Sequoia Coast sea billows roll

Simeon had managed to catch up with mom and the girls, and all should have felt right, but it didn't. As their steps led them further away from Sweetharbour, Simeon began to realize that his brother was not coming.

Malakai was staying on the island, alone.

He has John, he reasoned -- until John showed up, proving otherwise.

Well, he has Nakano.

But the thought did so little to comfort him - but why should he care that Kai stayed behind? He was always a bully - but he was also his brother, and Simeon had called for him before leaving, after all.

Because he was his brother.

It would have been a lot easier if Kai had just come along. What did he have left at Sweetharbour, if he didn't have them there with him? And it wasn't like Simeon could just go back. He'd promised Dee they'd see the mainland together -- that he would go with her --

-- but things had changed now, hadn't they? Because dad was supposed to be with them.

Judah.

A sharp anger flared in his chest, having replaced what numbness hed felt begore. He almost preferred the unfeeling, because now, his thoughts of his brother were stained with ugly words and ugly pictures. 

Why couldn't he have just come with them?

Why couldn't he have done just a little more to stay alive?

Why had he been so -

- been so -

- been so weak?

No, Simeon rumbled, to shut himself up before he rolled any further down the deep. Judah was good, Judah was kind, Judah was strong and did what he could to help.

It wasn't his fault.

It wasn't his fault.

It wasn't his fault, he said to himself, and closed his eyes, breathed. Reminded himself of what was real before he lost his brother's memory to what was not.

He should go back to Malakai. He shouldn't be alone.

But what about mom, Ava?

And what about Dee?

AW to Sweetharbour crew! @Heda @Dinah @Ava Amara @John

Dinah had slowly begun to realize that Judah, too, was not to return.
For the most part, she had ignored that possibility; maybe he went looking for them, the first time they left, or— something.
He'd find his way home. He'd find them.
But hours of waiting had spun to days, and now their dad is dead, and while it remained unspoken between all, the assumption that brother is dead alongside him had begun to strangle the harborwolves.
How does one survive this kind of pain? Why can't you tell the world to stop spinning; why can't you tell it to wait for you until you're ready?
But there was no readiness. Time would never be enough.
Dinah's stomach had begun to send pangs of hurt from how little she ate in the passing days. Her mind had been shot up, up, up into the air and out of her skull, way out into nowhere, and it left her with basal instincts: Feed. Sleep. Protect. A robotic, ugly, monotonous scrape-by of what was most certainly only survival.
And Simeon. Simeon had found them. Simeon came with them; with her, as he'd promised, and now she too fawned over him; a cluster of small fish placed at his feet as she approaches. She can see the rage on his face, in his eyes, and for a moment she wonders if she too will succumb to an unfathomable ire in time.
She sits down beside him in silence; head slumped down to rest upon his shoulder in a shared, horrible agony.

dinah became the central pillar for their small family.
when heda could not rouse herself to hunt, her daughter did what she was able. when heda found herself transfixed by the sea, drifting in and out of association with the natural world, it was dinah who held them together.
and when simeon came to find what was left of his family, it was dinah who found him, who fed him, who embraced him.
she should go back for malakai.
she should rebuild for her children.
she should tell them, 'sweetharbor has to be something. it has to stand to commemorate daddy. it has to — we have to — persist. we have to make it. we have to be something.'
but heda could find no words. she could not even find anything inside herself anymore, nothing tangible. wake. hunt. feed. walk.
the air was cold. the sea did not relent. god did not smile down upon them.
she wound thin arms around simeon and held him close to her beating heart.
out of eight, three remained with her. out of eight, four remained in all, and heda told herself she must go back for malakai. she must reunite her four.
she must she must she must she must she must;
endure, saith the lord.

John had risen early that morning, up with the sun. He had found two of Heda’s children, Simeon and Dinah, the two he saved all those months ago. He approached them, sitting at Simeon’s side, facing the same way, eyes forward. He then looked to both of them, with a warm smile, and calm eyes despite their stormy ocean color. “Hello Simeon, Dinah.” He didn’t say much else. “Would you like to, perhaps, go exploring today?” John could feel a slight spark of his inner pup. Although last time he looked for young ones to play with, it earned him a bite on the neck.

But these two were different. He knew them.

