Holler Me Home by The Norrington

Smells That Last

With a nose like his, you had to be careful what reached your nostrils.  He learned as a pup that some things just should not be sniffed.  Bees, for example, do not smell like honey.  They smelled like flowers, and then they just hurt, and you can smell nothing until the swelling goes down.  He grew up with many of his descisions based on his sniffer alone.  He soon could smell the difference between lies and truths, and he could smell fear from miles away, if he was down wind.  As simple as it was, his life was soon sculpted by this simple truth; if some one smelled good, then they were generally good.

As an adult, he learned to hate some smells; he disdained the smell of humanity, for example and even more than that he hated the smell of his half-brother's dirty blood.  The older he grew, the smaller his list of good smells became.  There were only a few that still pleased him through the passing of time; the smell of the wind over the ocean, the scent of Rin's happiness, and the gingery smell that came from the polish Jaken used on his armor.

And Her.  From the moment he met the egnigmatic miko from the future, he had pondered what to call her scent.  It was pleasent, yet dangerous.  It was light, but her purity was sharp, like a blade.  When she was happy it smelled of a soothing freshness, and when she was angry it smelled of storm clouds.  All through their courting, he day dreamed of what to call it, while completely enjoying it.  When they were mated, it was pushed to the back of his mind, but he still pondered it during slow hours, just curled around her.  

It was after the birth of their first son, when the pup lay tucked against his chest, safe in his arms while she washed up in a hotspring, that he finally knew.

"Petrichor," the baritone of his voice echoed through their content silence, and she looked him curiously.  Pet-ri-wha?

He took a deep breath, and smiled slowly at the scent that came after a rain fall.  Yes.  How well it suited her, too.  He sniffed his son, and rumbled deep in chest, pleased.  Another smell to the list of good ones, then.

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A/N: This was inspired by Avadrea's Oddities Challenge.  The prompt was Petrichor.  12/22/12