Wheeling Gull Isle blue flower

For the first time in his life, Everett was alone. For the second time, the ocean stretched on and on before him. For the third time, the lion had spoken.

The firebird who had led him here had long disappeared, concealed within the gray above the overcast sea. Strange, how such a bright creature could vanish so quickly! Strange, how such a small creature could stir such a yearning in his chest. An overwhelming need to cling to that feeling the sight of its beauty sparked. How desperate, how empty he felt when that beauty blinked out and away.

He needed to find it. The bird? The beauty? Something greater than both?

Only the dull gulls circled overhead — but Everett had seen where the firebird had flown. A rough stretch of land scoring the horizon.

He had not found a way across the night before, and had settled into a dreamless sleep, until something had jolted him early in the morning before the sun fully awoke, as dawn light began to filter across the sky. Everett looked this way and that, but he was alone, achingly so, despite the feeling that someone had shaken him awake.

It was then he saw the parting of the sea.

A delicate strip of sand within the low tide, stretching onward and out towards the isle.

And he remembered, then, that voice that had spoken. The bird who had led him. And am understanding clicked.

Go.

And Everett arose and bounded through that shallow tide, across the sea soaked sand, and would not stop until he reached the other side.