He was supposed to be the pillar, but he had broken, a stone dashed in nine different ways. But had he ever been the cornerstone? He had only One, and it was on Him his broken pieces fell and were upheld.

Though Dee had turned her back on God, God still sent Dee to help him; and in this Simeon understood that God had not turned His back on her. He didn't have a way to explain it. Maybe those words would come later. But her decision made her no less his sister, made him love her no less. He didn't eat the fish she lay at his paws, but he leaned into her and embraced that comfortable silence that had always been okay and understood between them.

Not twins, but they didn't need that to be what they were to each other.

Mama came, too, and wrapped herself around them, and he wondered, why had he been afraid? Her grief was like a blanket around them. Thin, and threadbare, but her arms did not lack the warmth he'd always known and found comfort in. Mom. Mommy. Ami. Children grown up too fast and clinging dearly to the familiar, even as they were pushed out to sea. They shared in their sorrows, their hearts woven closer.

John found them, too, but his words only stirred the anger still rising in Simeon's chest. He's only trying his best -- but his eyes fluttered and reason fled to the recess of his emotion, as sound broke the silence.

No, he said, jaw still set. He lowered his face to brush up against Dee's, thinking to whisper something secret to her. But his voice came too loud; it was not a secret he shared. He didn't know what it was. Anger? Grief? Did it matter anymore? The waters rose and broke over; he crashed like a storm at sea, this isn't fun. This isn't right. This is stupid - just like before, and we know how that ended, he hated the anger, but he did not stop, is Kai gonna die on the island, too? Is he gonna waste away like dad, or get eaten up like Judah? I hate him. But I love him. And God loves him. And I'm supposed to love him, and we're supposed to love him, but we just left him there too because we're all cowards, running away. Running away! Because things are sad. But I don't think life is ever gonna be not sad, and I think people are always gonna die. But Kai is still alive. We're still alive. And his brother and his daddy died too. And I hate that I left him there. And I hate that I'm here. And I'll hate myself if I go back because I promised I'd be here. And I want to be here. And I don't want you to leave me and I don't want to leave and I don't want to say goodbye to you or mom or Ava or John and I also don't want to say goodbye to Kai. This is stupid and it's not what dad would want. Dad would be so sad if he knew what we were doing. He'd be so sad, and I - and I - I -

I'm just a kid.

I'm just a boy.

He stood there, shaking amongst his family. Buffeted and torn apart. Teeth chattering, as though he were cold, though he hadn't been moments before. We need to go back, he breathed out and now, his voice fell to that whisper he'd intended, but he wasnt sure if he felt any comfort there anymore, and if we don't go together, then I still have to.

I'm so sorry, mom.

I'm so sorry, Dee.

Mama emerges from the shadows; John, too, although his chipper attitude is not at all appreciated. She wished she could shatter him to pieces with only a solid, hard glare; he didn't understand. He didn't! He didn't know, he wasn't their family in the way Everett had been, in the way— no. She says nothing to him.
And in that lapse of sound, she felt her brother crumble beneath her.
And she listens, listens to the rumble of the fissure and the torment in his voice.
And for a while, she says not a word, until something dark transfixes her, something enraged and awfully ugly. She peels from Simeon's shoulder to stare at him, empty-eyed, while her throat rumbles. He made the choice to stay.
Kai was not a brother to her. Not in the way Simeon was, the way Judah had — had been. She had felt it her whole life, that separation, that divide; made stronger only as time went on, that darkness that swam in his eyes when he looked at her. There had been no bond, no acceptance of relation, of undeniable blood-tie; only coexistence. Tolerance. Malakai hated her so openly, held nothing but disdain—
And she wanted to love him, still. But she couldn't; she couldn't, and it hurt her so deeply that she found it not within her to love him. He did not feel it for her.
Glassy eyes, voice shrill and sharp-edged, helpless, exhausted; You're gonna leave us too?

