Wheeling Gull Isle September

A break in the wind brings Ava to his nose. He runs his chin over one shoulder to spy the girl some distance away, bloodmark too-bright in the ambient daylight. Tempestuous at best was his relationship with the cubs. Some broad disconnect resides between their minds. But the prospect of a new other suffuses, the one he knew would come to steal his family away.

“Are you going there, Ava?” Is his first ask. “I’m not.” He’s decided this firmly.

“You can stay here with me. We can fish and learn to swim together and look at the stars and we won’t need anybody else.”