Tiger Winter - 23. Heat

Emmett opened his eyes and a fish swam in front of him. He barked in surprise, and warm salty water rushed down his throat. The polar bear surfaced in the glistening sea of their shared dreamland, and glanced around for his mate. Jian was not immediately obvious, and Emmett assumed his mate would come surfing out of the sun just as he had previously. Emmett made for the beach, swimming with strong strokes towards the stripe of glowing golden sand that separated the sea from the snow. He shook himself from nose to tail, splattering water everywhere, and scanned the view of the snow fields that spread into the distance before rising towards the bright blue sky as ice boulders. It was still snowing, and there were no markings in the white blanket that covered the land. As Emmett turned to face the bright sea, he frowned softly, because there was still no sign of his mate.

They had never been without each other in the strange realm halfway between waking and sleeping, it was after all a blend of their favourite environments, and Emmett did not like the silence intensified by the crashing of the beach waves. He stood on his hind legs and sniffed the salty snow-speckled air.

“WRRAOOM!” he called into the open sky, and paused for an answer, ears twitching in the soft sunlight. There was a long silence. Emmett was just about to call again, when his nose twitched at the scent of Jasmine, and he turned to look across the snow and ice.

“XUE!”

The polar bear reared up as tall as he could, forelegs dropping down by his sides, and stared across the snowy plains. Suddenly the tiger was snapped into hard focus, and Emmett was so shocked he barked, rooted to the spot where he stood.

Wading through the deep snow was in fact, a tiger. He was beautiful, resplendent with his rich orange and back fur, and even with the distance between them, Emmett knew the burning orange-amber eyes like the pages of his favourites books.

“JIAN!” Emmett dropped to all fours and bounded across the snow towards his mate. His paws were bigger, better designed for traversing the loose powdery surface, and by the time the tiger had arranged all four of his legs to run, Emmett was too close to him to stop. They ploughed into each other at speed, and Emmett righted himself to look down between his huge feet at the tiger on his back, his white belly fur soft and fluffy. Emmett nuzzled into his thick ruff instantly. “You’ve got fur!”

“I’ve got damn cold feet, is what I’ve got.” Jian replied in his throaty tiger voice. “I’ve been looking for you for ages.”

“I woke up in the sea. Did you know there were fish in there?”

“Better than waking up in the boulder field,” Jian-the-tiger’s expression softened, “I have fur!”

“I know, babe.” Emmett let the tiger up to right himself and nuzzled his long feline body. Jian chuffed happily and snuffled at his snow flecked guard hairs. Together they turned back in the direction of the beach, and Emmett couldn’t help but stare at the new body his mate inhabited. “How?”

“I have no idea. I didn’t even ask, like I did with the ears and the tail.” Jian trod around in a little circle and snorted gently. “I miss having only two feet to organise.”

“You get used to it,” Emmett laughed, “watching Rye trying to organise his paws on ice for the first time was damn funny though.”

“Do you think it’s because of the tiger’s at work? They’re Sumatran and I’m Bengali, but maybe it’s a proximity thing.”

They reached the narrow strip of beach, and Jian-the-tiger stood at the edge of the snow, testing his retractable claws against the soft sand. He sighed heavily.

“Babe?” Emmett rubbed his head against the tiger’s shoulder, “what’s the matter?”

“I always wanted to be a tiger,” Jian sounded thoughtful, and his eyes swirled softly, “but I should have been grateful for what I had. I miss my body,” he placed one big paw against Emmett’s shoulder. “I miss the way your fur feels. Turns out being a Kam wouldn’t have been so bad after all.”

Emmett cocked his head to one side.

“What does it mean?”

“Gold,” Jian chuckled, “dad’s a banker after all…”

Emmett pushed against him with a happy smile and licked his fur with his dark tongue.

“But you already are.”

“Huh?”

“Gold: you’re always shining gold, outlined in gold, glowing golden in every vision we share. That’s how I knew I loved you in the first place.”

