Wheeling Gull Isle You are my anchor, so steady me, steady me now

her days were filled with the questions of her daughter, the play of simeon, the coaxing of judah, the wrestling with malakai.
her days were good and golden, all that heda had known her lord would give her without asking. there were so many reasons to thank god, and each evening she found another.
the worshipper by the sea fairly glowed, having replaced the lost weight. all traces of fever too were gone, and she walked each day with the children, naming things, pointing our the bloom of new flowers or the winging of a gull.
this hour everett called for heda. she nodded at caracal, kissed his cheek and the downy heads of the nearest children, and set off, for the fragrances carried on the briny air touched her maternal instinct.
she came to find him with four dirtied infants, hardly alive long enough from their newborn stage. 
her golden eyes widened, and then a shy blush climbed her cheeks, for the very sight of these little ones was enough to announce her milk in visible pearling droplets.
but heda did not focus on her brief embarrassment; she set her mind to joining everett at his cleansing, and before long she had pulled each pup from the long piece of wood and settled them at her belly, checking each one for malaise, disease.
an earthen cub shimmering in odd olive tones. a darkling one beside. a child of black and white, and another already showing red hues.
was she a fool for loving them already?
two of them acted oddly, and heda looked up in sharp worry at everett. "where is their mother?" she asked beseechingly, her gilded eyes searching his own.