Wheeling Gull Isle Bring them home

The stranger speaks, the stranger knows. But beneath his laurel of leaves the boy scoffs, the most wretched of groans, “Sweetharbor’s dead.”

His hardness breaks into a quiet sob and a tree catches his lurch. Paralyzed, he visualizes what he can of mom. Her picture is obscured by time, only the essence of how he’d felt with her is recalled: joy. Safety. Does John know, that she was supposed to come back for him?

Silence is broken with a shout- Judah jerks his head. Form the scrub manifests a figure, silver and black with a roughened call and a scent that would never be stripped of brine and lupine-

“Mal?” He mouths, hardly with words, and paddles through the brush towards him.

His heart stops, his breath lost. Malakai stands before him.