“I thought it was my charming personality,” Jian retorted with a grin. The tiger looked down at himself and burst out laughing. “I’m naked!”

“Huurnt rooarm wrroal,” Emmett agreed just as the boy flung himself at the polar bear, snuggling into his thick fur, “haoorrm.”

“I love you Xue-bear!”

“Rooaw woorl wrou.”

Jian spun around excitedly, his arms flung out, his tan skin glowing in the sunlight. The stripes that decorated his lower back were perhaps a shade darker than they had been before. When Emmett poked his nose against them, Jian twisted to look at his skin.

“I think that’s enough for now: I don’t want to be all tiger.” Jian smoothed his hands down his sides and Emmett sat back and smiled happily with his tongue out. Together they looked out across the sea.

“Huurnt!”

“Is that a boat?” Jian peered out towards the speck, dark against the sun, “what kind of boat is that?”

Emmett grunted in confusion. Sailing through the clear waters of the warm blue sea, heading at an oblique angle away from them was an ice breaker, a boat like the ones in his father’s fleet that could go very nearly anywhere and had the power to smash through pack ice six feet deep. What it was doing in Jian’s sunny dream-sea Emmett could not fathom, but Jian was smiling broadly.

“Let’s go on an adventure!”

*

As spring approached, the snow fell less often, and Emmett retired his winter coat for the season, instead able to counteract the chill with his denim jacket and his layer of perpetual body fat. His diet had changed over the months since they had returned home from Moosonee, and now that Jian and Pitanê had to eat dinner every night, it seemed strange for Emmett not to join them. His portions were still enormous compared to the ones the little tiger consumed, but Emmett no longer sat down to stuff himself with forty-five thousand calories at once. Other things had changed too, and Emmett had been pleased with how well their lives had begun to adjust to each other. Jian’s irritating habit of using towels from the bathroom and then dumping them wherever he decided to get naked had been called out, but only on Emmett’s promise to stop picking up whatever book his boyfriend was reading, continuing from where he was and then absent-mindedly moving the bookmark. Pitanê assisted them in his own way by using Jian’s lap as a pillow the moment the little tiger was cuddled in between Emmett’s meaty thighs on the sofa, and the polar bear would have sworn the husky was learning which hockey teams they supported, because he always howled when their favourite players scored.

Emmett was sad to see the snow begin to vanish, but he liked the appearing spring green shoots, and it certainly made it easier for Jian to practice with the three wheeled scooter when he took Pitanê for sled-dog practice. Neither of them was quite sure hooking the dog up to an actual low-friction sled was a smart move just yet, because while Pitanê was excellent at doing exactly what Jian wanted when he was in position, the husky was still keen to chase squirrels the moment the tiger stepped off the runners. When Jian asked to borrow the truck to go out of the city for a longer training run, Emmett kissed him, and lied through his teeth.

“You don’t mind?” Jian blinked adorably.

“Don’t worry about me,” Emmett stroked his hair, “I have to go to the university anyway: one of the students has lost his wilderness notes and I don’t have any spare copies to hand.”

“I’ll wait for you if you want,” his mate purred literally, rubbing and vibrating against his chest and abdomen.

“Don’t be silly; you two go and have fun. You can tell me all the stories when you get back.” Pitanê barked in agreement. “Just don’t dent the Chevy, babe.”

Emmett had no intention of going into the university, and there was no student who required any extra notes: Emmett had after all trained them to be much more organised. Instead he took a bus out towards Scarborough and headed to Sunrise Avenue and a shop he had never even known existed until he’d completed a very quickly deleted search on the internet.

“Hi! Welcome to Surf Ontario. How can I help you today?”

