Stavanger Bay [m] the sparrows drag me down

But we are still one. Her breath caught again, this time with a new flavor of fear. All that longing, all those lonely days — but was this what she deserved? Was this what she wanted? This was no salvation, no; more like a mouth full of teeth asking her throat to bare itself.

You're alive — and the air left her lungs all at once, and her eyes drifted shut as his warmth filled the empty space. Dutch. That was his name. I'm alive, she echoed breathlessly. She pushed her forehead against the fluff of his cheek fur, breathed in his scent. And you are, too. So stay.

I have a den... Marina trailed off, her breath hitching again as the reality of it settled into the raw corners of her aching chest. In the burned forest, she might have finished, but she realized abruptly that it hardly mattered. None of it mattered but that he stayed.