Wheeling Gull Isle I come, God, I come

sorry for any typos! It is late and my eyes are bleary, but I wanted to get this up! <3

They had traveled on mass to the cape, and from there, Simeon and @Heda had bid their goodbyes and departed for the Isle.

He was glad the others would be nearby. The comfort settled in his heart like a safeguard against the strange mix of anger and grief that still battered around inside. He felt better, too, knowing they'd see Kai again soon.

Simeon had many thoughts as they crossed the landbridge, and one he couldn't shake. What if Kai didn't come with them? Simeon couldn't bear to force Dinah to live on the island again, not when he'd heard in her voice and seen in her eyes and felt in her avoidance of even glimpsing the Isle the anguish this place seemed to bring her now. But if Kai wanted to stay, could he really leave her behind?

Mom, he said slowly, as the waters lapped at the edges of the sandbridge, if Kai wants to stay... what do we do? He had sensed from her the want to stay together, but he knew very little beyond the feeling she'd exuded, or her thoughts behind it, or her ideas if worst came to worst and Kaai didnt come with. Would she be willing to let  Simeon stay? Would it be good if he did? 

Would mom say anything at all?

beautiful post! thanks for starting!

had the words to speak suddenly come to heda once more, she would not have had an answer. her children were no longer infants. malakai had already suffered one removal from the island.
but they were still very young, too young to be alone. heda had not allowed herself to consider the possibility that he might refuse to come with them.
and she did not now.
sweetharbor was bathed in the beauty she had always known; her heart kept in a twisting, sickened mien to be back.
her golden eyes leveled on simeon. she touched her chest, touched his shoulder, and pointed out across the emerald waving grasses in the direction of malakai's scent.
they would leave together. they must. she looked around for her son now.

Malakai strode the Greenhills, fresh blood spilt down his front. He had been successful, this day! It was the first time he had been able to catch a hare and the red meat was a rare treat from his usual seafood diet of clam, crustacean and fish. 

He was proud of himself. He had thought to seek out @Nakano, with the brown rodent clutched in his jaws but instead decided to go to the den, to show @Judah, hidden there like a wraith in the darkest places within. 

Kai would come to show the kill to neither, as the scent of his mother and other brother caught on the salty breeze. He walked swift into their direction, fur bristled on his spine, his jaws clenching harder onto the hare before he let it slip from his mouth and fall to the ground. 

Why have you returned?

She was quiet.

Hot anger flared again.

And as they finished crossing the landbridge, he couldn't find it in himself to say anything more to her.

Mom spoke, in her own wordless way, but it wasn't enough for Simeon. His nostrils flared as she turned away to head out over the greens -- she didn't even call for Malakai. Did she leave that up to him as well?

Malakai! he shouted, stifling the fury that nipped at his teeth. He was about to shout again when --

Malakai! his brother had found them, question in the air and hare crumpled unceremoniously on the soft earth. Was he angry? Upset? Surprised? Simeon couldn't read him. His eyes weren't like Dinah's. We didn't mean to leave you. I thought you'd followed me off the island when everybody else left, but then I realized you didn't, and I -- . hmm. Simeon paused. Maybe Kai didn't need to know the part in between then and now, and especially not that both he and Dee had said out loud that they hated him... yeah...

... anyway, We want to decide what we're doing together. So that's why we're here, I guess. To talk and... figure it out, I guess. By actually talking this time, and not just running away

He didn't look to mom again.

it felt like her tongue had never worked. on some level, though simeon controlled it, she felt his anger. she was his mother; how could she not? it wounded her, but she was not alone to work her jaws nor to try a word again. she could not be humiliated. and the wounding was a price, the price she gladly paid to see her boys together once more.
malakai arrived. her eyes were filled with love and with pain to see them converse. kai was cold, and heda approached him simply because of this. would he allow her to touch him? to hug him? she would not press if he denied.
simeon, it all fell to simeon, and her eyes shimmered with open tears as she looked at malakai, silently begging him to come back with them, off this island.

Malakai's expression remains flat, if not holding the slight bits of annoyance and boredom, as he listens to his bother explain how they had not meant to leave him- and yet they had. 

But it was not minutes later did they realize their brother was missing. Not hours even. But days. Had it really been days before they realized one was not among them? Or had it simply taken them days to decide it was probably in their best interest to go back for him, because God wouldn't have liked them abandoning one of his flock? Because Heda didn't want another dead or missing child staining her already blood soaked paws? 

