I took Lop’s place. "Did you like that?" I asked, softly, when I was still on my hands and knees. I gave his penis-sheath a lick, more out of habit than anything. My word, it had been a long time since I’d opened anyone.

"Yes", the boy said, in a kind of shaky voice.

"Did it hurt?"

"Yes. Well, a little."

"Only at first–"

"Yeah."

"Then what?"

"Then–it was–I don’t know. It was beautiful."

I lay down on him. His body was softish compared to Lop’s, but had a nice masculine feel to it. Something his wives would like. Like a lot, I was sure.

"Different, isn’t it? You getting some idea of why this is such a popular thing to do?"

He smiled the tiniest smile. He spread his thighs and raised his legs. I could feel his heels on my butt.

Such an eager pup!

"Not yet, Mickey", I said. "In a couple of minutes. Lop isn’t through with you yet. He left you something in your belly. You’re entitled to enjoy your bliss."

I wrapped my arms around his shoulders. "Just lie quietly for a little while. Tell me what it felt like."

Well, you know how youngsters are. It was pretty confused. And nothing new to me–what it felt like having something going into your body down there, how Lop’s black got huge, how his belly was going to burst, and how he started feeling things between his legs he’d never felt, and the beauty totally filling his whole body. But it was all disjointed and spaced out, and as the bliss took effect the silences were longer and longer.

I lay on him and let him nap for perhaps a quarter of an hour, maybe a little longer.

He probably wouldn’t have come to if I’d linked him. But I couldn’t do that. He had to feel it.

So I licked him awake. The look on his face was priceless. He mumbled something about never feeling anything like that, and how beautiful it was, how having Lop’s black in his guts was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened.

Well, Lop’s SkhtuS packs a wallop. Even for a grown man. And at wlkatar, I noticed it took a while before anyone he pegged could function again.

"OK, sweet kitten", I whispered to the kit–boy, now–"we’ve got to finish what your daddy started. Loop your tail around my thigh. You’ll like it even better."

I had done a little grooming around on the boy’s chest and belly, partly to be polite and partly to get a noseful of Lop’s hkshihh. It was so amusing: there were three distinct scents: my own hkshihh, Lop’s, and someone new. Mickey was in business. Partly, anyhow.

The scent of the hkshihh had done its job and in an eyeblink I was well and truly black. And tingling. When I felt his tail on my leg, I followed Lop’s example and maneuvered my blob of SkhtuS to the opening of the boy’s tail-hole. I was being gentle, but I didn’t have to pull at all firmly before I could feel it going in. Very easily indeed. So much so that I wondered if he could even feel me, after Lop’s black, but then I felt a little stiffening in his body.

"Feel me in you?" I whispered. "You’re a man, now. Black and hard. Like Lop. You can feel me–get used to it–OK, that was just for starters. Now I’m going to give you the whole thing." (The top of my head felt like it was going to fall off when I felt his asshole grip my root.) "Feel me? Pull and stretch. Yeah. Oh, yeah! There you go–there you go–your hand just–you just started to grab on my prick. There. Again. Oh yeah, that’s beautiful–feel that now? Can you feel your gut getting tight? Feels good, doesn’t it? Yeah! Like my black suddenly got bigger? That’s your hand. So beautiful. Oh, so tight! You’re a man, now. Great grip! Yes! Yes! Red and black. My goodness, you’re tight. You’re as strong as Lop! You’ll tear my drill out by the roots!"

He was moaning softly with every draw and pull against the grip of his hand, and when I juiced–I tried not to be rough, but it’s always a workout for both the drill and the hole it’s in–and when without really thinking I pulled everything but my balls into his asshole, at the very end, he stiffened and arched his back. I thought my mane was going to come out in his hands. Not that I was aware of much, myself. The blast of beauty that filled my whole body almost made me pass out.

It was totally exhausting it was to unload my SkhtuS. I just lay there. I would stay on him for a while, anyway. I’d love to have stayed in him, as well. But unlike that thug of a husband of mine, my black slips almost as soon as my nuts snap. And it was just as well for Mickey–as beautiful as it was, it was surely a relief to feel my peg slide out of his gut.

I could tell Mickey was confused. The young are often embarrassed. They don’t know how to feel. They don’t know what they feel. It’s so confusing. And so sweet. Just being there, with your weight on their body, comforts them. I’ll never forget my own opening. I wanted both my fathers to hold me for ever. It was the bliss working, I suppose. But also, I felt so safe with a man lying on my chest and my legs wrapped around his.

