Chapter 3

It was later that same evening, the sun almost down, when I finally came across a box of pictures. I should have known right away that I was headed for trouble.

Here was Sara standing by a waterfall, on our vacation 3 years ago. There she was sitting in a boat, that summer we went up to Lake Placid. Here was one of the two of us, taken at that scenic overlook near Asheville, by a willing stranger. Sara holding a puppy. Sara on a beach blanket. Sara and her brand new car. Sara, Sara, Sara.

I couldn't help it, the tears just came, as the memories flooded over me. Blindly, I kicked the box away from me, scattering some of its contents. You should be here with me, Sara, it's not fair! I stumbled out to the deck, and onto the beach, inconsolable with the sudden weight of my loss, all over again. Hardly paying attention to what I was doing, I slogged out a little way and sat down in the shallows, miserable. I was in about 20 inches of water, and it softly sloshed around me as I wept...

Late in that same daycycle, I heard what was becoming a familiar splash, and knew that the landwalker was back. With an odd feeling of gladness, I swam to meet him.

But this time was different, I knew it immediately. The creature was sitting in shallower water than before, and his head was down. But the biggest change was the way he was feeling ... I sensed a great weight on him, a sadness deeper than before. It was so powerful that I even caught shreds of images in his mind. A face -- his mate? It was someone he missed terribly.

Wife, he calls her. It was his wife. This must be what the landwalkers call their mates. Man, I also caught, he calls himself a man. And he misses his wife.

Now I understood, and pitied this creature -- this man -- whose loss was so like my own. And I understood why I felt the deep connection I did. Perhaps the gods had brought us together for a reason...

... I must have sat like that for several minutes, oblivious, when I realized that something was gently nudging me. Opening my eyes, I found one of the dolphins looking up at me. I was fairly sure it was the same one which had cuddled with me earlier. She had quietly paddled over and was rubbing her snout against the inside of my knee, almost as if she had heard my distress and come to console me. "Thank you, girl, that's nice of you," I said, sniffling, and stroked her on the head. She nuzzled in closer, essentially easing into my lap, and we sat together like that in the water, her gentle weight comforting in some way I couldn't define. I put my right arm around her, grateful for the contact, any contact. My left hand went to her head, patting and cradling her in a sort of hug...

... he had not noticed me approaching, but now I nudged him, and he looked up with tired-looking eyes and spoke to me, stroking my head. His sadness was so like my own, and we both needed comfort. So I paddled closer, to place my body next to his. He wrapped his two skinnier limbs around me, and held me close. I could feel his heartbeat now. We rested like that, drawing comfort from each other, two creatures as different as nightcycles from daycycles, but the same inside...

... I had never been this close to any of the dolphins before, and in another part of my mind, I was taking note of new things. For one, with her snout nuzzled up to my left shoulder, I became aware of her steady respiration. Dolphins breathe through that blowhole on top of their heads, and I was right in the path, each time she exhaled. As you might expect, her breath was a bit fishy-smelling, but it didn't really bother me. It simply reminded me that this was an air-breathing mammal, just like me, who happened to live in the water. I decided she really needed a name, but I was in no mood to come up with one just now.

As the water slowly undulated around us, my dolphin friend naturally slid back and forth a little in my lap, her smooth skin slippery between my legs and against my belly. It was soothing, like the knowing embrace of an old lover. Despite my frame of mind, I once more developed a good hard-on, which now pressed against her slick body, slipping gently back and forth as she almost imperceptibly paddled in place, holding her position...

... with the two of us in this embrace, I could feel his male hardness return beneath me, and its gentle pressure on my underside began to make me tingle again, memories of joining with my mate coming back to me. How we had loved that pleasure, the joy of our togetherness! With those good memories strong inside, I naturally began to rub myself against the hard shaft beneath me...

... in fact ... it felt like ... she almost seemed to be deliberately rubbing her skin against me. What... ?

Dolphins are highly intelligent creatures, everybody accepts that. What is less-publicized -- a fact I had read once, now that I thought of it -- is that they are one of the very few beings other than humans who will engage in sex just for fun. Male dolphins in captivity have even been observed masturbating, rubbing their erect penises against the walls of the tank. It suddenly occurred to me that this dolphin probably knew exactly what she was doing, and was providing the only kind of comfort she could think of. And in fact, I found my morose mood lifting, as this sensitive creature ministered to me in her own odd but tender way.

This is nuts! Yet I found myself wanting to return the gentle affection she was showing me. I began to stroke her belly again, reaching down toward where I remembered her slit to be. When I found it, down past my knees, I started caressing it, just as she was "caressing" me with her body, letting my fingers slip gently through the folds...

... I could feel the man's sadness start to lift, and he began to stroke my skin with his fingers. The tingling rose higher in me, and when his fingers found my female parts, they were already swelling with my arousal...

... she pressed herself against me a little more firmly, and holding her with the other arm, I let myself relax into our odd, intimate cuddle. It was very soothing, sitting like that with her in the tropical water. But the dolphin's body, just like mine, seemed to be warming up to our contact ... it felt like her slit was opening up more, swelling slightly to form definite lips. As one finger slid through the slippery folds and into her heat, I noticed that her oily juices were making her much more lubricated than before ... and as I brushed against that hard nubbin, there was an immediate reaction, a full-body shudder which startled me with its power. Then, with a deft flip of her body, she drove herself down against my hand, burying my finger in her hot flesh, and then started... humping it...

... as one of the fingers probed me, and slid over my hard pleasure-nub, I was helpless to do anything but swish my fluke and bear down, the sudden motion pushing his finger up into my body. The tingling sang in my ears, it had been so long ... my body began the motion it remembered so well, the pleasure as familiar as life itself...

... I held onto her, incredulous, but there was no doubt in my mind, now, what this dolphin wanted. She had sensed my despair, and was offering to console me by making love to me! I had no time to consider the craziness of the situation, she was already straining forward in my lap, basically stretching me out beneath her slick, undulating body...

The man knew, and began to extend himself to meet me, suddenly removing his finger and placing his male hardness at...

... suddenly, my hard cock was at her eager slit -- I pulled my hand out of the way, and... UNNNGGHHH!!! She shoved me hard into her hot insides, the slipperiness of the salt water and her oiliness combining to bury me to the balls in one smooth stroke...

... GODS!! the thick shaft sank into my slippery body, the feeling so close to having my mate back, I could see him when I closed my eyes...