And the King of the Sea roared.

Frey Drakkar

Beach Beside the Triton Sea

OFF THE WEST COAST OF FIRENZE

“What on…”?

Frey Drakkar turned his head to his wife.

He then turned his head to the direction where his wife was staring.

That was when he stared.

It started with drifters.

But then it became crowds.

Finnie and he joined them.

He felt Apollo and Maddie fall in step at his side.

They stopped with the others at the tips of the waves and stared in awe at The Finnie, surrounded by dolphins, multiple pods of them, leaping and flipping all around his ship.

He felt another presence on their other side, and Frey looked that way to see Aramus’s man Tintagel standing there.

“Should we be worried about this?” he inquired, even though he knew he needn’t.

Tint was grinning like a madman.

“No,” Tint gave him the response he expected.

“Does this happen every time they make love?” Finnie asked, awe in her voice.

“I hope we’ll see,” Tint replied, and when his eyes got wide, Frey looked back to the galleon.

He did this just in time to see two whales some ways farther out than The Finnie break the surface, leap entirely out of the water, and land with massive splashes on their sides.

“Not expecting there’ll be sand drills tomorrow,” Tint noted strangely, and still grinning, he turned and walked up the beach.

The rest stayed where they were, and it started slow, but then it built until the cheering and clapping rent the air.

He felt his wee wife’s eyes and looked down into their ice-blue beauty.

“I think I like it here,” Finnie declared.

His Finnie. His adventuress.

She found something to like everywhere.

He smiled at her.

Then he decided he didn’t care how close the other tents were.

So he took her hand and led her back up the beach.

Queen Ha-Lah

Aboard The Finnie

OFF THE WEST COAST OF FIRENZE

Aramus was nuzzling my neck and I was stroking his back when the cheer rent the air.

We both stilled completely.

Then my husband lifted his head and looked down at me.

My, but he was handsome.

“Do you think they—?” I began.

“No.”

“But the timing can’t be a coincidence.”

“None of my men can see through wood, baby,” he murmured, but his head twitched just as I heard it.

The high-pitched, happy shriek of dolphins.

A goodly number of them.

He slid out, I did not like losing him (in the slightest), but I did like how he gathered me to him, wrapping a blanket around us both, and pulled us to a porthole.

We looked out and saw a large pod of dolphins flirting with the surface of the sea as they swam away.

“Right, well then, I guess they know,” Aramus muttered, humor in his tone.

I looked at his profile. “Should I be mortified?”