Lying there, I did what dads do–talked to Mickey, saying encouraging things, praise his manhood, talking about relaxing, and letting the bliss just seep into his body. I could tell from the half-closed eyes that he was feeling the effects. I wondered if a double-dose of SkhtuS–and rupellid SkhtuS at that–might kick him into an oversexed stupor, like a white-belly at a wlkatar. But I hoped that enough time had passed between Lop’s injection and mine so that nothing like that would happen.

Eventually, I raised myself from his body (after I got him to loosen his tail’s grip on my thigh, which was about to go to sleep). Mickey was bit of a mess.

Now came the weird part. If this had gone more or less according to plan, he should be pretty eager for a link. Or rather, his black would be. So this time, cleaning him up would have to include soothing his poor itching cock.

I dabbed at his face with my tongue a number of times and murmured to him that I’d clean him up, but his brother wouldn’t do that for him. From now on he’d have to take care of his own body after being drilled. (And drilling.) I didn’t say what else I was thinking: if he was any relative of mine, he and Tim would spend day after day doing nothing much but cleaning himself up, between one driving and the next, with occasional time out for eating and sleeping. Let him find that out for himself.

I busied myself around his belly, penis-sheath (his black had slipped), egg-purse, and groin. The ritual was standard in our clans. It was considerate, of course. A young boy like that would be pretty flemished out after his experience. Even when the "experience" didn’t include something like Lop’s black. And of course poor Mickey had had not one but two adult cocks up his little ass (nothing so "little" about it! I was just making the mistake all parents make), and he was zonked out from a double dose of adult-strength bliss. But cleaning him up also made it possible to take a good assessment of the damage. As I licked around I got whiffs of Lop’s and my SkhtuS, and a good noseful of SkhtuS I’d never scented before. Mickey’s. Good. It worked. Nice and musky. But there wasn’t so much of it, either to smell or taste, to make me think that his nuts had actually snapped while he was being boned. I judged that at least half of the hkshihh in his fur was his own, however, and it was still oozing out of his sheath.

And of course down next to the root of his tail there was Lop’s and my SkhtuS. Aplenty. Small wonder. I probed his tail-hole with my tongue. It gave easily. I tasted a little blood. Standard–and anyway quite unthinkable that anyone Mickey’s age could take Lop’s black without something giving.

The ticklish part involved getting the SkhtuS off of–and out of–his prick. You can’t lick that thing, as Lop had taught me. So I sort of squeezed and milked his sheath. He started to show a little black wood, and as I worked, SkhtuS appeared and I nibbled it off the end of his cock as it came. I’d never done anything like that before, and wasn’t quite sure of what I was doing, but after a few minutes of working his sheath and black, nothing more seemed to be collecting at the tip of it. I was sort of fascinated. Brand-new cock. This thing had never seen the light of day before now. It had never seen the inside of a butt or cunt. It had, however, seen the inside of my mouth, which was decidedly contrary to custom, but I doubt the boy was even aware of what was going on. He’d have been plenty aware if I hadn’t stripped the SkhtuS out of him, though. I can’t imagine what that would have been like!

I was on hands and knees over his sleeping form. I sighed as I looked down at him. Sweet Mickey. The young man was now open and ready for as much beauty as the hours in the day and his brother’s stamina would allow. Right now, however, the poor sweetie was so limp he looked boneless. He’d be criminally handsome in a nipple-ring. Later. Maybe on the 3rd anniversary of his opening. After his neck had grown longer. It’s not seemly for a kid of 9 or so to wear stuff like that. (Besides, show me the 9-year-old who has any taste.)

Tim, naturally, had been following the whole thing with round eyes. I’d have to have a talk with him, after he’d had his own encounter with being driven crazy by his black itching with SkhtuS. He’d understand better.

Lop had pulled himself together–I hadn’t noticed. Noticed that or anything else except intense beauty. Tim was snuggling with my man, and after the action with Mickey was over, they were holding whispered conversations about whether it hurt, what did it feel like, and so on. Lop replied sensibly and reassuringly. Yes it did hurt, a little, at first, and as for how it felt, well, it felt like nothing else. So he couldn’t say. Tim would just have to find out for himself.

