After a moment’s pause, Sakura blushes a little and looks down. She asks shyly, “Am I being too forward… I don’t want to scare you off.”
Larrikan says, “Too forward? Why would I be scared off by having a beautiful, intelligent, sensitive, caring, educated healer vixen tell me that she wants to be with me?” He leans down and kisses the top of hear head, and uses a finger under muzzle to lift her head back up, so he can look in her in the eye to say, “Nothing has ever made me happier. I’m hoping it’s not all a dream, which I’ll wake up from and have fade to nothing.”
Sakura smiles and blinks a couple of times. “It better not be a dream, Larrikan… I’d hate to wake without you.”
Larrikan smiles like an idiot and doesn’t manage to do anything but stand there and hold Sakura, gently stroking her head fur and ear, feeling her close to him and smelling her foreign and delicate scent. He finally says, “I don’t want that, either.” Looking down at her, he asks, “But, can you really stay here?”
Sakura smiles, tinged with just a little bit of sadness, “There’s not much reason to go home, Larrikan. There’s little place for my kind on my world, except as slaves to humans in all but name. I don’t want to go back there.” She looks up, eyes shining, “I want to stay here, with you friends and the kitsune that I’ve fallen in love with.”
Larrikan looks somewhat taken aback, and clings to Sakura almost instinctively, protectively. He says, “You don’t have to go back to slavery. Stay here with us, with me.” He smiles, and says, “I know I love you, and I’m certain some of the other kitsune here like you.” He frowns, then adds, “What of your family? What of the responsibility to the other people you travel with, and that clan?”
Sakura tilts her head to the side, “My family I’ve said goodbye to. I love them dearly, but I came on this mission knowing that I might not come back for many years, if at all… my crewmates… I will respect their decisions, whether they decide to leave or stay, and hope they will respect mine.”
The fox murmurs, “That’s a brave thing to do, that I could never have done… to have looked my family in the eye and just walked away.” He hugs Sakura again, and says, “I hope I can make that worthwhile.”
Finally, he steps back and looks around a little self-consciously, but no one seems to be around. He says, “Shall we keep walking, before it gets any colder?”
Sakura accepts, and the two foxes walk back to Larrikan’s snug little den, snuggling closely.
As he walks, Larrikan’s mind is awhirl, full of amazed thoughts like, “She wants to stay here with me. Not just here. With me!” Her closeness and occasional looks of open adoration do nothing to help settle those thoughts.
Reaching home, and singing the little chant to unlock the door, Larrikan asks Sakura if she’s thought about what she can do, and what she wants in her life and her home.
Her reply that she wants to help heal people is delightful, as healers are always welcome.