Wheeling Gull Isle below her mouth

A tender smile softened the tiny Groenendael’s intensely worried expression. She and Komodo had a great deal of work to do in order to rebuild their still-smouldering bridge, but she believed they could — and would. They were healers, after all! “Sing of Chelan,” she begged, dipping her nose below surface to playfully splash the Earthstalker. She was as willing to respect his wishes as he was to respect hers, and if he did not want her to overindulge her affectionate tendencies around him, she wouldn’t. She was learning, interaction by interaction, that not everybody felt as she and Stockholm did. If she wanted to be a Good Dog by the Teekon Wilds’ standards, she was going to have to rein in her often overexuberant need for touch.

She listened raptly as Komodo recounted Chelan and Illahee’s love story in his honeyed, rollicking way; and he did not demur when she asked him to repeat the names of their children several times over. Tallulah, Tolikna, Taima, and Taipa, she thought to herself, wishing enviously that she and Stockholm had thought of naming all their children with the same letter. The Seelholms were bound by a theme, but she wondered if they’d stick with that theme through the current breeding season or change it up. She thought, but did not say aloud, that it would be lovely to see the children Komodo and `Io would produce. Instead, when the medicine man was finished regaling her with news from home, Seelie gently withdrew and returned to her mate’s side to pass on what she’d learned — and to propose a visit to Morningside.