Sea Lion Shores when the shadow comes to take me away

She stumbled, unseeing, through the pools. It had been well over a week since she had last eaten and longer still since she had eaten well. The furious drive that led her south was still singing within her, stronger now even than when she began, but it was breaking against the reality of a body that was failing.

She needed to get home.

Rosalyn stumbled again and fell, this time collapsing against the sand and failing to push herself forward. The world fogged around her and for a moment even the roar of the ocean disappeared.

Erzulie… please….. Her wife was near. She knew this, and if she only had the strength, there would be no worry. Both would be complete once more, her heart mended and made whole. A little further…

The ocean was a gentle roar in her ears as she tried to struggle to her feet, but no part of her traitorous body cooperated. Instead she lay where she’d fallen.

val left sapphique at a speedy clip nearly four day's hence. it broke his heart to leave his family behind, but he did so for greater purpose.

for he had found, somewhere, the faintest inkling of rosalyn's scent fading from the world like a smoke tendril.

mad, panicked, fearful, anxious -- each of them a corporeal shadow which followed behind val's steps.

he did not see rosalyn fall. he only saw her body still in a pool of glittering water. in his heart, he feared the worst.

maman!" he cried.

oh, it was cruel -- so fucking cruel -- that she fell between a stretch of sand and ocean-water. val froze as he realized to get to her he'd have to dodge around thin spits of lapping ocean.

he could do it. he had to do it. he had no choice.

a dull roar whined in his pounding ears as val jumped from sand-patch to sand-patch towards the collapsed figure of his maman.

She would fail here. If she could not get up then they would be apart forever and her soul, her heart, would think she had been abandoned. Please. She couldn’t bear it.

Someone called but she did not know who for. It was not the voice she sought.

It did press her to try to find her feet again, but this time she barely shifted before reality faded out once more, replaced with the momentary silence. This time the ocean was quieter and slower to return. Fear elicited a low whimper in her throat. If she lost the waves she would never find her way.

maman! val called again, this time desperate.

between them was a band of water which stretched around rosalyn like a ribbon. for all of its shallowness, to val it represented the pelagic deep.

his skin crawled in horror as he felt moisture at the bottom of his paws.

rosalyn seemed to rally, but the moment seemed fleeting. when she rose to her feet again val realized she was not there: that harangued, familiar look of distance overcame the face of the mother he loved so dearly.

it was an expression he had seen a hundred times, but its familiarity made it no less cutting to witness. maman. val insisted, dancing from toe to toe as he struggled to find his courage. around him the sea seemed to loom as if some predator, waiting for his final, fatal move. where did she go; would his voice find her in that silvery veil?

he leapt just as a whimper pressed from rosalyn's throat.

The voice again. It cut through her despair and this time she recognized the word. Someone else sought what she did… and suddenly she recognized the voice. Perhaps she had not failed after all.

Val. She croaked, though her exhausted voice was lit within by a clear note of hope. They could seek her together. She’s waiting. I have to find her.

He would understand. He would lead her home, and together they would find his maman upon the shore. She was so glad to hear his voice.

val landed in a scree of sand.

rosalyn had turned -- this time she faced him. her remaining eye lost its glaze. rosalyn had snatched herself back from wherever it was her mind faded to. val was relived, but his heart did not stop its hammering. here was the closest he had ever been to the ocean since he was a cub: he could practically sense the rippling water between his toes.

she's waiting. i have to find her. it broke his heart to think rosalyn did not know. what he did next broke his heart again. it shattered around him in a rain of seaglass shrapnel.

i know maman, i know. val's head bowed. come with me.

Somehow she had managed to find her feet, but when he asked her to come, she took an unsteady step southward. She would not make it any further without his help but her heart sang of home.

She’s home. There was no more explanation than that, but despite the call, she did not have the energy to question. If he took her then she would assume he looked as well, and that together they would find her at the end.

The call of home led to a beach, a much-loved bay and a shore on which they had begun. It was right that she be there, and that together they would race through the surf and on to sunset.

val had no reason to know it then, but rosalyn's soul had fled south, her love dying somewhere on a beach he'd never been.

she's home.

rosalyn took one step southward. val offered her his shoulder, ripples of tension fighting the skin along his body. his fur stood on end to be so close - to be touching seawater now. it choked him to know he would have to walk through this --

for maman.

she was listless. he would be her rudder, always. this way, maman. he tried gently to steer her in the direction he'd come. his footsteps darkened the sand north -- their trail fading into the sands.

She leaned on him heavily, awash with the scent of salt and of another home. This flickered through her thoughts before being lost to the haze of exhaustion, a space where simply continuing forward would take most of what she had to give.

Unbeknownst to her, they walked the way she had come, turning further and further from the shore where the ghost of her beloved’s memory waited to welcome her home.