Wheeling Gull Isle fall back into place

He allows his sister to hold him, clear his face of tears, to rock him like a child, though she was scarcely an adult herself. They were just two children trying to figure out how to pick up the pieces of their broken lives. Judah’s breathing slows, he looks hopelessly up into Dinah’s face.

“If she chooses to stay… I-I just need to see her.” He needed to know she was alive and safe. He needed to tell her that he loved her- in case this was the only chance he ever got.

His sister speaks of leaving, and Judah's vision pulses, the shallow leads that tether the boy to this world threatening again to fracture. He reaches for her instinctively, heartbeat quickening in his ears, teeth chattering from the erratic clenches of jaw.

“Then don’t!-” his throat ruptures, “we can’t leave! I’ve been to the mainland. Everything there is… cold and, and hard, and violent.” His body quivers, his arms tightening around her torso. “This is our home. Our island. Our ocean. We were born here.”

“I don’t belong anywhere else, Dinah,” the words fall like tears.