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For some reason the sky seemed especially beautiful tonight. Cloudless, the stars stood out like little diamonds and the sounds from the pine forest around us spoke of nature in all it's glory. The sky was the best though; we had been treated to a pink and golden sunset over the lake, and now the stars stood out and the moon shone down bright and the summer breezes tickled our coats and spoke of all the things a summer night could bring. Midnight walks, swimming, kisses. Especially kisses

The memories crowded in and I sighed. Memory was a bitch sometimes, and now my lips tingled and my heart felt like lead. I looked across to my companion, and saw him looking up too admiring the sky. At least he seemed to have missed my sudden shift to melancholy.

We were at the lake, my favourite place on Earth some ways. The land around us had been in my family for generations; then some years ago, the family got together and gifted most of it to the state as a recreation reserve. The family retained a small patch right on the lake, and over the years, several branches had staked out individual plots and built little cabins and piers into the lake. My father had done his bit before I was born, and I had added slightly to the cabin in my time but in general I kept the old place basic. A simple wooden hut with a bed and a stove, nothing much to lose if some asshole came and trashed the joint. The whole point of coming up here was not for comfort but for something else.

"Hey uncle Jack, can I have another beer?"

I turned back to my companion and gave him a smile. I liked that he called me uncle Jack, even though I wasn't his uncle. It was a thing he made up, unable to find a better way to describe his father's best friend so uncle it was. It had stuck. People always gave him a sideways glance when he said it, trying to reconcile the tall gangly colt having a bulky minotaur for an uncle, I just smiled and let them wonder.

Reaching for the icebox, I tossed him another beer. He caught it with a thanks and popped the can. He then proceeded to down half of it and the backwash spurted all over his chin and he let out a burp. I hoped I wasn't that gross when I was his age, but suspected the answer was yes.

We had finished our BBQ dinner, both of us chowing down on veggie burgers. As herbivores, we stuck to what we knew best; my bovine ancestors would not appreciate me turning carnivore I am sure, and his equine ones would probably do the same. I knew things were a lot more liberal these days, but some things mattered when you came from where we did. I liked it that the colt seemed to stick to it as well.

He stretched luxuriously and gave me another grin. He had gone swimming in the crystal lake much of the afternoon, and his muscles no doubt felt the strain. We were supposed to go walking in the forests too, but for some reason he didn't seem keen. Instead it was swimming, swimming, and more swimming. I watched him move through the water with effortless grace and tried to hold off the memories as best I could.

"Pity Mike couldn't make it."

"Yeah, stupid bastard."

I could feel the disappointment in his voice, but there was something else too I couldn't place. I knew he wanted my son there with us, they were great friends back to school days, but Mike didn't really like camping like this. He had begged off, wanting to catch up with friends from his own college who had come back home with him, and had ignored the colt's look of disapproval.

For me, this was a duty too, and even without Mike, I knew I had to take Roy. I had promised his dad, and that meant everything.

"Uncle Jack...can I ask you about my dad?"

I gulped down a heap of beer myself then. It was as if he could read my mind.

"Sure sport. I know he has been on your mind."

Mine too, of course. When he was diagnosed with cancer, the doctors had been pretty grim about his future. He lasted two years longer than they gave him credit for, but in the end he lost the fight. I had stood by him, and his colt right through it. This was the first summer since, and it had been my duty to see Roy off to college. Now a nineteen year old stallion, he had his father's body, his mother's eyes, and a sense of sadness that came from neither but rather from the reality of learning what loss meant way too early. He was still flat even now, though he had lost some of it during the day. It was one reason I hadn't pulled him up on the burp; as stupid as it sounds, it was a good sign.

This might be another, I thought. At least he wanted to talk.

The colt seemed to think a moment, and then put his beer down. He turned his blue eyes on me, and they were piercing. I swallowed hard.

"Jack...can I ask you about you and my dad?"

Now that was one I wasn't ready for at all. I coughed up my beer and dropped the can with a thud.

"Uhhh Roy...what do you mean?"

He frowned, almost sadly, and nodded.

"Jack, after dad died I found a box of his stuff. It had an old combination padlock, and I tried a couple on spec. Do you know what opened it?"

My heart was pounding now. I tried to remain calm. "No...no idea sport."

"It was your birthday. Inside there was all sorts of stuff, things from when he was in school playing football with you. Do you remember?"

