Stavanger Bay [m] the sparrows drag me down

He'd thought her dead. Gone the same way as his seal hunter. As his wife. As his father. In his wildest dreams, there were many he thought he might one day see again — but her, Marina, he had truly thought lost to him.

His eyes drank her in, disbelieving and hungry, shaded by renewed grief and a rising miasma of hope. If she was alive —

But there were no familiar scents on her pelt. Only her, small and alone.

The question, then, felt quite galling. No, he thought. I thought they were. But you're still here. Even if she was not the one that he wished most ardently to see, she was still a scrap of home. She was still a bright spark of something warm and lovely, despite her coldness, despite the distance she held between them. He stepped closer, hoping to thaw the numbness from his lips.

"They weep," he said to her, his voice low. "It is a cold comfort."

He did not know what else to say. His eyes raced over her, retracing old paths with quiet desperation. His heart pounded in his chest.