Emmett blinked in the warm atmosphere of the shop. Everything inside was yellow wood and the kind of hard concrete floor he was sure people skated on once business was closed. The polar bear had met enough cute sporty types in bars to know that board-sports people tended to adore more than one discipline. Everywhere there were stacks of brightly coloured surfboards, including one hanging from the ceiling, and Emmett ducked automatically, casting around for the familiar view of a friendly sales assistant. There were two of them, a well-muscled incredibly tanned young man with bleach blond hair who had worn shorts despite the thin layer of snow still on the ground, and a girl with a bright smile and fantastically multi-coloured t-shirt over her khaki trousers. To Emmett’s relief, it was the girl who came forwards to shake his hand.

“If you don’t mind me saying; you look a bit lost hun.”

“I feel it,” Emmett shivered internally, “I have to choose a surfboard,” he stared around at the enormous selection, “and I have no idea what I’m doing.”

The girl chuckled in a friendly manner and put her hand on his arm.

“No one is going to force you to buy a surfboard, hun; not even me, and I get paid on commission.” She paused and arched an eyebrow at him, “I’m going to assume this isn’t for you?”

“No,” Emmett admitted quickly, “I don’t surf.” He frowned softly, “I’ve never tried, but it doesn’t appeal. It’s for my boyfriend.”

“Oh sweet! Special occasion?”

Emmett filled her in as they wandered through the store towards the back of the shop and the long counter behind which hung a selection of all-weather surf clothing. Somehow Emmett couldn’t imagine Jian donning a wetsuit to ride around in the chilly waters of a Toronto spring. She seemed pleased with the idea he was buying a board for the man he loved, but slightly disappointed that he didn’t know even the most basic of facts about Jian’s riding needs.

“What the heck is a groveler?” Emmett glanced around like he was in the centre of some enormous joke.

“Little choppy waves, harder to ride but lots of fun. You need lots of volume in the board to get good turns on them.”

“Volume?” Emmett winced.

“OK, so from the beginning: the big three things to consider when choosing a board are the design, the volume, and the dimensions. Do you know what kind of board he had before?”

“It was blue and green?” Emmett glanced around the shop, “they all look the same shape to me.”

Emmett’s new sales assistant sighed at him.

“Oh we’re going to have to fix you big guy. First off design; what kind of riding does he do?”

It took forever. Apart from seeing the boy cresting a big glistening wave in their shared dreamland, Emmett had never seen him surf. According to Tallah, there were all sorts of ways to ride: some people wanted a board with a lot of nose, that would cut and turn quite sharply; others wanted the kind of punchy high-performance short board which would allow them to shape the wave; and more still wanted something soft and easy to ride, so they could sweep effortlessly across the sea. Apparently it was all dictated by the sort of waves he would be riding. With the response that Jian had spent most of the last year in Hawaii, Florida, Australia, and California looking for big surf, Tallah nodded sagely and moved on. Volume apparently meant how much lift the board would give, and after staring at an upside-down bell curve for a while having the mechanics of floatation versus weight of board, and rider, and level of riding experience, Emmett could feel his head spinning. It was at that point the other sales assistant leant across from the computer with an inquisitive expression.

“What did you say his name was?”

“Jian Kiang.”

“He’s Chinese right? Little guy, about five-nine with black hair?”

Emmett stared at him, slack jawed.

“You know him?”

“Well sure, unusual enough name. He was in here before Christmas, we had a long chat one week day when it was snowing and trade was really slow.” Tallah frowned at her colleague. “There was sod-all else to do Tal! He showed me some pictures some guy had taken for one of the surf mags down in Cali; I’ve got them round here somewhere.”

Two minutes later Emmett was staring at the screen of the computer, wondering how he had never known pictures of surfing could be so beautiful, dynamic, or overpowering. In every single one, Jian was half naked and tanned, mostly soaking wet and grinning like a mad lunatic, or determined and focused with his eyes on fire as he rode the waves. Each picture was mostly blue with sky and sea, and there was always a flash of white behind Jian’s board as he cut through the waves.

“That’s my boyfriend?” Emmett asked in a disbelieving tone. It wasn’t as though he didn’t recognise the little tiger, because Jian’s outline was burnt into the very fabric of his mind, and couldn’t be mistaken for anyone else, but he hardly dared to believe the boy in the photos was the same one who graced his bed every night.