"Yes Roy, I remember it well." Too fucking well. It still hurt.

"And in there, I also found a whole lot of letters. He wrote them to you, and he never sent them."

I blushed, under my fur, and stared into the forest. I suppose it had to happen sometime, but why now...why fucking now.

"Roy...I don't know..."

"Unc, I know ok. I know what you meant to him, and what you two did. And...well, I'm sorry. For everything."

Looking over at the colt, I could see the look in his eyes. He felt the hurt, and it was clear whatever my mate had said, it was enough to make up the gaps. I hated that he felt the need to apologise though; he was the last that needed to apologise.

"Son, I'm sorry and..."

He was beside me, by the fire, and I felt his fingers on my lips quieting my confusion. The trouble was, now I was even more confused; he didn't just touch my lips, he rubbed them softly. Another familiar gesture.

"It was here you first did it, wasn't it?"

"Yes..." Ahh the world of regret in that one word.

****

We had come up for one last camp out after school was over, with Fall and college beckoning. The sexual tension was thick enough to spread on toast by then. We sat by the fire, this same campfire spot, watching the sky and the lake, sinking beers pilfered from his father's stash in the garage.

"So Jack, how are you feeling?"

I felt awesome, as he well knew. Buzzed, with my muscles just nicely sore from swimming and hiking, and then soothed from an all body massage from my stallion. He lay me down on the grass, stripping my swimming shorts casually as if naked under the stars was normal, and his hands roamed over my body. I was in the best shape of my life, my ass thick but muscled, thighs taut, and he worked them over with perfect hands and had me grovelling under his touch. When he slid fingers down the crevice of my ass, I nearly came on the spot.

He slid up my back then, right up my spine, and did my shoulders. I was groaning, almost sobbing. He always had that effect on me.

That was how we started our physical side; a massage after football practice. That was how he got me over my shyness, and my inhibitions. I knew what he was up to, he had this twinkle in his eyes that told me he was up to mischief, and I let him. I bathed in it.

Then the next time, when he was done, he rolled me over and insisted on doing my chest. I had the mother of all boners, and he grinned down at it and proceeded to give my pecs a delicious workout and then slid his hands down my abdomen to within an inch of my spurting cock head and stopped.

"Nice...you ever jack off...Jack?" he said it with such a chuckle. I had to admit I did; fuck I did it three times a night, mostly thinking of him.

"Well...if you want to now Brad...I'm not stopping you..."

Mutual masturbation can be intensely erotic. I learned so much about his body watching him jack himself, and he learned about me too. He watched my hand move over my shaft, the way I used one hand on my nuts and the other just under the head. I know he watched, because the next time, when he suggested we do each other, that was exactly how he did me. Just as if he knew my body completely.

Then came the night we were lifting weights in his garage, and he was holding down my thighs while I completed a set. He slid his fingers up the inside of my legs, teasing, and I groaned and dropped the weight in the brackets and stared at him while he drove me crazy as he always did.

He slipped my cock out of my workout shorts, the end so swollen and purple. I expected him to jack me off, like he had before, but this time was different. This time he gave me a wink, bent his muzzle forward, and closed his lips around my head.

I only lasted a couple of minutes, and just as his lips slid down my shaft towards my nuts and I felt his tongue on my piss slit I lost it, grunting out a warning way too late. It went everywhere, all over us both, and I collapsed on the bench. When I composed myself a little, I was facing a needy colt groin, his own much longer cock facing me. He lasted much longer, and at least he gave me a warning. I tasted colt spunk for the first time of many.

So here, beside the lake, with his hands all over me, I was at ease already, and my cock sang under my belly expecting it's reward. He was planning something different though.

His hands worked my shoulder blades, and his muzzle dropped to my body. I felt his lips rub my neck, the fur tingling under his touch, and then he licked right down my spine. I was melting by the time he reached the hollow of my ass, just above my tail.

I wasn't expecting what followed. I had no idea what to expect. His tongue lingered above my tail, his hands moved to my thighs and he spread me wide like a frog. Then his tongue moved, sliding round the base of my tail, and lapping just under. I let out a deep moo that would have startled any wildlife in the forest around us, and another even deeper when his tongue slid deep in my crevice and his warm wet organ touched my tailhole.

