Fish Tickling by sallysavestheday

Fish Tickling

Beleg’s nose itches, inconveniently.

He has been crouched over the trout lie for some time, waiting for the fish to settle. The overhanging bank is steep, and he will need to be careful as he reaches. To scratch will throw off his timing and send a shadow arcing over the water, so he tries to ignore the itch. He wrinkles his nose, and waits.

He can feel Mablung laughing at him – that sparking flash in his mind that surprises him, still. It is so new and fresh, this knowing another’s intimate feelings, this ever-present warmth and comfort in his thoughts. It both settles and unsettles him, this bond.

He is like the trout, he thinks, ruefully. Skittish, quick to use the forest’s currents to escape attempts at intimacy, always heading swiftly downstream and away from those who love him.

Mablung, though, had used that to his advantage: obvious in his interest, loud in his devotion, fond and tender and brave. His affection could be read from the opposite bank: steady, dogged. Not one to yearn in secrecy, his seeking heart drove Beleg into the lie himself. Now he is caught, well and truly and forever.

Beleg reaches under the lip of the bank, closing the way against escape, sliding his hands slowly and carefully under the fish. His fingers dance like waterweed, floating in the current. The tips find the belly of the trout and stroke it, gently, tenderly, giving no cause for alarm.

Just so Mablung had courted him, the Heavy Hand surprisingly deft and light at loving, always a gentle presence, never a prod. Ancient Beleg settled into those seeking fingers wide-eyed, lulled and soothed and eased into tenderness, sinking against his nature into that confident hold.

As the trout does under his own touch, he floated, entranced, balanced at the edge of changes unimaginable as the world flowed by. Mablung’s grip, when it closed, was natural and comforting, infinitely warm.

Eased and quieted, his whole self sang with the arc up into the crystal air, the end in the beginning of all good things.

This is what love is, he thinks: Mablung’s touch stole his scales, but gave him wings.