It must have seemed strange to both kits; neither Lop nor I had really groomed them since they were four or so and got good at doing it themselves (in pairs, of course, as much as by themselves).

The business of grooming the kit–well, "boy", now–after opening him was part of Lop’s traditions, too. Neither one of us could say for sure it was a wlko universal. Dr Roper’s account doesn’t mention it at all.

Anyway, we had to think about getting our black into working order for Tim’s opening. First we had a little snack, and napped. Cuddling. But then, we usually cuddled when we napped. The feel and smell of Lop’s fur never lost its beauty for me. The feel of his body. Whether he was holding me or I was holding him.

Then after a couple of hours, we made us a light midday snack: cold boiled crabs, pickled eel, StStahS grass for seasoning. A little kvass would have been perfect, but we hadn’t had any kind of contact with monuxes since Lop killed the one who’d driven his seed.

Then we lay together. Groin to groin, on our sides. Legs all tangled up. Tails. I looked into his eyes, so dark, so soft; let my groggy gaze wander over his blocky, male features, the scar on his muzzle next to his eye, the two fangs that just showed when his mouth was closed. It was so cute, the tips of those teeth; the only thing about him, maybe, that you’d want to call cute. His inky eye-stripes and equally inky neck marks. The swelling on the side of his head had never entirely disappeared. Long ago it stopped being sore, at least. He’d never lost his limp. I didn’t notice exactly when he stopped groaning every time he straightened up. It happened gradually, I suppose. It was no use asking him if he still hurt. He always said he didn’t, even when it was obvious that he did. But it bruised my heart when he’d make that soft sound after we linked. He’d just about blow his bone out of my tail-hole when he snapped, and he’d be curled over sucking my own blast of SkhtuS into his mouth. I’d be feeling so blissful I thought I was dying. And then he’d lie down on my chest. And make that deep noise as he straightened up. He wasn’t asking for sympathy. That wouldn’t be Lop. Anyone could see the pain in his eyes, though, together with the beauty.

But all that stopped. Except for the limp.

He was so–I lay there looking into his face. So–what? So rugged. So gentle. I wanted to lick him all over. "Girl stuff". I’d blown my SkhtuS into little Mickey some hours earlier and had been all but knocked unconscious by the beauty of it, but now I was aching to have a certain stick of big black wood inside me. Giving me beauty. Giving me bliss. Not to mention making my man feel so beautiful as he did so.

I didn’t dare. Not that time.

We started talking sweet to each other. Just a little. Don’t want to overdo it. Just to throw a little fuel on the fire. Tails braided together. Sweet talk.

I guess we wlko lead pretty placid lives, except when hunters start slaughtering us. Of course there’s death otherwise. And it’s very hard. You know people for 150 or 160 years and more, you really miss them. When a kit dies, it’s even worse. Dr Roper talks about why co-mates go cold. But I saw he left out the main reason. When a youngster dies, the whole family group is stunned. The women sometimes try to remind the men about driving seed. But the men just lose interest. They have this hopeless feeling. It saps them. They don’t care about anything. And by the time they’re feeling more or less themselves, they’re white.

Until the hunters did their job on my family, I hadn’t had any experience with losing a co-mate or a wife. But I’ve seen what it does. Even if Drushka and I had escaped together, somehow, I know we’d have gone white, even if I hadn’t been cold even before I got back to the site. But I know that when I was on the run with the babes, before bumping into Lop, nothing could have been further from my mind than a link or a fuck.

For some reason, on that wonderful day when we opened the twins, as I looked into that blocky face, I was thinking that one of us is going to die before the other. Probably me, since I’m so much older than Lop. But accidents happen. And, he’d been badly hurt. Nothing like that had ever happened to me. Maybe it evened things out. And anyway, I didn’t know how long rupellids normally live.

On the other hand, he’d never been, well, shafted by a herd of monuxes. I can’t imagine that that is a life-prolonging experience. And I’d had my guts shredded by the ponies four times. Lop’s ignorance of all that was why his one encounter turned out so badly for the monux, I guess. Lop must have been familiar with the theory. But I had no trouble understanding his reaction when a foul-mouthed monux really started going into him–

We snoozed. We woke, and cuddled. I looked over and saw the kits. Medium brown, now. A dark tan. Nice contrast between their white belly fur and the brown of their backs and shoulders. Neck stripes. Snoozing in a heap, like always. That would change in a few hours. Well, there’d still be plenty of snoozing. "Linking to exhaustion" isn’t just a figure of speech.