simeon shimmered in her arms, with worry, with pain. with the bone-deep anguish no boy should endure. none of them should suffer the way that they had. the way she had made them. and heda had replayed that over and over in her mind: what if she had not left? a reimagining in which she led caracal to sleep off his drink in their den and been with him when he woke; in which she talked softly to him and helped him. stood by him. 
it had been her exhaustion, the loss of two sons and almost a daughter, the constant conflict between those she had birthed and those she loved as if she had. it was her own lack of escape, constant touching, constant mediation; she and caracal had suffered, and finally he had sought some respite from it.
the hurt had been because he had not come to her; he had hidden from heda, cursed when she found him. and now he lay in a fresh grave on a mostly-emptied island, and they had lost all the more.
now simeon choked out his pain, and heda listened, cupping the back of his head and finding, with a wonder, how much he had grown, how she could no longer cradle him; a mother reliving the first blurred, soft moments as dinah's voice turned to glass.
the cool that filled the space between brother and sister chilled heda. she shook her head once, then stood, pulling away from them both; she caught her breath and fought the panic of another splitting between them.
first, a paw, steady on simeon's shoulder: he is not dead. he will not die. her son had been from island to mainland and then back; heda found her faith in malakai's persistence. her own golden eyes turned now toward sweetharbor, in agreement all the same that son and sibling should be found, should be given the protection of a last family discussion on what they must now be.
she did not want to go back. the idea of returning a second time brought her eyes now to dinah. ava was a veritable baby in comparision: she could not make this choice. heda pulled her gesture from simeon, now pointing to the left, then the right, along the cliffs.
we can go home or we can go on. her eyes were now upon john, he who had come down from sweetharbor, surrendering a new home for her. for them. and in her gaze, she made the choice that of her children; if he still believed in god, then he would know their works belonged to the lord.
she was grateful for his kindness, for his attempts; heda hoped john would stay with them, even as she felt that they were about to be tested again.
moonspear was in one direction, the cluster of moon villages a hotbed of heathenry from all she knew, but it would give them all a chance to grow up among family, connected as caracal would have also wanted for them.
heda knew she could not live by the sea any longer; in its voice she thought she nightly heard the voice of judah, crying out for her. and at moonhigh, caracal had begun to come to her, only for now a reddish silhouette that stood upon the waves in silence.
the ocean could no longer be her home, but she would ensconce her children beside it, if they chose as a unit to be; to be.
and lastly; heda turned her back upon the saltwater, upon the island; she lifted her muzzle into the breezes ranging from the inland, and tried to remember where rivenwood had once stood.
a place god could not reach.
not once could she recall having told them of the place, its details. of mahler. of sequoia. of druid. she had left it all behind with her name.
skaigona.
her gaze gathered simeon and dinah both now. heda gave a soft shake of her head. no more argument. if malakai would not come with them, then simeon would stay. but two boys alone could not survive winter, and thus heda might find herself with them once more.
all silent. the woman's trust in her own mind had been broken; now she seemed to close in on herself once more, slowly turning back to the long darkness of the eternal sea.

May be my last post here unless otherwise prompted. :)

Despite John’s hopeful attitude, his words brought nothing more than an anger to the two children. Simeon, refusing John’s offer, let out his deepest thoughts, about home, about his father, his strained relationship with brother, and about Judah. What had happened to Judah? Obviously his time in the Lion’s den caused him to be out of the loop with some other happenings.

All in all, it was true: John didn’t understand what all happened, or what they were going through. But he himself was taken from his family, his home. He wouldn’t share this now, there was no point. 

“Okay.” Was all he said in return. He then fell quiet, as sometimes just listening was as effective as speaking.

Anger, sorrow, hate, remorse. It was all out on the seabed now, and he could never take it back. Did he want to? He didn't feel any better now. He only felt ugly. Ugly, as Dinah warmth unraveled from his side. Ugly even when mom helf him. Ugly when John didn't talk like he always did, because he had shut him up.

Kai made the choice to stay --

But he's still just a kid, just like us. They hadn't even seen more than two seasons! They'd just learned how to swim! Why did everyone think that right thing to do was letting them choose whether to follow their only family left or not? How could mom just stay quiet and leave the choice in their paws?

But now, Dinah's storm stuck him, in a way he'd never felt it before. She had never been angry with him, not like this, never heard her so disappointed. He always knew Dee hated Kai (and honestly, he'd never really done much to curry her good favour), but this --

he'd never known this --

and suddenly, she felt an alien to him.

You're gonna leave us, too.

He had no answer. He'd given it already - but he felt the fracture, and he sensed the motion of mom's shaking head.

