Wheeling Gull Isle sparrows

"@Nakano," heda said, when she had finally stopped crying long enough to gather a few skins. "i — i need you to tell @Hviske and @John that the children and i are leaving, for a little while. caracal is staying," and that made her sick as a wheeling lark to say, seeing as though it had been a very long time since she had spent any time away from him.
she loved him! she loved him, but oh the memory of his slurred words and his — his swearing! at her! was that what this did?
she kept looking for him. caracal was devoted and contrite; he would come back. and yet he did not. he did not come up the greenhills nor call for her, and so she looked toward the sweetharbor wolf, wondering if he would heed her messages.
she needed to leave.

Tear-stained face, words a flurry with a wretched anguish, eyes red from every vein pulled from light. Her throats a chamber of coarse sorrow, and the priest's heart yearned, gutted with pity and seeping with long to comfort. "Oh, my Heda." Blood from the heavens, she was hurting. His head bowed, should she allow, to offer a tender touch against her own, a pierce of a gentleness struck through the holy-walker's armored soul.

"I will tell them. Be freed from home life- for a time, or for your name. Your heart must burn." A churning gut, and he felt the damn of nature whisper through mind. A sour, drunken illness that struck his eyes when he looked upon her, and his head felt a blur. A blur he knew well. A blur that made his mind weep for her and struck fear into the eyes of the holy man. "Oh, Heda," he murmured once more. "What deep wounds you must have. I feel a great terror for you." The light of day felt of a scorch and no longer a warmth- a warning. A horror. They spoke! They spoke!
God, have mercy.

tagging ana even tho that thread is still going; visibility for timeline! <3

"i'm not yours," heda snapped toward nakano's softly said words; her jawline tensed from chin to earbase in regret. "sorry, i — i will heed your warning. and while i'm gone, keep this place."
her eyes wished to weep. she would not let them do it. "watch over caracal," heda asked, clearing her throat to keep the salt at bay; "he isn't well."
she turned back to her work, bristling, and when she had added the last fur she called to @Malakai, to @Judah, to @Simeon, to @Ava Amara, to @Dinah, to @Anathema, to join her at the landbridge for a trip to see grandma towhee.

“Mom,” he slips from his concealed place where he had been led to secrete by strange shouts. A shaking paw touches her arm. “I love you.”

He didn't understand what was going on. But once, Judah had been a very scared little boy, and it was his father who had refused to give up on him. It was Judah’s turn to do the same.

“I’m staying.”

The devil ran rampant. On her tongue, he burned force of the fallen's voice, and he recoiled! A sinners action. A sinners call. Harboring within her, blood spilled from parasitical demons that fed from her skin. "In soul," he looked to the sky, a command of undying faith- loyalty, settled to chains of holy fire. "We are all anothers." There was no other way.

But in that moment, he saw something beyond the face of an irate mother, a sister bound in soul, or a weeping wife.

Judah, before them. Saran looked to the mother, hardened, spun with empathy.
Oh, Heda.
"Watch your daughter with care."
What had he seen?

Dinah had stumbled after her Mama's call in something of a stupor. For once, she did not cry; no, no, though surely, to all that knew her, that would come later. Her face held a shocked, haggard, dead-eyed stare; Nakano is only briefly acknowledged and Mama herself is given only a half-glance before her eyes fixate on the sandy floor.
Her home. Her Isle. Her family.
Daddy.
If Hell is real, she is already in it.
Judah flashes into view while she feels as if there are four suffocating, stagnant walls around her, and they are collapsing. He is staying. Please don't, please; a wave, a flourish of anger, jagged edged; he is staying? Keep Kai here with you then, since he's so important, Kai. Kai! He could go fuck himself too! Was that why he wasn't coming? Was it him too?
She does not wait for anyone else, even a response from her brother; all she heard was watch your daughter with care before she slips onto the landbridge before anyone else can stop her. She would wait on the other side.

Simeon, meanwhile, was none the wiser to anything that had happened on the other side of the island. He'd been in the tidepools with Psalm, perfecting a better fishing technique he was totally sure he could use to show up Kai later, when mom had called him, and he'd dipped outta there with a bombastic sprint wgen hed heard why -- fish still in tow.

They were finally getting to cross to the mainland, to see Gramma, even! Heck yeah!

But when he saw the motely array of his gathering family, he couldn't have felt more out of place. Like sunshine straining through the clouds of an overcast day.

Jude staying, Dee snapping. It was all Simeon could hear, before his sister bolted for the landbridge, and his smile shot to panic.

Saltwater, sweeping legs away.

Dee, wait! he shouted, wirds marbled as, forgetting the fish, it fell around his chin and slapped unceremoniously to the ground. Nearly tripping over the slippery thing, he managed to stumble past Jude and mom and Nakano with a quick breath of, I'll go ger her, and didn't wait for an answer before plunging down the wer sandy trail. Dee!

What was going on?

His mother called for them. For him, for his siblings, for the two last remaining of his adopted siblings. They had been swept away, but to where? Good riddance, either way- something which Malakai would never speak allowed to either of his parents. 

When he came, the sorrow in his mother's eyes were apparent, for the loss. Their dad was distant too... Had all this anguish been because of those two having gone missing? Because one of them snapped and went crazy on John? Or was there more? Kai knew his mother and father had good hearts, good souls but he was far too young and unaware of the full story and the tension blooming between his parents. 

Malakai swept his eyes among each- his mom, Nakano, Judah and Simeon booking it after Dinah as she ran across the land bridge. Clearly already over it, Kai turned back to the others- What's her problem now? Always whining, always complaining, always crying. That girl needed Jesus. 

her tongue, it robbed nakano of a moment shared between them, and for a moment her eyes threatened the hot brimstone of tears as she traced his striking face. the sorrows did not come in this moment; they came in the next, with judah denying his place at her side to remain with his father.
"no," heda managed, but it was weak with shock; her golden eyes searched his face. she could order him; she could insist, at the cost of another scene and more strain upon her affected children.
and still caracal did not come.
rivulets of bitter salt ran down her face.
"i'm coming back for you, judah."
she couldn't stay here another moment; she followed simeon and dinah weakly, pausing beside malakai, for whom she had no answer for once.
neither ana nor ava had yet showed their faces. "go with your brother and sister," she told the twin to judah; and for the first time they would be parted.
a tilted call for @Everett, to come with her, to stay; he would seek god's answer in this even if he did not know what had happened.
a shuddering breath raked upon her heart; she would pause to search until the tremble in her limbs too sent her down to the landbridge and into the world beyond.
already regret spiked within her; for her anger; for her reaction; for her assumptions; for her inability to simply let things be as they were.

He sat on the shore of the island and quietly cried as lapping waves ultimately sealed Sweetharbor away from the rest of the world, and his family with it.