Nothing in life prepared me for the first touch there. His soft horsey whiskers tickled my cheeks, and he spread them wide now, his hands digging into my muscles. I spread my knees wider, wanting him to continue this miraculous exploration, and he wasn't about to stop it seemed. I felt a tongue on my perineum then, nuzzling, licking, and then on the back of my scrotum. I knew he loved it already, he had told me how good my heavy sac felt in his hands, but the feel of his muzzle right there...ahhh magic.

I was squirming when he returned to my pucker, licking in a ring at my asslips, then he pressed his own lips to my flesh, and prodded.

It too him a few tries before he got me open, and slid his tongue deep into my hole. I let out a sigh of deepest contentment, and he ate me out. My hole clenched, opened, clenched, and he rode through it all, licking my sensitive tunnel until I was sobbing and dripping into the grass. Then I felt him behind me, his body over mine, his lips on my neck, and his cock wedged in my cleft.

"I wanted...I wanted this so much bro...so much..."

He jerked his hips, trying to find the right spot. I tried to help him, humping back on his long thin horsecock. He couldn't find the spot, and he lifted off with a sigh of frustration and his left hand left my arm. He seemed to line himself up then, because I felt his flare on my hole, the hot pulsing flesh so big, so hard, and then he grunted as he thrust his hips against me and tried to enter.

It didn't work at first. Then he kissed my neck and bit down in his excitement, and I cried out and his flare split me wide open and I cried out louder. It hurt the whole way in, but I tried not to show it. We knew nothing, back then, except the hunger and the touch of male flesh on flesh. Eventually he buried himself to the hilt, his spit and precum enough to make it work but the burn of his entry took my breath away. Then he rested inside me, just holding me, and pulled my muzzle round and suddenly we were kissing.

It was the first kiss of all. All through the games we played, pushing on a little at a time, we never kissed. That was too much, too intimate, too gay I guess. It meant something. Somehow, in our minds, jacking a football bro's cock didn't mean the same. Sucking a bro's cock didn't mean the same. But now, with his cock inside me, filling me to breaking point, he got the courage to kiss me, and I kissed back with all my heart.

We were still kissing when he pulled back, and I felt the rasp of his flare on my straining flesh all the way out. I whimpered into his muzzle as he took me again, easier this time, his leaking cock making it a fraction less painful, and a whole lot easier to take. He rested with his balls on my ass, his chest on my back, his hips on my big rump, my tail crushed between us, and he rolled his horsey hips gently, fucking into me in easy stages, and inch out, an inch in, two out, two in. He kissed my horns; oh fuck he kissed my horns.

I was proud of those horns; outward sign of my maturity, shining and formidable, almost as much as my pecs or the thick thighs that got so many stares from the girls. He kissed them, licked them, and then kissed my head, and whispered into my ear, telling me how hot I was, how much he loved me, how much he loved my body. His thrusts built, battering my virgin hole, smacking into my ass, crushing me into the grass. My cock rubbed painfully on the Earth, leaking and throbbing, as my stallion bred me like I imagined him breeding his many girlfriends. I wondered if he told them he loved them like he just did for me?

I was so close when he came, so agonisingly close. I heard his breaths becoming faster, his grunts becoming moans, and then gasps, and then his whinny and the gush of heat into my depths. My cock ached, right from the base to the tip, and my balls rolled in angry need. He licked the back of my head, over my headfur, and nibbled my ears, then he pulled me onto my side as he spooned me still buried inside.

Ahhh his hands...the still knew my flesh. One on my sac, squeezing just firmly enough, almost painful. One just under the head. I screamed and came, my back arched as if trying to throw him off, when that was the last thing I wanted. He kept stroking me, coating my cock in spent jizz, and licking it off his fingers before pulling me into another kiss. I tasted my spunk on his muzzle. Has there ever been a better taste than your own cum on your lover's lips?

We washed off in the lake, and dried off by the fire. In the little cabin, he laid me back on the bed, kneeling between my thighs with my hooves lifted over his shoulders, and he fucked me so well and so thoroughly I have never been fucked so well again. He was so wild he managed to fill his knees with splinters from the crappy unfinished flooring, but he didn't care. With his cock inside me, and his hand on mine, we fucked for an hour, while I spurted three more times and he held off until the last and his head went back and his body tensed like it did when he lifted in the gym. His cum seemed to drain him at last, and he lay with me on the bed just holding, and I drifted off to sleep in a sweat and cum stained ode to perfection.

****

Colt fingers stroked my lips. I was panting, almost sobbing, the memories fresh. That first kiss...

