One need not consider everything true; one must only consider it necessary

Cohlt grew up on a rocky, cedar-covered island off the coast of western Canada, an orphan living among a cloistered religious sect who had chosen their island setting to escape the persecution they perceived from the mainlanders. During his youth, Cohlt came to know the trees, the rocks, and the many moods of the steely North Pacific with great intimacy, which was reflected in pale skin of his forearms and chest. But he was curious.

“Father, what happened to my parents?”

“They died before you were born, my son. You have lived your whole life here, among us.”

Cohlt reached adolescence; he saw changes: his muscles grew longer, more toned; his back wider. He began to feel sensations that were new to him. Cohlt noticed the curves of the priestesses’ breasts under their robes, and with increasing frequency, felt his penis swell against his salt-scaled trousers. More than once, he reached down across his stomach, beneath the elastic of his waist, and gripped himself. The pleasure of his own touch caused him to catch his breath; but he did not know what these things meant. He asked a priest.

“Cohlt. You must not think about the bodies of women, and you certainly must not touch yourself for pleasure. Doing so is a mortal sin. You must never touch yourself, and you may only lie with a woman to procreate, and then, you may only do so after you are married.”

Cohlt obeyed the priest’s admonition with increasing difficulty. Days and years passed, and he grew into a strapping, handsome young man, who learned to fish—a skill at which he was preternaturally adept—and provide for the people of the sect. At eighteen, however, he became restless and asked permission to leave the island to seek his fortune. The high priest acquiesced and summoned a small fishing boat from the mainland, which Cohlt had never seen. Not even in the foggy distance.

When the boat reached the shore, Cohlt was shocked to find himself in the sprawling, vertical city of Vancouver. Disoriented and afraid, he followed the coastline south, missing the border patrol as he crossed into Washington and, dodging the towers of Seattle, drifted down as far as Oregon, where he came to the mouth of the Columbia River.

“This,” he thought, “is where I’m meant to be.”

With the help of friendly souls he met along the way, Cohlt found himself at a beachside coffee shop in Astoria, where the Columbia roared into the Pacific. A tug deep within him called, and he decided to follow the river upstream and see where it led. But not long after he'd made his decision, a woman with hair black as a raven’s feather and eyes as brown as Sitka spruce bark spoke to him.

Her name was Ash, a Chinook who was raised on the Shoalwater Bay Reservation, just up the coast.

“I’m working on my dissertation in fisheries science at Oregon State. It’s on the spawning strategies of Oncorhynchus tshawytscha. My working title is Plenty of Fish.”

Hours later, after spending all afternoon talking with Ash, Cohlt found himself in her hotel room. He noticed a bright, elaborate effigy sewn into the material of her backpack.

“It’s a bear. Bears are the protectors of my family.” She curled her hand into a grizzly’s paw and wrapped it around the back of his neck. She kissed him roughly and pushed her other hand down between his legs, where she felt him hard and ready.

“No; I can’t,” he pulled away and explained what the priest had told him.

“I understand,” Ash said and smiled at him.

They spent the next four days together.

In that time, Cohlt noticed that the skin on his face had started to peel badly, sloughing off throughout the day.

“Probably the sun,” he said to Ash, who just nodded and didn’t inquire further.

Unable to contain his desire any longer, on the fifth day, Cohlt asked Ash to marry him. She smiled and said yes.

They migrated upriver to Portland, where they were married. Ash rented a hotel room for them, and upon entering, they began to kiss. Ash slowly removed her clothes, revealing the sensual curves of her body, and Cohlt thinking he may explode, began to shake visibly.

Ash peeled off his clothes and, taking him by the hand, pulled him onto the bed, onto her body. She touched herself to make sure she was ready and then guided Cohlt inside of her. He thrust his hips two, then three times and shuddered. His body seized uncontrollably on top of her; she held him tight with her arms and legs, until she felt him explode into her, sending his seed with incredible force, against the flow of her own fluids, into the streambed of her body.

He inhaled sharply… and released a long exhalation, his whole body shaking. Then he was still.

Ash whispered, “Cohlt?” He was silent and unmoving. She turned her ear to his mouth and could not feel him breathing.

She saw that his skin was peeling off across his entire body. Sighing, Ash put her hands on Cohlt’s cooling shoulders, rolling his body off of her and onto the floor, where it landed with a dull thud. Looking up at the ceiling, Ash raised her knees to her breasts and wrapped her arms around her shins, then smiled, baring her powerful teeth.