After our nap and yet another snack, it was time for Tim's turn. It was much like Mickey’s opening. But there were differences.

There was more whispered talking between the boy and Lop than with Mickey, it seemed to me. And Lop told me later that Tim had been really worried about being hurt.

When I took Lop’s place, it seemed to me that Tim was a little more keyed up than Mickey had been. I hardly was into him all the way when I started to feel the first pulsing grips, and when his guts clamped down on my black in earnest, the grasp of his third hand was very strong. Surprisingly. Much stronger than Mickey’s .When I praised him for "being a real man", I wasn’t just making encouraging noises, no indeed. That boy’s ass felt like it could rip a black bone right out of its sheath, given just a little more excitement. I asked him the usual questions about whether he could feel the difference after he gripped my black, and he was hardly able to gasp out any answer at all, through the purrs and groans. I guess that was "yes".

The main difference, though, between opening Tim and opening Mickey had nothing to do with me. When my softening black slipped from the clutch of Tim’s third hand, I looked up and saw Mickey. At my shoulder. On all fours. Black. All black. And hkshihh beading up around the rim of his cock-sheath where the wood came out of it.

Tim was lying on his back, like Mickey before. Glassy-eyed. I’m not even sure he heard me say the ritual words–"Now you’re a man".

"OK, stud", I said to Mickey. "After I clean him up, he’s yours. Make him. Try out your peg on this man."

Mickey was licking Tim’s neck and cheeks and muzzle while I worked at the other end of him, and no more than ten seconds after I finished mopping up little Tim, the two were a writhing pile of ardent boys. Getting their first taste of it. Real taste of it. There’s too much going on when you’re being opened. Too many brand-new sensations, too much apprehension, even too much pain. These kits–no, boys–were getting their first real helping of what makes life worth living for a wlko.

And they were helping themselves pretty liberally. More eagerness was on view than finesse, and a mere ten minutes or so later, Tim’s back arched strongly and his whole body jerked and quivered. A few minutes after that, Mickey coughed and snorted and appeared to be trying to hug his brother to death.

Lop and I had witnessed the very first time in their lives when the boys’ nuts had snapped. Lop and I exchanged gances. He looked so pleased and proud. Fatherly.

And the boys? They were already asleep in a dark-tan-and-cream-colored heap.

Lop and I felt so beautiful and blissful ourselves. We cuddled and talked. Sometimes we were sort of playing at sex. Sometimes we just watched the boys snoozing together, sharing the feelings of pride and affection. As we talked about the kits, I mean boys, I swear that Lop came as close to crying as I’ve ever seen him. We talked about our own openings. Lop’s had elements of comedy because of the problem of two wlkon opening three kits. We discussed the wisdom or the reverse of opening young men at a wlkatar. Some swore by it, I knew. Even within my own clan tree. But since just about every wlko who sees a white belly at a wlkatar links with it, a mere boy who’d never felt black in him even once before then can be made a dozen or more times in a day. Strangers, mostly. It’s hard to see that as a reassuring experience. Lop agreed. He thought his cousins Paul and Clyde had been opened that way, but wasn’t completely sure. He’d sometimes wondered if starting out sexual life by being fucked half to death (Lop said "fucked", too) had something to do with Paul’s strange ways.

I saw that he was looking over my shoulder at something, his whiskers twitching with amusement. I followed his gaze.

Mickey was sitting on Tim’s belly. It seemed obvious that that wasn’t all he was sitting on. With a low wheeze the boy lay forward onto Tim’s chest. Something shiny and black was visible just under his tail. Tim’s trunk curled, and the black disappeared altogether. The two of them were twined together with their tails, and they rolled over so that Mickey was underneath, and it was off to the races. I remember feeling mildly surprised. Somehow, I thought Mickey would be the hot one, but this was a straw in the wind. Seems to me over the next several years, Tim–gentle, shy Tim–shafted Mickey twice for every once he took Mickey’s peg.

Some minutes into it, Tim’s light voice could be heard saying "Oh! Oh!". It was like a little sob.

Much too soon for his nuts to snap. Besides, his hammering increased in vigor.