I felt a muzzle on mine, and responded, tongues duelling, and held the stallion to me in a hug that threatened to break us both. The kiss ended, and I sucked in air and nuzzled his neck.

"Ohh Brad..."

Opening my eyes suddenly, I saw the stallion in front of me. Young as I remembered, but I wasn't. My belly was thicker, and paunchier, my headfur shot with grey, my horns chipped, and my eyes sad. I realised what I had done, seeing his eyes mist up and a tear form in one corner.

"Oh fuck Roy, I'm so sorry..."

He kissed me again. Softer this time, and gentler, a tender long slow kiss. I didn't respond at first, and by the end I was ravishing his muzzle.

How does it feel to lose the one you love twice? The first was our first Spring break of college. I came back, expecting him to join me by the lake again. I ached for it.

Instead he called to tell me he had found someone, a nice mare, and they were going out. He told me in words full of regret that he wanted to try to be normal, as he put it. Normal. I cried so much and put a fist through my bedroom wall.

He had married her, and by the time they graduated, she was pregnant with a foal. Another Shire just like him, with big body and muscles as he grew, and big blue eyes like his mother's. I had gone down the same route, marrying a nice cow from church, and had a calf of my own, and we had both returned to something like a normal friendship with our wives blissfully unaware, as well as our progeny. When my wife left me for a truck driver, I thought she knew somehow, her look of regret seemed to say it, but she left me with Mike and went without a word of reproach.

Just once had he caved, a camping trip back here when our kids were off with their mothers and we had one last time. The first time felt like a beginning, that definitely felt like an ending. He even refused to cum the last time for so long, until I begged him to end it and he screamed out a whinny like I never heard and held me close shaking all over.

Now his colt was against me, his body holding mine for all the world as if I were the vulnerable one, his arms around me, and his muzzle on my neck. I tried not to cry, and I failed. He licked my tears, just as his father had done that last time, when he told me it would never happen again.

"Don't be sorry unc. I have wanted this for so long...and I know now what dad felt. Please...please..."

He kissed me, and begged, and kissed, and begged. His youthful voice cracked, the emotion too much, and still he kissed me. Then he kissed my horns.

"I read dad saying you loved this..."

Oh so much. So so much.

He was clumsy, as we had been then. He was also ardent, as we had been then. I don't know why I let him, except it felt so good, and if I was being honest, I craved a last touch of my Brad. Maybe we were both craving the same thing, in different ways.

Like father like son, he had me on my front on the grass. It made my heart ache how similar they were in making love. I felt the presence, instead of the absence, and it hurt even more. We scrabbled clumsily at our clothes, tops discarded, shorts dropped but not off, it was too much bother to get them over hooves. That was the hottest, I always thought, just undressed enough to get access to his body, your hunger and your need so much you couldn't wait to do it properly. Skin on skin, fur on fur, body on body, cloth rustling as you fucked.

"Please unc...please..."

How could I deny him?

He licked down my back, over muscles now a little the worse for wear but still big. I was bigger than I had been in school, by several stone, some of it muscle. He licked over my back, down to my rump, nibbling my cheeks in ways that made me moo deep and hard. He spread my legs just as I remembered his father doing, wanting my hole, wanting me. No hesitation, he bent his muzzle forward and huffed hot breath down my cleft, and I was begging now.

The colt took his time though, unlike his father. Long slow licks, kisses, on my taint, on my balls. He suckled each of my nuts, I know not how, and I writhed lost in pleasures as his finger found my pucker and slid in to the knuckle dry and harsh.

With a persistent pressure on my ass, he made me lift onto my knees and hands, head on the grass, ass high, and he stroked my tail, licking the tuft, before returning to the simple pleasuring of my body. Knees planted wide, I reached back to spread my own cheeks for him, completely needy, and he gasped at my display and went for it, lapping at my scrotum as he fingered my hole. I felt his fingers nice and slick; one point for the youth of today. They had learned the basics, and the benefits of lube it seemed.

One finger, two, three. I ached. I spread totally, completely, and he took my ass that way, his long fingers touching me in ways that made my head spin. I heard him hesitate a second, and I moaned in frustration, and he laughed, breaking the spell.

"I want you on your back please unc...I want to see your eyes..."

Another difference, another similarity. He liked being in charge, just like his dad. But his dad had been reluctant. Even when he fucked me on the bed, face to face, he had been reluctant to look at me direct. It was as if it was too much seeing how I looked at him. The colt was made of sterner stuff it seemed.

