Wheeling Gull Isle turncoat

caracal redhawk sat in a bed of fall harvested lavender, more peaceful in death than ava had ever seen him in life.

she frowned and twirled a knot of coneflower, gone to seed this late in harvest.

daddy? can you hear me?

she closed her eyes and thought of judah; judah, who had shown her how to pray. if her inner voice was just loud enough, maybe they could hear her.

the wind stirred the fur along her flank and then sighed somewhere between caracal's cheek and his soul -- gone now to some other world ava could not follow.

her mama's voice rose over their heads, high pitched as it clung somewhere in clouds of pastry white.

ava worried the dry stem again.

dear daddy i am sorry
i did not stay with you
and judah

and i am sorry if i
forgot the way
i should have tried harder to come back for you
and judah

i am sorry for the whale
and mama
and i am sorry for betraying you
and mama
and i am sorry most of all for the curse that followed me
from blackwater, to you

i will keep it with me forever.

she closed her eyes as the rustle of heda's footsteps fell away. while john was nearby, ava's reception of him was colder than caracal himself -- she willed it all to not be true. maybe if she closed her eyes and hoped hard enough, she could collapse into herself, folding over and over again until this day had never happened;

but when she opened her eyes again caracal was still dead, and the seagulls still shrieked overhead, and john -- infuriating john! -- was still there, and why could it not have been him instead of daddy and judah?

with tears stinging her eyes she flung the shriveled coneflower towards caracal. it landed aimlessly, the wind gently rolling it off his chest.

the thud of dirt scattering over his body was a sound she would never forget. 

ava amara buried the last of her hope with her father -- and she did not look back.