Tear-stained face, words a flurry with a wretched anguish, eyes red from every vein pulled from light. Her throats a chamber of coarse sorrow, and the priest's heart yearned, gutted with pity and seeping with long to comfort. "Oh, my Heda." Blood from the heavens, she was hurting. His head bowed, should she allow, to offer a tender touch against her own, a pierce of a gentleness struck through the holy-walker's armored soul.
"I will tell them. Be freed from home life- for a time, or for your name. Your heart must burn." A churning gut, and he felt the damn of nature whisper through mind. A sour, drunken illness that struck his eyes when he looked upon her, and his head felt a blur. A blur he knew well. A blur that made his mind weep for her and struck fear into the eyes of the holy man. "Oh, Heda," he murmured once more. "What deep wounds you must have. I feel a great terror for you." The light of day felt of a scorch and no longer a warmth- a warning. A horror. They spoke! They spoke!
God, have mercy.
tagging ana even tho that thread is still going; visibility for timeline! <3
"i'm not yours," heda snapped toward nakano's softly said words; her jawline tensed from chin to earbase in regret.
"sorry, i — i will heed your warning. and while i'm gone, keep this place."
her eyes wished to weep. she would not let them do it.
"watch over caracal," heda asked, clearing her throat to keep the salt at bay;
"he isn't well."
she turned back to her work, bristling, and when she had added the last fur she called to
@Malakai, to
@Judah, to
@Simeon, to
@Ava Amara, to
@Dinah, to
@Anathema, to join her at the landbridge for a trip to see grandma towhee.
“Mom,” he slips from his concealed place where he had been led to secrete by strange shouts. A shaking paw touches her arm. “I love you.”
He didn't understand what was going on. But once, Judah had been a very scared little boy, and it was his father who had refused to give up on him. It was Judah’s turn to do the same.
“I’m staying.”
The devil ran rampant. On her tongue, he burned force of the fallen's voice, and he recoiled! A sinners action. A sinners call. Harboring within her, blood spilled from parasitical demons that fed from her skin. "In soul," he looked to the sky, a command of undying faith- loyalty, settled to chains of holy fire. "We are all anothers." There was no other way.
But in that moment, he saw something beyond the face of an irate mother, a sister bound in soul, or a weeping wife.
Judah, before them. Saran looked to the mother, hardened, spun with empathy.
Oh, Heda.
"Watch your daughter with care."
What had he seen?
Simeon, meanwhile, was none the wiser to anything that had happened on the other side of the island. He'd been in the tidepools with Psalm, perfecting a better fishing technique he was totally sure he could use to show up Kai later, when mom had called him, and he'd dipped outta there with a bombastic sprint wgen hed heard why -- fish still in tow.
They were finally getting to cross to the mainland, to see Gramma, even! Heck yeah!
But when he saw the motely array of his gathering family, he couldn't have felt more out of place. Like sunshine straining through the clouds of an overcast day.
Jude staying, Dee snapping. It was all Simeon could hear, before his sister bolted for the landbridge, and his smile shot to panic.
Saltwater, sweeping legs away.
Dee, wait!
he shouted, wirds marbled as, forgetting the fish, it fell around his chin and slapped unceremoniously to the ground. Nearly tripping over the slippery thing, he managed to stumble past Jude and mom and Nakano with a quick breath of, I'll go ger her,
and didn't wait for an answer before plunging down the wer sandy trail. Dee!
What was going on?
His mother called for them. For him, for his siblings, for the two last remaining of his adopted siblings. They had been swept away, but to where? Good riddance, either way- something which Malakai would never speak allowed to either of his parents.
When he came, the sorrow in his mother's eyes were apparent, for the loss. Their dad was distant too... Had all this anguish been because of those two having gone missing? Because one of them snapped and went crazy on John? Or was there more? Kai knew his mother and father had good hearts, good souls but he was far too young and unaware of the full story and the tension blooming between his parents.
Malakai swept his eyes among each- his mom, Nakano, Judah and Simeon booking it after Dinah as she ran across the land bridge. Clearly already over it, Kai turned back to the others- What's her problem now?
Always whining, always complaining, always crying. That girl needed Jesus.
He sat on the shore of the island and quietly cried as lapping waves ultimately sealed Sweetharbor away from the rest of the world, and his family with it.