With my legs lifted then crossed behind his back, still tangled in my shorts and my boxers, he lifted my ass with hands surprisingly strong, and knelt between my thighs. He eased inside, watching me, watching the junction of our bodies, the point where his flare disappeared and entered me, drawing a gasp from him and a groan from me. So long, so tight. I had missed this.

He leaned over my chest, pressing his muzzle to mine.

"Kiss me..."

I reached up and did as he told, and he rewarded me by bucking his hips into me and burying his length in my aching hole as much as my aching heart.

He was so lean, and yet muscled. Just like his father as I remembered him, that night here by the lake. His feathering brushed my fur, making me shiver, and I slid my hands down his thighs feeling the soft carpet of fluffy fur on my coat. It was still magic.

His eyes looked down with lust, and a twinkle. Thankfully, I didn't see his mother staring back then, I think that would have unmanned me totally. Instead I saw him, not his dad. He was just as much in control though, and he loved it.

"Hmmm so tight unc...dad was right..."

He jabbed his hips forward, and I let out a moan, as much at the feel of his shaft nestled against my skin, as the little nugget of information. Damn that sexy stallion. Damn him...damn fucking hell I wanted to know what was I those letters, and I knew they would tear my heart out one letter at a time.

"Ahhhhh..."

He pulled back, teasing me with his flare, and then slid all the way inside, and rested on my chest again. I felt his body, the tension, muscles wound up like a top.

"I need...I need..."

He showed me what he needed with his body. Muzzle clamped to mine, hips writhing and jabbing forward with youthful power and no control at all, cock twitching, his taut abdomen rubbing my cock between us, the sensation almost but not quite exquisite. I ached, and I rode with him, and I felt the tingle building to a burn.

He went wild at the end, slamming into me with force I wasn't expecting from the youngster. I came, spraying his chest and my muzzle, and he lay his head back just like his father and shook his mane and his ears twitched and his tail flagged as he came, and I felt my guts bathed in colt cum for the first time in so long.

His head lay next to mine, muzzle open, tongue out, panting and he laughed. He laughed.

"So much better than I imagined unc. And so much better than my hand..."

"Yeah..."

"Someone must have been watching over us I think big bull."

His words were earnest, and delivered with shuddering breaths. I patted his back, and cupped his ass, and tried not to cry. I looked up at the stars, and over to the little cabin where I had won and lost so much too.

To see my son, my calf, standing there with his eyes wide and his muzzle open. He was crying, and he was also hard. His cock was out of his shorts, and he had it in his hand, the tip leaking clear fluid that glistened in the moonlight.

"Oh fuck...there was Roy..."

The colt seemed to misunderstand, and he ground his cock into me and chuckled.

"Hey, I wonder what would have happened if he could have seen this..."

"Roy I mean it, Mike, he's here!"

He caught my anxiety at last, and looked where I was pointing. The gasp and cry of the colt were matched by the look on my son's face. Such a mixture.

He pulled out, and it hurt like fuck, the flare rasping over my sore hole. I was leaking colt cum, I knew, but I had to move fast. I tried pulling my shorts up, and the colt stood unsteadily and tried to do the same. His cock swung like a ships mast, pointing into the wind.

"Mike...Mike!"

My calf put his cock away with a sob, and stormed towards the pier. The colt was fastest, as befitted his youth, sprinting after my young bull who was swearing and yelling.

By the time I caught them, they were on the pier, facing each other, and it was not going well.

"How could you!"

"Mike, I'm sorry, it's my fault..."

"You bet it is you bastard, bastard, bastard!"

He was hitting now, slamming fists into Roy's gut, then his chest, and finally his muzzle. The colt recoiled, holding his face, blood streaming, and my calf stood panting in fury, his nosering bobbing.

"How could you Dad! You knew I wanted him myself!"

We held that little tableau for an age, under the stars and the moon, sudden realisation coming to a colt and an old bull who should have known better, while my calf stood shaking and his tears rolled down his cheeks. I knew he idolised the big shire colt, but he kept his other thoughts guarded, like I had. Like father like son.

"How could you..."

We managed to get him back to the campfire, and got him to talk. He was shaking still, and he went through beers way too fast, but I felt I couldn't stop him. Not after this.

"Mike..."