“Yup, that’s your boyfriend. Why didn’t you take the specs off one of his current boards?”

“He only had the one,” Emmett shrugged, “and he sold it.”

“Damn,” both Tallah and her companion sighed. “Well now it’s pretty much just a choice of how much you want to spend.”

After a further hour, Emmett ended up standing in front of three boards. To him, they looked almost identical, except that two were white and one was laminated with wood veneer. Tallah told him not to worry about the colour, because all the boards could be custom finished with whatever colours he wanted: Emmett was suddenly glad he had arranged his shopping trip a few weeks in advance of Jian’s actual birthday.

“Which one would you go for?” Emmett asked the two assistants. Tallah chose the board to the far left, a Haydenshapes Shred sled, ideally suited for six-foot waves and high performance for a strong rider; which Emmett had now been assured his boyfriend certainly was. Her very tanned compatriot shrugged softly.

“The Rusty Dwart is a lovely board; damn near walks on water,” he indicated the board in centre, it’s white body emblazoned with a giant black ‘R’ accompanied by a round dot. “But for that guy, on those waves, I’d go all out and get the Firewire. The Stealth is quick, it’s powerful, it’s damn fun, and practically deadly sometimes; but it’s the best board in its class, and nothing else has the turning circle it does. It’s a step up from what he had before, but if you’re looking to please a guy like him, I wouldn’t know a better way.”

Emmett parted with something just over two thousand dollars for the Firewire Lost Stealth, a full set of tail fins which Tallah swore were the best in the business, a padded hard case for travelling with, and a custom paint and lacquer job that raised eyebrows all around. The board would be delivered to the university, boxed and present-ready, in time for Jian’s birthday. Oddly, Emmett didn’t leave the shop feeling any poorer.

*

“Emmett?”

“Hmmm?” the polar bear half turned towards his housemate.

“In the nicest possible manner: why are you carrying a giant cardboard box into my room?”

Emmett leant the offending box against the wall and toed the door closed. Huan-Yu was sat at his little desk in front of his new sleek and shiny laptop, doing something which looked complicated with numbers. Emmett knew with one glance that he would never understand accountants, bankers, the differences between the two, or anything about the divine flow of money.

“It’s Jian’s birthday tomorrow and I couldn’t leave it at work.”

“What did you buy him?” Huan-Yu looked at the box as though it might contain an earth changing monolith.

“Surfboard,” Emmett grinned happily. Taped to the outside of the box when it had first arrived at the university had been a photograph of the finished board, held on its end by a man in a dust stained t-shirt with a particle mask hanging around his neck. He had obviously been pretty pleased with his work, because he’d been grinning; giving the camera a big thumbs up. The surfboard was perfect.

“Brave man,” the panda replied, “something came for him the other day, I thought I’d hold onto it.” Huan-Yu lifted a brown padded envelope from his desk and turned to Emmett as the polar bear sat on the very edge of his bed. “It’s from home.” Emmett turned the envelope over, feeling the squarish shape within: the post marks were from China. “That’s his father’s handwriting; I recognise it.”

“Things aren’t good back home,” Emmett sighed heavily, “I don’t want to give him this on his birthday and upset him.”

“How much do you know about Jian’s father?” Huan-Yu quizzed him.

“Not much: he’s human, he’s a banker? Jian says he’s boring.”

“He runs a major accountancy firm: the Kam’s do the books for some of the biggest property and development corporations outside of Beijing. It upset him a lot when his only child renounced his last name.” Huan-Yu looked frankly across at his housemate, “but he loves his son, even if he doesn’t understand him. Kam has never approved of the way Yéyé treats the boys: Jian’s grandfather is overly fond of grand gestures, but in both directions, and he’s just as stubborn as you’d expect a dominant tiger to be. He will swear black is white and if anyone disagrees with him….” The panda shook his head softly. “When Yéyé told Jian to come home, it was not a suggestion: it was an order, and he ignored it. Yéyé cut him off, as you know, and nothing anyone could say will change his mind until he decides to change it. When and if he does, he will act as though it never happened. Kam will not approve of this behaviour.” Huan-Yu sat back in his chair with a small smile. “Give it to him, I think you’ll both be pleasantly surprised.”

