morning prayers had become tradition.
yet it was the evening he prayed in tonight. the stars vibrant overhead. the soft lapping of the sea not far from where he sat at psalm's point. the world seemed calm tonight.
eerily comforted by the fact they were sheltered and far away from land. untouchable nearly, but not unseen.
God looked upon them tonight. wrapped them in warmth and protection.
he remembered mo asking him of songs and singing here, just a day or two before. he remembered telling stories to heda. he remembered the fiery arrival of spunky jasmine, a lively face. he remembered inviting miseria to morning prayers. and lastly he remembered the woman in the cave, astray but cared for all the same.
all of this a reflection upon himself.
upon the isle.
sweetharbor.
tonight he would sing. for them, for God. it would not be of words but a howling song. long, deep notes. a song of protection and love. a promise to tend to them and the isle they lived upon.
his voice invited them to join.
The boy had been playing alone, pretending to hunt as a means of testing his ability, when he heard the first notes of Bartholomew's song. It was enough to make him stop and stare. It came from the north, the beaches there.
Mo could hear an invitation there; as his nose tipped up and he answered with his own juvenile song, the boy thought, what a nice sound! But there his mind blanked. He was glad to be singing and soon his own voice strengthened and became loud.
He hoped, somewhat in vain, that his anaa could hear him.
miseria peeled her head back in something in likeness to lowing cow, evocative; to express her content and maybe to untwist the knife in her flesh. her ant for her family, so deep it made her weep with love.
she had stretched the truth of her willingness to learn about for fear of something she couldn't even remember. but she could try, until it all went up in flames.
for fear if she caught fire, she could only change her aim, her troubles to the sea.
She had lost count of the days between now and when she had first come here, washed ashore of her own doing, for curiosity's sake, the want for something new. Somewhere between then and now, more had joined them, beyond Bartholomew and Heda. Jasmine had yet to meet them all - though in due time, she would. Already, she couldn't help but think what a ragtag little group they made.
Ragtag, but certainly something. They were just pickings anymore. They weren't quite family yet, either, but they had become something more than strays.
When Bartholomew's voice touched the evening sky, the girl splashed from the waters, a fish clamped in her jaws. She listened, having heard many a song he offered to the heavens - but this one sounded different. Her spine tingled. A chill, brought on by something other than the waters.
With a toss, Jasmine chucked her fish somewhere towards the rocks where it couldn't slip back into the ocean. And, with the same fiery strength she'd used to drag herself ashore, she threw her head back and added her voice to this song their shepherd sang.
she cried out
her voice was a joyous sound!
sweetharbor stood.
her heart filed with a thousand words, and each of them carried by her heart.
heda worshipped with her prophet and her people.
at the lip of the cave,
bloated brain brought the skull down onto paws. dull eyes were mirrors, less a gaze. they reflected the world back at itself, ridiculing it with the statement of its reflection.
if they had expected a corpse to self-flagellate, their own depravity was mundane.
it was the canonical hours, and the first of the seven prayers. the corpse would have not reacted to them, standard as they were, had the preacher's voice not been joined by another.
then another...
and another...
it found its ears had tilted towards the sound. sharply embittered, it sneered at nothing and turned its head.
let them sing.
the greatest echo dies as eventually as the smallest cry.