"Mmm. Yeah. Mickey’s got the grip on him", Lop said, conversationally, with his twisted grin. "Quite the surprise, first time that happens."

I chuckled agreement. My own virginity was many more years in the past than Lop’s, but I remembered it well.

Tim’s snorting and coughing and little cries were a measure less dramatic than Mickey’s, but there was no missing the snap of his nuts.

"Well", said Lop, with a lick and a deep sigh as though he’d been holding his breath. "That’s that. If they’re anything like I was at that age, we won’t hear more than a sentence at a time out of them for the next year or two." He snickered. Gently. Another sigh and a lick.

The pungent scent of hkshihh hit my nostrils with sudden force. Startled, I glanced down between my man’s legs. Well, no mystery–wherever there’s hard black, at least if it’s attached to Lop’s eggs, there’s hkshihh.

"I guess I got a little exited by the boys", said Lop. He seemed sheepish. I don’t know why. I’d have given my whiskers for a link, then and there. And it didn’t make a particle of difference to me whether the beauty came out of my black or out of my butt-hole. My wife-husband tilted his body slightly so he could take my balls in a loop of his tail. I was oozing hkshihh myself even before I felt the pressure on my nuts. By the time he leaned over to lick my tits, maybe thirty seconds later, I could feel the tingle of SkhtuS growing up through my black.

"Fuck me, stud", he whispered into my ear as he licked it. "I’m hot."

Magic words. He spoke for both of us.

I don’t know when I’ve ever given a man such a hammering. He must have thought he was being made by a monux, I swear. As dizzy as I was with beauty, I had this inkling that his nuts were going to snap–something about the noises he was making–I tried to hold on to him as much as possible while I curled down and got his black into my mouth. That was all it took. At the moment my balls snapped, the SkhtuS started pouring out of him. You sort of lose control when you start to juice, but I was determined to keep his black where it was. (And not bite him!) There was another little problem. There was so much SkhtuS I nearly choked. He was hot. After all that!

Maybe two years later, when both boys were every bit as tall as me, Tim and I were snuggling and talking. Some boys get so wrapped up in their linking after they’re opened that they hardly know their folks exist, but Mickey and Tim didn’t change much. Maybe they would have been different in a regular family with moms and a bunch of brothers and sisters and the odd ancestress or widowed great-uncle. Our boys were so friendly and affectionate. Anyway, I was half-lying against the trunk of the big tree that was between the hearth and the lake, and Tim was between my thighs, his back on my chest, my arms around him. We were chatting about nothing much in a lazy way. Then he craned his long neck up and around smoothed my whiskers with his tongue. He did that when he had something on his mind and was trying to figure out how to say it.

I decided to help him out.

"Tell me what you’re thinking."

"Well", he said, "you know how you and Lop sometimes, um, when you’re linking I mean, one of you will hold the other guy’s black, um, in your mouth–?"

"Yes."

"Well, um, isn’t it a little, um, weird?"

"How do you mean?" I was wondering how I could suggest to him–firmly–that Mickey and he mustn’t do that.

"Well, yesterday Mickey tried it. I mean, he was plugging away and he pulled his chest off of me, like you two do, and bent down, like you two do–"

"Yes–?"

"Oh, man! Was that a surprise! Pain?! Ooooh, it hurt! I screeched, and jumped so hard he fell out of me. I bet I slipped my black before I hit the ground. I think I’ll be OK, but it still hurts. It wasn’t nice at all. How do you guys stand it?"

It was a miracle. Like a fish jumping out of the water right onto the fire.

"Well", I said, smoothing his fur. "It’s–an acquired taste. Something rupellids do." (There’s so much nonsense going around about rupellids. I figured a little more wouldn’t hurt.) "I don’t recommend it. Life is long, especially if you have to live it with a scarred stump where your black used to be. So, please, don’t you and Mickey ever try that again."

Well, there are other things to tell. The boys’ first wlkatar, where we also got nipple rings for them. Deepening relations with the two family groups a day or so’s walk away. Given the rugged terrain, you could swim there in less time, and we did that sometimes. Tim and Mickey’s growing affection for two sweet young things in Clan 60.

Cora and Polly had been promised, the girls. But that was years ago. It’s a tribute to the charm and grace of our boys that the two families involved willingly acknowledged the youngsters’ affection. Even given the obstacles presented by their, ah, irregular parenting. So a marriage with our sons was set up.

