He has gone back to the place from whence he came

was how the apostle John had responded to the barbed question of the Pharisee: where is your savior now?

But that question then planted a seed of doubt within him, which grew as does any parasite that has found a host. He agonized as the branches cut into him, tender at first but hardening into splinters, drawing blood and sustenance through its abiding veins.

There were many times in history where the earth turned a shearing path along a new axis, tilting into a new world and shedding customs once thought to be immovable. Recall that the Oracles all over Ancient Greece used to deliver their prophecies in rich verse; in Plutarch's time all but one spoke in undecorated prose; not long after that, they ceased giving any prophecy at all, and so began decades of lamentation across civilizations: why does God no longer speak to us?

In his quiet way, Abraham carried the torch shared by John and these lamenters. He found himself wandering back, not to the place from whence he came, but a place he had coincided with, briefly, long ago. A place he associated with his father so strongly, that to him Wheeling Gull Isle seemed to be a mere manifestation of Bartholomew's stewardship on earth, even if the man himself was long gone and his prayers were no longer spoken there.

He gazed upon the pane of the sea, which glimmered in spades of @Blue: there was @Cobalt, and there was teal, and there was the occasional facet of pure sky, as if it had been scattered upon the water via osmosis, across the vast straight-edge horizon.

As she approached him he readied himself to greet her, but he saw that the look on her face was distant, as if she had come here on a mission and he was an irrelevance unseen in her original design. In fact it was unclear if she was even aware of him.

He did not attempt to parse the cipher of her bearing, instead letting the silence become denser and denser, the seaside ambience lending it significance. Gulls screamed; the tide groaned.

Finally, he spoke. I can leave, if you need space, the flap of one ear laid flush to his cheek as he tilted his head, half out of respect and half in self-deprecation.

But please let me ask one thing of you.