Ocean's Breath Plateau lonely times when i could not find a friend

Dutch wondered if it was all women of Simbelmyne's line. If her sisters and her mother were half so enchanting. If his own daughters would grow from awkward adolescence into something so beautiful and fey as their mother. Whatever the case, he imagined he knew exactly how enthralled his father must have been.

Guiltily, he could only be grateful that this Coelacanth had not been his own mother.

"Do you love her still?" he asked, though he was sure he knew the answer. Part of him felt a tiny twinge of dissatisfaction, that so close to the end, Aditya would speak of someone other than the black bear. Yet even Dutch knew that Easy had not been Aditya's first choice; it seemed that she hadn't been his second, either.

"I think..." he began, a pair of berrybright eyes filling his mind. But then he didn't know what it was he thought, exactly. Just — about him. A lot. And as Dutch wished Aditya would think of Easy, he wished, suddenly, that he thought only of his wife. It was an idea that had never occurred to him before, and a wash of guilt he only half-understood swept the air from his lungs.

He turned his head away, looking out toward the starry sea.

"You have not had a happy life," Dutch said instead, testing out this idea. He'd always imagined that Aditya enjoyed his adventurous lifestyle, but more and more, he was beginning to see that his father was, a heart, a family man unmoored.