"Our sons." That sounded so natural.

The most amazing thing happened. The girls’ parents gave Lop and me presents. A pair of necklaces. They’d belonged to the ladies’ great-great-great grandfathers on their fathers’ side. They were made of htssahhsh shells. Deep, rich red with cream accents. Cut to reveal the two-color spiraling interiors, and polished bright. They were very old. And in fact old-fashioned; no one wears things like that any more. But they were amazing. All by themselves they were amazing, but they went perfectly with Lop’s fur color. He looked incredibly handsome wearing his. Old-fashioned or not, the necklaces had to be prized possessions (I couldn’t even imagine how they were made), and it was a very impressive gift.

We were more than dumbfounded, we were embarrassed. We had nothing to give in return, as required by custom. Being little more than refugees, after all. The girls’ parents were so gracious, though. They headed off any awkwardness: when they gave us the necklaces, they said they were hS-nlhhupss–"return gifts". By way of repaying us for the love between their girls and Mickey and Tim, or something. It was so touching.

The women made the presentation. (I’m not telling you their names, they wouldn’t make any sense to you.) That was fitting. But I was especially touched when one of the men suddenly embraced Lop and licked his neck and said they were happy for us, and felt lucky to be joined to us through the marriage of the children. The ritual noises about welcoming the boys to Clan 60 were just that, ritual; these other remarks were astonishing. The other co-mate hugged me and purred, and then there was hugging and purring and licking all around. We were pretty good friends, by then, but this was unexpected. They recognized that Lop and I are a family, in fact. Recognized it and accepted it.

For a year the young foursome lived with us, before moving to a little cove on Tellebris-Tail Lake a couple of kilometers away.

Watching them linking and slotting around the place (which they did pretty incessantly) affected Lop even more than it did me. He’d lick my ear and murmur how sweet and beautiful young love was. The boys–well, men now, in fact–would sometimes talk man-to-man to Lop and me. Praising the joys of cunt. It was so obvious. They were sort of hinting around that we might think about looking for wives.

"You’re missing out on something really neat", they’d say. "I don’t know how I lived without cunt, it’s so beautiful", and so on.

It was cute.

Lop just laughed. We both said, at one time or another in these conversations, that we knew rather more about cunt than they did. Besides, we were happy with the way things were.

We’d never actually discussed our situation with the boys. But after that first wlkatar they themselves sometimes referred to Lop and me as "queers" (zizi). There had been that laughable discussion when they were opened. But it was never clear to me that they knew what all that really meant. By now they surely did. In fact, their talk about cunt, I decided, was in part a disguised way of asking us if what they’d heard was true.

When our grandkits were–well, they weren’t really any such thing as "our grandkits", but we all thought of them that way–when the grandkit pairs of twins were 9, 6, and 1, Mickey and Tim and their wives said they’d like to move back to our site. They missed us, they said. And they wanted the kits to know us as they were growing up. We were very pleased. Lop and I had got along just fine, alone by ourselves, but we had plenty of room for them all and it was wonderful having an actual family around. The kits were so lively. And so much fun to play with. Lop was downright goofy with them. The young wives, Cora and Polly, were such warm young creatures. Charming and funny. Remarkable personalities for such pretty girls. And they were wonderful mothers.

But this is enough for now. Lop doesn’t know how to read or write and thinks I’m crazy. But I figured that Dr Roper’s stuff could use a different kind of "case-study" to round it out. I don’t know how different Lop and I are. We can’t be unique. Well, we may be in fact the only rupellid-vulcid lovers, ever. I’ve never even heard of a "normal" co-mate pair with one rupellid and one vulcid, for starters. And I have the idea that wlko men don’t often turn out the way we did, even though there seems to have been something a little funny going on in one of Lop’s clans.

Everything in our lives that brought us together was so accidental. I think about that a lot. About how happy I am, perfectly happy, and how easy it would have been to miss out on it altogether. Well, for starters, how easy it would be for either Lop or me (or both) to be rugs on someone’s floor somwhere. But what happened, happened. I don’t think there are any happier wlkon in the Meggada. Anyway, even after all these years I hardly ever look closely at that damaged, blocky face of his without nearly weeping from happiness.

And I sometimes catch Lop just gazing at me with this quizzical expression. Peering at me. Like he was looking at me for the first time