Wheeling Gull Isle end;

official leaving post for heda, who will be non verbal for the foreseeable future! she has called out for all her kids and those who want to follow, but will not be coming back to sweetharbor <3

god has forsaken me
caracal lived hardly a handful of days before he was gone.
they had blurred from one into another until she had finally opened her eyes, truly opened them, to see towhee's paw holding her son's own in that still, eternal silence, there was nothing left inside her.
for a long time heda only sat outside the lion's den, untouched by sea or surf or sorrow. the birds were in her mind and they sang her far and away over to the mainland.
god has forsaken us
judah was gone. caracal was gone. ana was gone. the boy whose name his failed mother hardly remembered, he too had gone, loved no less but paling to nothing as heda closed in on herself.
we should bury him, she would hear herself say somehow in the next hours, cobbling together words that stuck to the roof of her mouth, monotone, cold, removed as to the far-flung planes of saturn itself.
because there was no god to beg, heda did not. because she knew now no god would resurrect her husband so she could beg forgiveness and start again, she found that as she stood before the gathered eyes, if any, she had nothing to say.
her voice fled on the tattered wings of her dying faith, dipping into the sea. and heda released the concept of speech the moment it was her turn to hold caracal, to look down into the still face and know that she had forsaken him and so god had turned away from them all.
when heda passed over the landbridge, it was with a mind scarcely her own. a long, low dirge poured out for her remaining children: now you must choose.
a life on the island. an existence with the redhawk clan. to strike out with their mother. but god had taken all from heda, and in the dust of her mouth she had nothing else to give. 
sweetharbor was a charnel house. she would not be back, waiting ten hours on the other side of the landbridge to see who would join her in the back turned upon their father who wert in heaven and looked on them no longer with favour.

evens she leaves, odds she stays: dinah will also be leaving sweetharbor

In the waking hours of the dawn, before the sun yawned across the isle for the last time Dinah would ever see it, she, too, would cross the landbridge in search of her mother.
In the time before she had chosen to depart, she felt the last of her daddy's breath in the lap of the sea. Her home. Her isle. Nothing remained of it. Silent, awry, cataclysmic; part of her wished to stay, to cling to what was left, but her mind sung and twisted and begged to leave.
God had turned away from her. Or, perhaps, she did so to him.
Whether or not @Simeon came with her, she holds him tightly and in his eyes she sees the beloved face. She screams into the pale of his chest with a pain that knew no forgiveness, no end; and she gathers what little she had.
Her flowers. The ribbed shell once belonging to @Judah, still pristine, save for a small chip. The sherbet conch once belonging to Daddy, now churned and eroded with sand. It was all she had left of them. She places them in the protective arms of a crude leaf-woven pouch, and she carries them with her. 
As she crosses the bridge and sets her bony feet upon the shore, she does not look back. Instead, she searches for her Mama; or, rather, a fractured version of her, face held in a tight, haggard emptiness. Dinah decides she will not cry in front of her.
In place of father sat the little girl with his face, and with no words exchanged, she would wait with the shattered remains and hold them together with shaking hands.

love does not delight in evil,
but rejoices with the truth.
it always protects, always trusts,
always hopes, always perseveres.

how does one decide what order to abandon their life?

ava stood at a precipice and knew whichever path she took, she would not have an opportunity to take back. the world around her was crumbling into a wrathful sea all too hungry to claim them all. her blood siblings. her father. judah.

would she sink?

or swim?

two figures cut across landbridge, hours apart. a third arrived as the seas closed around her.

armed by terror, ava fought to keep her composure as the tide rose. she thought of her father and the whale -- she fought, and paddled, and screamed against the current until at last breathless and gasping she touched the mainland --

where heda's footsteps had long since grown cold, and dinah's followed behind burdened --

i am coming! ava regained her breath and staggered to her feet, grief-stricken and shell-shocked as she trailed their receding steps into the hinterlands.

He had held her as she wept. She was all he had left. He did not know who mom was anymore. Her grief frightened him, and he was still too numb to really know what grief would make him.

He can't be gone. He can't be gone. This can be real.

But it was, wasnt it? Juju. Dad. Abel and Tzedeq and Ana. They should be coming round the corner with a joke or funny story, with weird side eyes or funny little clicks. But they never came, and silence swallowed the places they should be. Dreadful and empty.

When Dee finally left him, he knew where she was going, into that great beyond that held none of the sorrows of the island. None yet, but he had a feeling it soon would. It always would. And that was the nature of this world.

Broken.

Groaning.

Waiting, under the weight of grief and that quiet that deafened the corners where faith should be found.

Why, God?

Simeon didn't expect to hear answer, and he didnt get one. Just the lap of ocean water against the shore, the peaceful cry of the gulls, and the little silhouette of Ava crashing across the landbridge. Running away? Or chasing after Dinah and mom?

Dee and mom thought God had left them. Simeon didn't think He had. He had never been spiritual like mom. Never religious like Kai. He and Dee had always been on a similar page, but she had left Him, and now, Simeon had to let his own faith grow up.

I don't know why.

He stood from his solitude and found his way one final time down the lavender fields.

Maybe I won't ever.

A last turn of his eyes upon Sweetharbour, seafoam stare taking in their paradise lost. A tip of his head bid @Malakai to come and follow. He was a royal pain in the butt, but he was still his brother. And he did not want him here alone.

But I know who You are.

Ava! he called after her when he reached the beach, wait up!

I know who I am.

Whether she heard him or not would soon be seen, but he would follow her trail regardless, even as she followed Dee and mom out into the wilds.

I am still your child,

And you are still my God.