, am I glad that’s over with; let’s get down to business!” air — and today, business meant introducing the Seelholms to their aunt and uncle.

Just then, a splash at the water’s edge piqued her attention; she whipped around to see her shy daughter plunge below surface. She wasn’t really worried — this litter had been born in the Labyrinth, and they were already accustomed to telling freshwater from salt, deepwater from shallow. Low lighting meant nothing to them, and despite their puppyish clumsiness, they were already trending toward an innate surefootedness that’d been honed by the environment into which they had been born.

Sure enough, Thresher surfaced with a prize clutched proudly between her teeth and pranced up to her mother to lay it triumphantly at her paws. Seelie regarded the gift as if she’d been given the most precious of jewels — she sniffed it from end to end, her tail wagging furiously until her body was forced to wriggle along with it. “Our Treasure,” she proclaimed proudly to the returning seawolves, the canine equivalent of slapping a, “MY CHILD IS AN HONOR STUDENT!” bumper sticker on her caboose.

“Good girl,” she praised the girl warmly, and nodding toward the short work the boys had made of the fish, “Good boys,” she added. Dipping her muzzle, she nibbled at the fine fur between Sixgill’s tufted ears. “Our Six. Sixgill.” And to her most vocal, verbal son, she offered, “Our Grayling. Say, say,” she encouraged, eliciting a torrent of childish babble from the boy, with the words, “mahmee” and “fush” strewn liberally throughout. Koi, swept up in her mother’s joy-love-pride and the female’s nervous energy and the male’s warmth and her siblings’ excitement, froze in place as her own name was gently, warmly called: “Our Koi. Good girl. Come.” Koi tossed her head like a spirited filly, or a not-quite-leash-trained puppy, as if she might disobey — but she did as she was told, answering the command and leaning against her mother’s wrist.