Ankyra Sound 'Cause my dad's office door's always closed but I stopped knocking

Sunset on the beach; there was nothing quite like it, that bright amber-and-gold horizon set over the vast expanse of churning water. Reverie had spent quite some time playing with Blossom, right up until the moment her daughter abruptly flopped face-down into the sand and did not move. She'd panicked, of course.
After many tears and frantic whisper-yells, Reverie had determined that Blossom had fallen asleep. Mid-stride. So she'd gathered up some leaves and arranged them far enough up the beach that the water wouldn't reach her, and laid her down to rest for awhile. She was still quite worried, of course, and checked on her every five minutes for the first hour.
Then she decided she would drive herself crazy this way, and removed herself. She kept Blossom within her line of sight, but moved to the edge of where the waves reached so that the water kissed her paws periodically. Reverie closed her eyes and let the sounds of the ocean wash over her. The birds and the waves, the distant whispering of forest life at her back. She felt the chill against her skin, the salt-laden ocean wind tangling its fingers through her fur. And all around her the world moved; the stirring air and the crashing sea, the whisper of wings in the air and tiny digging feet in the sand.
Something rushed past her ear in a flurry. Her eyes opened to a flash of gold; a gilded bird, as bright and perfect as a sunrise. Reverie let out a shaky little laugh, delighted but startled as she began to remember:
The bird. The cave. The Garden. The sun, the sun, the sun...
She didn't know what to do. Not at first. The bird flitted around her with fleeting slivers of song spilling from its beak, and for a moment she could only watch. Had she ever seen anything so beautiful? Anything so perfect? Like living art, like magic given form. And then she knew what to do.
Reverie stepped into the water and started to dance.

While @Heda and @Caracal spent time away from the Isle, Everett stayed behind to watch over their little home. The island had a pastoral feel to it. Quaint. Quiet. Safe. They were hardly what Everett thought a pack might be. Too small to be considered such. But they seemed significant, this place seemed significant, and the more time he spent there in silent thought watching the waves from the lavender fields, the more he understood that this was where he was supposed to be.

But this morning a compulsion stirred him and as he walked along the seashore, he saw that the waters had pulled away from the land bridge and revealed that safe passage to the mainland again.

He had passed by the stretch many times before, but this time, for whatever reason, he decided to turn and follow the bridge until his paws hit the shoreline on the ocean’s opposite side.

He would be back, he knew, even as he let himself wander along the coastline, allowing the world to open up before him again. Clearing his mind, his soul, his heart.

Clearing his ears to hear. His eyes to see.

Sunlight on the shoreline. A catch of gold as paws stirred in familiar rhythm along the beach. Wings of fire stirring up the sky between them.

Dreams made manifest. A vision come to light. A shiver that burned his spine and rendered him speechless, gawking.

Terrified, thrilled.

He had seen crashing waters as vast as The Gilded Sea, with sky birds screeching a foreign song -

He had seen a land without fire, without Father or Mother -

He had heard the voice of the lamb, the lion -

He had seen an apparition of gold along the shores, dancing, as some had once done.

making some vague assumptions, let me know if anything needs to be changed <3

Writes you a poem instead of a post

It was the smell of home on the wind;
And home was a word laden with salt.
A word that stung against the cut of memories
Of fear, the sour flavor of fate
Sticking behind your teeth and in the back of your throat, that constant reminder
That there are some things the waves can never wash away.

And home was a term stolen from stories and daydreams;
Carefully crafted, a patchwork of if I ever, and one day we'll,
Until one day came, and with it a knowing
That you never really knew what home felt like, that peace was a concept confined
To the aftermath, when the stars have all fallen, and you know that the only light you'll ever have is what you steal from the sky.

In the stolen light she danced; fluttered with the wind as if caught by it, bound to it. But she was bound to nothing and no one, free in this moment and forgotten by the world. She might have stayed that way forever, had the winds not brought her a gift.
Everett.
She stilled even as the water flowed around her, rushing in, filling all the spaces until she could no longer separate herself from the sea. The force of it nearly swept her away. Somehow she kept her footing, and as the wave receded she went to him. Everett, She breathed, whether he heard her or not over the din of the sea. Louder, then: Everett!
And then she was running, splashing through the water on a mission to embrace the brother she'd left behind.
Everett! She laughed, and hugged him, and started to cry.

She ran. She called. She cried.

She broke her dance to come to him and he let her chart the way. And when she found her way to his embrace, he laughed, he smiled, in ways once known to him before the Gilded Sea had swallowed him, before his father was the fire and his mother the rain.

He sought to hush with a quiet word, I missed you, and would rest in her embrace.

Thinking a long time of the words once spoken to him, when his mind had been clear of the mushroom’s effects, when his feet had finally followed Reverie here. He would think, even as they spoke together, walked together along the beach. Sang and danced in the waves.

Of seabirds, of safety, of a dancer on the shore.

And he would ponder these things even when the night grew quiet and voices stilled and his thoughts were the only voices left.