Emmett secreted the letter on the top shelf of his tallest bookcase in the lounge, which Jian couldn’t reach without jumping, and was in the kitchen by the time Jian let himself in from work. He was greeted by Pitanê, who had become bored with the eternal waiting game he played whenever Emmett cooked, and tiger and husky danced around each other happily before Jian fell to his knees to rub and fluffy the dog’s thick fur.

“Hey babe.”

“Mmmmm….” Jian sniffed the air. “Smells like seal; what did I do right?”

Emmett slid the pan away from the heat and stepped out into the hallway to embrace the man he loved. Jian purred against him and kissed his lips with a smile: Emmett ran his fingers through the boy’s soft hair.

“You came home just when I was thinking about kissing you,” Emmett replied belatedly, “did you have a nice day?”

“It was great. I got to feed all of the Sumatran tigers by myself: Vienne said she’d never known someone do it so quickly, but they all behave so well for me.”

“Did you give Indah another turkey leg to crunch through?”

“No, they got rabbit today along with the regular, so he had plenty of bones to munch.” Jian stretched, his spine crunching softly, and the hem of his zoo uniform polo shirt pulled up to reveal a few inches of taut tan skin. Emmett rumbled happily in his chest and bent to kiss the narrow end of the darker stripe that crept around Jian’s side. “Mmmm…” the tiger purred again, “if you keep doing that, dinner’s going to go cold.”

“Go on then and get changed,” Emmett half-hated the idea that Jian would be naked somewhere he couldn’t see, “dinner in ten minutes.”

“C’mon Pita!” Jian gestured to the husky as he started up the stairs, “tell me all about your day.”

Emmett washed up as he worked now, an habit he had very much worn a groove in as the months passed, and by the time the seared cubes of seal were resting on a bed of mixed salad leaves, accompanied with a huge dish of seasoned potato wedges and sour cream, Emmet had wiped down the kitchen and was ready to hand the plates to his mate, pocket the cutlery, put Pitanê’s dinner bowl down for the husky to dive into with the force of a fired bullet, and followed his mate to the sofa.

Apart from his excursions out to clubs to find the sort of company he no longer needed, Emmett had always been the quiet sort, and though the weeks were littered with going to the movies, half a dozen restaurant dates, and one pair of tickets to watch the Maple Leaves roundly thrash the Vancouver Canucks before the hockey season ended, they had both settled happily into a routine most young men would have thought of as boring. Emmett didn’t understand why, because the best reason to do anything was because Jian wanted to, and if his mate wanted to curl up on the sofa and eat seal cubes while watching Formula One pre-season test races, then Emmett wasn’t going to argue about it for even a moment. Jian washed up the plates after dinner, let Pitanê out into the garden, and brought them back a beer each as Emmett turned off the television and lifted his current reading material off the floor. His grandfather’s collaborative paper was nearly ready for publication, and Emmett had been delighted to get an early copy. Jian snugged up against his side with a biography of the once Formula One World Champion James Hunt, and they settled in for the night.

*

Jian’s birthday dawned bright, and with one glance up at the cloudless sky, Emmett could tell it was going to turn out to be a warm day. He sighed forlornly, lamenting the end of yet another winter, already mourning the lack of snow on the ground. Soon enough his fur would lose its bright and snowy lustre, and Emmett would have to pack all of his warmer clothes away. But his sadness was short lived, because the polar bear rolled over and stared at his mate.

