Wheeling Gull Isle fayaslais

it was not the rain that woke her, it was the remembered sound of druid retching.
it woke her. she was spurred awake and sweating and gasping, for in her mind she was still within that cavern in the glacier. she looked around frantically for lane, but the woman was not here.
she was not in atautsikut.
heda bit her the inside of her jaw and clambered out into the grass, seeking the peak of the hill. rain fell, but heda only ran faster, illuminated by the lightning forking across a sea-sky during this early and odd morning. "oh, druid, i'm sorry," she mumbled under her breath, and then louder, casting her words out over the ocean: "i'm sorry!"
if she was lucky, @Bartholomew would not hear her over the din.

can be just a cameo if someone else wants to hop in! i couldn't resist. <3

the isle was further than they have dared to venture in some time: the blackwater islands were their home, where the voidwalker felt most home, where their power was strongest, where their nightwife is found with their shadowchildren.

but every and now again the void beckons them away. over the whispers of the void — commanders, ingram had called them — the dreadfather hears a voice call out. curiosity draws them towards the origin of the sound though when the pale young woman comes into view something gives them pause.

steps freeze and muscles tense. recognition glows dimly like a dying fire within the dreadfather as seaglass gaze bore into their wombsibling.

an echo of memories; flashes and a soft pang that they are quick to banish with a cold and cruel brush of a their tail. sentimentality held no sway over them...if it ever had.

they do not speak out; content for the moment to observe.

:o!

the last days it had just been he and she. heda expected no one to answer her, not even bartholomew. they were alone on this island and it provided her with a deepening sense of safety.
spotting a figure down below tore that away from heda. she stood unmoving as it became the great figure of a wolf and she approached.
shadowed legs on shadowed paws. the silhouette grew and lengthened and morphed into someone who sparked an insistent sense of familiarity inside her heart.
her hackles rose. she refused to back away from the stranger.
heda stared at him, her golden eyes raking the stamp that life had left on her brother. he seemed fathomless. beyond her. 
"worripa?" her voice was timid. she felt like she was falling.

they are spotted.

worripa; her voice soft. a dead name for a dead boy. even ingram did not fit them anymore. not truly. but it served it's purpose when 'keeper' and 'dreadfather' did not.

she has grown, they note, though their memories of her are fuzzy; clouded by the cloying and choking void, by the crimson of their mother's blood.

to have thought to have severed all ties — cleanly or otherwise — and yet find her here fills the dreadfather with a soft pang that they instinctively hate. there is only the listener, their children and the druids. they are the family that the dreadfather has.

no, speaks the voidwalker. worripa is dead. i gutted him from the inside out. a violent and cruel way to say that the brother she knew is gone. killed the boy so the god can live. i am the dreadfather.

in one moment he was worripa; in the next he cast her down and ended heda.
violently; breath torn from her in a rush. a thousand emotions crossed her face. her lips contorted and brow furrowed. words wished to come and yet they could not —
i am the dreadfather
what kind of stupid fucking name was that? but heda forced herself to look at him, at the scars on his muzzle. maybe he had been worripa once. but he wasn't that anymore.
"skaigona is dead too."
her voice was tight and grim. nausea chased itself inside the column of her throat. why was he here? this was worse than not meeting at all again. there was such a rift, and then a cold deluge of awareness that she was unsure she even loved the individual standing across from her.
that she loved no one.
and at last, tears began to sting heda's eyes.

they watch her with an impassive gaze.

once she'd been a staple in their life: but now it was the druids and their nightwife and shadowchildren.

that the dreadfather can see this disconnect, this frayed and snapped chord that had once bound them was a little surprising but they let it recoil back without making an effort to stop it. a bridge burnt: as it was meant to be.

skaigona is dead too. at this, the dreadfather regards her with a soft spark of consideration: wondering in that split second before it fades if she is more similiar to them than they had first assumed. nevertheless, it changes little. their paths had seperated so very long ago.

it is for the best then, the voidwalker drawls in a low, contemplative rumble. with their deaths we have given ourselves the opportunity to grow beyond. though for the dreadfather, death in the physical sense was not final. the void took those wayward souls, the dreadfather knows. they grow quiet then; studious of her reaction.

it felt like that was all there was to say. heda stood awkwardly. nothing about her brother invited her to embrace him or invite him into her life.
the dreadfather was not a title that suggested her sibling wanted anything to do with who they were to one another.
her throat felt tight. constricted. she nodded quickly, refusing to give in to the sting of tears. 
everyone left in the end.
heda was suddenly and fiercely protective of the island. she didn't want bartholomew to come across them; she was afraid he might try to offer worripa a home. and heda wasn't — he left. he'd left her and changed his name. 
this island had to be kept as a paradise for her. a safe place. 
"you're right. i've — done a lot of growing." heda hoped he would leave now, and with that thought came the thrum of guilt.

the dreadfather draws in a deep breath; collected. unaffected. cruelly unfeeling.

the salty seabreeze is cool against their face, the waves creating a repetitive motion; the lulling crash of them broken only by her words. a confirmation, an agreement. an ending. they can sense in the air between them; palpable. taste in the unspoken but lingering words upon the tangy seabreeze.

goodbye. the voidwalker murmurs, taking their silent cue to leave; retracing their steps back to the mainland.

<3 ;;

heda didn't speak as he turned away. her golden eyes would watch for as long as it took him to dip into the waters from her sight.
"goodbye, worripa." words her brother would not hear, whispered into a salt wind.
she wept.