Wheeling Gull Isle when silence gets too hard to handle

Mou woke to the chill of an absence beside him. He had kicked himself awake; dreaming of the hollow where his children had burned. He had been running. He had been ash and smoke while they had become embers, twisting together and then parting upon the wind. Maegi had been there — standing alone and out of his reach — and when he looked for her after waking, Mou was afraid.

There was something wrong. He saw her finally, standing out of his reach with her back to him. Staring away from the island. The sky was dark but not for them; the darkness was clinging to the mainland as if the night sky were to bleed across the horizon. He went to her. She was shaking — pleading with the dark.

He sank beside her and tried to focus his one good eye just right, a frown uncoiling across his long face.