Jian slept like a child, still and soft. Emmett ran a bold hand down his spine, following the furrow over his many stripes towards his butt. Jian’s body curved into him automatically, and Emmett smirked when he found the young man’s pert rear under his palm. Moving very softly, Emmett stroked him, reaching lower to work his fingers between the smooth mounds of the tiger’s perfect arse, and circled his opening gently until Jian’s sleeping muscles quivered and a tiny mewl escaped his lips. The polar bear fumbled with his other hand to find lube in the night stand, and warmed the slippery gel as he slicked it over his own erection. He kissed the back of his boyfriend’s neck gently, lapping at his soft skin and as he continued to stroke the young man found that his lithe narrow body vibrated with the force of his purring. It was all so deeply inviting, and Emmett only moved his teasing fingers to make room for his cock. He pushed in slowly, and paused in his assault as Jian’s purr changed pitch and the young man moaned as he became fully conscious.

“Happy birthday, Tiger.” Emmett murmured in his ear, and then completed waking his boyfriend up by fucking him until neither of them could speak.

A long luxurious shower later, Emmett watched Pitanê snuffle around the back garden in the warm spring sunshine, nosing through the short grass after the kibble that fell from his treat-ball whenever he nudged it. By the time the dog was half-done with his breakfast, Jian had returned to slip his arm around Emmett’ bare waist.

“Is it really warm enough to be topless outdoors?” Jian asked sweetly.

“Hey little Tiger: happy birthday,” Emmett kissed the man he loved, hard. “So do you want your present?”

“I get presents?” Jian’s eyes lit up instantly, and he giggled as Pitanê abandoned his search for food and came to dance around his feet. “Presents, Pita!”

“Go sit in the lounge, and I’ll be right there.”

“’Kay.” As Jian walked away, Emmett could very nearly make out the ghostly shape of his tail swinging along with his hips.

He placed the surfboard box down in front of Jian, then reached up to the top of the bookcase and pulled down the padded envelope.

“This came for you as well.”

Jian frowned, pondering which to open first, and then slid his finger under the flap of the envelope as Emmett perched on the far end of the sofa. He pulled out a single large red envelope, its edges sharp and glossy, plain except for the traditional brush strokes of Chinese calligraphy. Jian stroked the pictograms thoughtfully.

“What does it say?”

“Jian Kiang; that’s my name.” Jian took a deep breath, “It’s my father’s handwriting. He’s very good with a brush.”

To Emmett surprise, the red envelope was filled with money. They were Canadian dollars, and Jian flicked through a stack Emmett estimated at around fifteen grand before he put the envelope on the coffee table as though it was a poisonous viper. Emmett blinked, and found the little tiger curled up in his lap, still staring at the red envelope.

“Babe? Why is there a huge pile of money in a red envelope?”

“My father sent it. Red is the colour of money,” Jian explained softly. “My father sent me money for my birthday.”

“That’s good right.”

“He wrote my name differently, my last name.” Jian fetched the envelope back again and traced the pretty letters. “This part says Kiang, but this part,” he traced a set of curved shapes held within the other letter, “this says Kam. I get to be both.” Jian’s smile spread slowly across his face as his eyes lit up. “You know what this means?”

“Your father loves you?” Emmett suggested.

“Means you’ll need to buy some shorts, and I’ll need to buy a board: we’re going on holiday!”

“Well about that…” Emmett took the huge box and placed it over Jian’s lap, “happy birthday babe.”

Watching Jian open his present was exactly like watching a cat tear up a cardboard box. Jian ripped into the cardboard with frantic glee, pulled aside the bubble wrap around the board and hauled it out with both hands. He stared at the board for a long moment, and then turned it in his hands, balancing the weight on the tips of his fingers, eyes narrowed as he evaluated the board. He was looking for things Emmett didn’t think he could even name, considering the beautiful object he held in his hands, spinning it around over his head to check the belly of board. When he finally stood the board on its tail end and stroked the smooth surface with one palm.

“We match,” Jian beamed, “oh Xue, you got it custom?”