"Don't Roy, just don't..."

"Mike please..."

"Roy, you fucking asshole, go for it if you want, just stop tormenting me and..."

"Mike, for fuck sake!"

The colt believed in direct action it seemed. He threw himself on my son, arms wrapped round the thick torso of my calf, and planted a deep kiss on his muzzle. I saw the stallion wince; his muzzle still hurt, in spite of using some of our small supply of ice, but it seemed this called for heroic gestures.

"Roy, fucking mpfgh..."

He kissed, and kissed. The anger and the denials slowed, and stopped, and somewhere it just became one long kiss. I watched them, drank my beer, and reminisced. My own eyes were misty by the time they came up for breath.

"Err...Jack...we may need some privacy..."

I waved them towards the cabin, and settled in by the fire. The night was magnificent after all, and my ass tingled with the memory of colt flares, one long ago, one tonight, and my muzzle tingled with the memory of kisses sweet with hay and mint.

The night noises proved unable to mask the rest though, and my sensitive wars picked up the sounds. Arguments, then silence, then moans, then cries, then screams, then silence, then more, then begging. Begging could be lost, alone and frightened. It could also be the hottest sound in life, when you knew your wishes would be answered with a body and a cock and a loving just as you needed. That was how they sounded now, but what intrigued me was the voice providing them. The voice of a colt.

After things had gone quiet, I tiptoed up to the window, but it was covered in mist and I couldn't see in. I opened the door a touch, and peered in.

By the light of an oil lamp, they lay on the bed, covers off, their coats covered in sweat which was the best blanket of all. There was no feeling like laying together, with your love for warmth, and the fresh coating of your sex evaporating slowly in the warm air, sweat and cum and saliva.

My son was asleep, spooned against the colt. His cock as buried deep in Roy's ass, the colt's upper leg lifted slightly to accommodate the intrusion. He was awake, playing with his cock, the tip still wet from a release that coated the bed, and he winked at me with those mischievous eyes.

"I think someone would approve of this too, you know unc..."

I had to agree, standing there in the doorway.

"Your boy is a damn fine top by the way...who would have guessed?"

I grunted at that, pleased at the difference somehow. Alike yet unalike, like the colt.

"I heard that...not bad for my first time, eh?"

Mike was awake now, his eyes gleaming. He had claimed his prize, his cock buried in the evidence. They say a son's life involves a series of stages, and one of the key ones is besting your own father in something. I guess he had done it now, and I couldn't begrudge him.

I watched his eyes now, my calf staring at me, daring me to speak. I couldn't, instead watching amazed as he bucked his hips slowly, and I could see his length sliding into the colt's ass, glistening with a sheen of cum. I also saw Roy turn his head to look into my son's eyes and saw his own soften and crinkle. I knew that look; I had given it to a colt myself, more than twenty years ago. I swallowed and prepared to leave.

"Dad...if you promise to do what I tell you, you can come in."

I hesitated, my heart pounding. They were both looking at me now, and both eager. If I was Catholic I would have crossed myself, but alas all I could do was give my cock a stroke through my shorts. Being ordered around like this by my own son was disturbing...and arousing in ways I found hard to reconcile.

Under his coaxing, I joined them, my muzzle at Roy's groin, my groin at his, and we suckled like I had done years ago with his dad, when everything seemed so much simpler. This time though, I also got to watch my son's cock slide into the colt's ass, feel his cock respond, and taste his cum and watch his tailhole clamp down on a bull cock already twitching on the brink. They came together, stinking of sweat, cum, musk and I lay with them as the colt slid a finger up my aching hole and drove me to the end. I gripped his mane and tried not to fuck his muzzle, but he took me to the hilt anyway and I shot down his throat as my boy watched on.

As they lay there entwined, I let them sleep, heading for the pier and the lake. I lay on its flimsy wooden boards, and stared up at the stars, and wondered.

The fire burned down, and the lamp spread it's glow on the two inside the cabin. I wondered if a light shone down on me then, protecting me. I pulled a grimace, shaking my head at such sentimentality, but the tingle returned to my ass, a talisman of something I guessed. Life perhaps, in all its glorious uncertainty. With a curse, I tossed my last beer can into the water, looked up, picked a star, and whispered it.

"I miss you my love."

If this were a fantasy, I would probably have heard a whinny over the water. Alas there was none to be heard. But the contented snores from the cabin were better, and at least they were real.