Nova Peak yon peche [m]

for a girl raised with no concept of father, she had the sense of a brother. and this had been encapsulated and fulfilled only in sobo, a boy who had never left his home and grown into a man of the sea, who forsook men and clung to the name of his mother.
sobo had been the only brother mireille truly recognized. val was not that to her. he was a brother in the sense of childhood playmates, a cousin, a man with amorphous connection to her but all of it belonging to sapphique.
in her dance through the taiga, mireille had been denied one thing: trust. and though totoro had given her a time of gentle respite, it was not the same.
there were no fathers nor brothers. there were only men, once, perhaps twice in a generation, who proved that they could be trusted.
mireille at last put her eyes on val for a second of time and then she was bold; she extended her paw to cup his cheek and pulled him forward the small space until their foreheads met, then their mouths, the connection sending a path of striking fire through her, one backed by the contrast of that aforementioned sense: a bond.