Wheeling Gull Isle treibloka

drying her tears as if he were magdalene, heda could not help the darting little laugh that thrust from her throat, nor the way she leaned minutely into the allowance of his touch, eyes joyed though mouth said no more as heda sought composure and breath and her god.
his smile was as though a volcanic-wrought vent had opened far beneath the surface of dark water, at last giving entry to sunray and sunshine.
and then danill was bending away from her, a stone rising roughly and unmovingly, moored in those same blackening waves. so few words, until that song; until that song.
heda's slender limbs went around that contrivance of rock where a man had just been. she felt on some level as if he and she both moved underwater, felt her fur raise with the sensation of waves; heda wound her arms about his shoulders and lay her sea-softened cheek just over his forehead.
"let it go," snegurochka whispered, urging and care in her tones.
she would not guess at what daniil was carrying, only that surely it must be a millstone like the one she had cut loose in the stillness around sweetharbor.