allegro

Ditto! ;-; ♥

Koi was so deeply absorbed in her tugging that she didn’t notice the attention she’d drawn, and Ephraim’s abrupt arrival all but knocked her flat with surprise. She flattened instantly, a spilled drop of pearlescent ink on the forest floor, her teeth still closed stubbornly around the midsection of antler, and peered up at him with wide cerulean eyes. At first, she saw Thresher — the pale flash of buttermilk fur made it hard not to — but when the proverbial dust began to clear, she recognized her error. It was his eyes, all champagne and chardonnay instead of whiskey and bourbon.

Thoroughly wounded, she relinquished her grip on the antler but placed her two tiny forepaws where her mouth had been. “Peace be,” she greeted him in a lilting singsong, tilting her head from one side to the other as she regarded him. He looked less and less like Thresher the longer she stared, and though his patterning was beautiful and there was a certain sameness to be found in his oversized ears and lissome musculature, looking at him made Koi sad. Still, she was a mannerly creature, and if this was his whalebone, she would drop it. “You keep it? Do you?” she asked shyly, dulcet timbre edged with the silver-gray of wistful sorrow.