“Yes. Is it… right?”

“Babe; It’s perfect!”

Within moments, he had shoved everything off the coffee table, pulled the cushions off the sofa and placed the board on the padded surface. Emmett watched as his mate discarded his socks, and hopped up onto the board. The polar bear didn’t know how he did it, but the moment Jian’s bare feet touched the surface of the board, it looked like he was riding a wave. Knees bent, transferring weight from one foot to the other, it was as though he had already crested a bright blue wave, and now he and the orange, black and white surfboard, painted to match his tiger stripes, moved as one.

*

“You ready Xue?”

“As I’ll ever be,” Emmett blinked out through the window. “Do I have to go outside?” he griped gently.

“Yes, you do. That’s where the waves are.”

“Did I ever mention my overwhelming fear of large open bodies of water without ice on them?”

“Funnily enough, no.” The tiger took his big paw in his own small, smooth and tanned hand. “I’d give anything to see you lying on a beach in those shorts.”

Emmett glanced down at the board shorts he had purchased. Unlike Jian’s, they were plain khaki brown with a navy stripe down the side, and Emmett felt very pale walking side by side with the tanned brown young man who loved him as they passed through the resort towards the beach. Jian wore his own shorts low slung on his hips, in bright lurid purple with white trim and yellow hibiscus flowers, and Emmett was sure they were drawing far more than their fair share of attention. Part of it might have been for their joined hands and the close way Jian walked with him, their hips nearly touching every step, but Emmett knew that beautiful young men with tiger stripes on their backs and tiger stripes on their boards were unusual even on the sun soaked white sand beaches of the Florida Keys. He followed the boy all the way to the edge of the surf, the little white patter of the bubbles around their ankles, and then Jian planted his board in the sand and lifted himself on tiptoes. Emmett grinned, half coughed to say something, but Jian wrapped his arms around the polar bear’s thick neck and kissed him until Emmett would have sworn he could see the stars behind the sunlight. They parted with the damp noise of flesh on flesh.

“I love you, Xue.”

“My little Tiger,” Emmett ran his fingers through the young man’s hair, “I’m so proud of you. Now go, go and show me this thing you do so well.”

“I’ll be rusty,” Jian shrugged, “don’t expect too much!” He grabbed the board and jogged into the surf, and Emmett watched as he vanished beneath the waves.

The polar bear chose almost the only spot on the beach with shade, and sat back on his towel by the palm tree, watching the glittering surface of the sea. It looked just the way it did in the dreamland they both shared, only behind him wasn’t the comforting chill of the snow and polar ice caps, but yet more heat. Emmett didn’t like the heat. He adored the ability of the air conditioning to produce icy winds that swirled around their hotel room, but he knew he would do anything if it meant seeing Jian smile the way he did in the sunlight. Emmett wondered how the boy had lived without it for so long, chasing down a bear who’d been too blind to see what the tiger could mean to him.

“It’s because I love you.” Jian was kneeling in the sand, shining golden at the edges, and Emmett smiled to himself at the vision. The young tiger’s eyes glowed orange and bright, and Emmett could see the picked-out shapes of his pointed ears and long twitching tail. He reached forwards for his mate, but the image swam and faded just as the noise of the beach, the surf, and the people in the water reached Emmett’s ears.

“Look at that wave!” someone exclaimed.

“Look at that guy!”

Emmett looked. There was a big wave coming towards them, its top edge curling, the body of the water shinning a perfect blue as it rolled. Cutting through the centre, choosing a line that seemed to in total defiance of gravity and logic, cut an orange and black striped surfboard, Jian balanced over it, one hand trailing in the water, his fingertips leaving a second trail of white foam. Just as Emmett thought the boy would be able to fly away, the wave broke up, and Jian vanished from sight to the groans and cheers of the watching crowd. He sprung back up a moment later, grinning, spraying water droplets everywhere, and his orange eyes found Emmett immediately.

For the polar bear, everything went gold.