Still, she didn't speak, and neither did John. A choice in his paws, because Dee had already made hers.

Simeon pulled away, though the cold had alrwady settled through him. We'll go talk with Kai, he reasoned, and stepped in the direction of Sweetharbour, we don't have to stay there. But we need to decide what to do together. I know that's the way dad would want it.

Das had loved Kai, as much as he'd loved each of them.

And he knew they knew it, too.

He's just a kid; they all are, they're all just kids; a young mother with children not yet at the halfway mark of one year. Dinah, immature, naïve, vulnerable, fresh-faced;
And yet here she was.
Mama stays silent, withered. Daddy is in the ground. And now the choice, ultimately, had been left to her. Sim, her voice is weak, fragile, and her eyes round at the edges just enough to convey the love that still prevailed. I'm not going back there.
He was right, in some way, and she knew this. But the thought of the now-barren lavender fields, the soft song of crashing waves, the mound of silt where her father now lays and the — the blackened paw that had belonged to Judah.
She could not, would not; empty, empty home, save for the incessant disgust to be found in the eyes of her preacherman brother who she no longer thought to consider her own. She did not want to see him; did not want anything to do with him. Did not want to go to a home that had scattered in the wind, a home no longer there.
Her gaze falls upon mama. Her heart aches. Moonspear, Rivenwood, somewhere else wholly — they would do it together, build a new home together, just the five of them, because everyone else had turned cheek upon them.
And decidedly, if that too was torn to shreds, she would go alone if she must.

just a kid. just a child. just a baby. just a boy.
like judah had been.
her sobbing was muted and broken, but their mother did not collapse, as she only wished to do. dinah would not go. simeon might not return.
just a kid!
and she, their mother! could they have been cursed with a weaker parent?
in breath she steadied herself, then crouched before dinah.
i need you to stay here, with john, a glance to gather the sweetharbor man, and ava.
i need you to be here when i get back.
heda too, could not leave without this closing, and this chapter could not end if she abandoned malakai as god had abandoned them.
but she would not go unless her daughter assured her, promised, that heda would come back to two daughters.

He didn't want to look at his sister if all he would see was her coldness again. His thoughts of Judah were stricken enough. Please, not Dinah, too.

But her voice was different when she said his name. Frail - but softer, and she compelled him to turn.

And he might have changed his mind right there, the way her eyes still frayed with affection. She didn't hate him; she loved him, and he loved her --

and he wished Kai would see reason, and come, so he could tell Dee he loved her again and again, in a place she felt safe, instead here, for one last time.

The anger melted from Simeon's eyes, and for a moment, they were just kids again.

But they couldn't stay that way. Not anymore.

I know, he said softly. Understanding, though they'd exchanged only this look. He wouldn't make her go back.

You and John and Ava watch out for each other, he repeated the words mom hadn't said, but he felt in her gestures, her slight movements about, Mom and I will watch out for each other. And we'll work something out, he didn't know what that would be, but he hoped, and prayed desperately so, he wouldn't have to leave Dee forever. But this time, he didn't promise. I love you, kay? he said, eyes fixed on his sister. Drifting then to John. Wishing for Ava to have been here, too - but maybe it was easier that she wasn't.

Mama's eyes tell her all she needs to know. Simeon only confirms it.
Mommy
I'll-- I'll wait, near the cape. The three of us can stay there. I-I don't want to, to be too far.
Please come back for me
I love you. I love-- I love you both, so much, okay? Please, and she hates the desperation now woven thickly into her voice, into the words that fall numbly from her tongue; but she is tired, too tired to fight this. She reaches an arm for each and tugs mother and brother into her chest. please, please come back. Please.
She did not want to have to brave this alone. She could not let her only family be washed, too, by the cursed sea.
I'll take care of Ava.

@Simeon, feel free to start the next thread or lmk if u want me to do it <333

i will be back.
heda held dinah for a long moment, for a moment that went on and on and on until it had to end, until she had to step back.
but then the young palewisp mother draped in mourning black smoothed the soft forehead of her daughter and nodded, keeping their eyes together.
i will be back.
she kissed dinah's ears, her face; she breathed something that might once have been words, a prayer, but were now only a sound.
and then she turned for the island, moving alongside simeon.