Dispatch 6 — Morning Float.md

The sun is doing its best work of the morning when Kai stops swimming and simply rolls onto his back.

He'd been doing laps — proper ones, the kind that use the full diagonal length of the lake and require actual effort. Hunting form, tight turns at each end, working through the underwater maneuvers he only bothers practicing when there's nobody watching. It's good for him to move like that. Keeps the edges sharp. But the sun has climbed to exactly the right angle now and the shallows are warm and there isn't a particular reason to keep going, so he doesn't.

He lets the water take his weight and stares up at the sky.

The sun presses into his belly and chest and the top of his muzzle where it breaks the surface, and he feels the energy of it absorbing into his skin, straightforward and efficient, his body's metabolism simply accepting what's offered. He'd eaten — a decent bass from the deeper section, caught clean on the first pass. The safe pool has been checked and is fine. The algae on the western edge was nothing serious.

There's nothing that needs doing.

He floats in the middle of that thought for a while, fins slack, tail barely moving.

Somewhere on the other side of the boundary, Raymond is in a kitchen. Probably waiting for coffee to finish, or already holding a mug, slightly rumpled from sleep and not yet fully assembled. Moving around his human space doing human morning things, comfortable in the routine of it even if the body that carries him through those routines is all wrong.

Kai watches a cloud cross the sky.

He's choosing to think about Raymond. That's worth noting, at least internally — that it's a choice and not a compulsion. He could think about the underwater rock formations he found yesterday, or whether the weather will shift enough to move the fish out of the deep section, or any number of things that have nothing to do with the person he's waiting for. He's simply choosing this instead, the way you choose the warmest spot on a rock when all the spots are available.

He thinks about the plushie hugged in both arms first thing home last night, before even checking messages. The thirty minutes of contact before words. He thinks about *it makes me happy regardless* said without any particular weight, just as fact.

The sun keeps working. The water holds him up without being asked.

He'll go clean the pool edges properly when the warmth tips over into heat. He'll probably find something else to do after that — there's a section of the bank that's been eroding and he's been meaning to check if it'll affect the root systems of the reeds. Small work. Useful work.

But right now he's just floating, belly to sun, thinking about someone who's probably on their second mug by now and making their way back to bed.

Kai closes his eyes.

The morning takes its time.