Malakai did not hate Simeon. He didn't even hate Dinah. Hatred was a strong emotion, which Kai did not hold for either. Simeon had never done wrong to Kai, yet Kai's devotion lie elsewhere. To Dinah, he pitied her. Such a lost and little girl, who couldn't see God's light if it smacked her in her smug face. Simeon was just simply caught between, like a middle child that often had gone unnoticed. 

From where I'm standing, it seems like you all had already decided. You all left. I stayed. Like father had. Like Judah. His eyes of sun and moon then, cut into his mother's direction, with every secret hope to see here flinch from the cut of those words. To stop her in her tracks as she meant to draw nearer to him. 

Malakai loved his mother, deeply and truly, but she had fucked up and all must be chastised for the error of their ways. Father knew it and in it had shown great penance. A self punishment which had been his ending. Now, if it be so that his sins were forgiven, Caracal walked with God now. 

We built this temple - we did. His look passed to each of them, one which now shown great disappointment, despite his so few months of life. A child was not meant to at such a young age see his parents fall so swift and hard. Yet he had. The illusion their greatness, strength and unbending faith completely shattered. 

Mom, Dad, you and me and Dinah and Judah. It is our sanctuary. We sang and we praised, we laughed and took love in our faith and worship. We didn't need to seek out others, for God provided. God brought them to us. Because he knew this was where his chosen people belonged. And you want me to give up? To leave?? 

His head tilts up. A snort. Inconceivable!! 

I will rebuild this temple - or die trying - either way, God will know my conviction.

Despite his appeal, his brother still shows no emotion, no subtle change, no subtle cracks. And why should he? They both knew they left him, first in thought, but now in word. If anything, Kai is angry, though only mild irritation shows, and he has every right.

But Simeon still feels the slap of Kai's words, even knowing this. His own indignance flares.

Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry - but Simeon stops after the first.

Dad's dead, Kai, was all he could say in rebuttal, his throat tight. Or did his brother not realize that not every wolf could think straight when something like this happened? and Judah is, too. Mom's not even talking, Dee's about to lose it, and Ava's still too little to decide anything for herself. You do a fine job of forgetting God's told us to take care of them, too. So this isn't about choosing people over God, Kai, so don't you dare look at me like I did something wrong, and don't you dare tell me I'm giving up.

His brother's mind seemed set, and Simeon expected this. And if it could be swayed, what a fine job he did.

heda had seen the shattering of her island and her family. she had seen the fracturing in her daughters, and now she watched spiderwebbing reach across the auras of her warring sons. one, a wounded boy made in the calm image of his father — the other a zealot as she had fed to him with her milk.
she heard the weight in simeon's voice, ears wilting when he spoke of her new inability. she heard the lash of fire in malakai's voice and felt it ignite something behind her tongue; a mustering; she straightened.
"kai."
her voice was weak, wavering; rusted as a hinge in a storm-battered door. raspy with salt and with grief. "you ... will die ... if you stay here .... alone." heda drew a long breath, not daring to glance toward simeon in case she saw anger, horror, anything else than the relief she hoped hearing her would bring him.
"you do ... not have to ... stay with me." and she lifted her chin sharply, hoping neither of them would interrupt her. "i will .... take you any ... where ... you want, kai."
better a boy raised miles from her than another boy dead, another piece of caracal stamped out of the world. another child for which she had wanted far better now gone due to her failures. a kid not allowed to grow into the man he wanted to be.
no more.

JUDAH IS NOT DEAD. His words snapped with the snap of his teeth as they bared now at his brother, the fur of his hackles on end now. The other words were heard, yet Simeon's rebuttle was weak and held no weight. 

Dad's dead - duh. Dinah was loosing it - duh. (Who cares about Ava) Mom isn't talking - apparently not true and Malakai's brow rose once their mother spilt words. Broken, rough, but words none the less. She pulls his aggressive attention away from Simeon and onto her now.

She spoke of him dying out there (which he had already addressed) especially so if he were alone. Kai snorts. Though he held himself dignified and spoke with even confidence, his youth still shown through. A child's stubbornness, one which did not fully take into consideration what starving to death might be like. What living nearly all on his own without any family might feel like. 

I'm not alone. He speaks then, his words softer to his mother, yet still trying to remain firm with his decision. @Nakano is here... And, He paused, a grim look given and he turns away, to the ocean tides. He wouldn't give up on looking for Judah. Refused to acknowledge the likelihood of his death too. He wouldn't. He couldn't. They were twin- Kai would have felt it if he had died. He would have known! ...Right? 

Malakai didn't say these things. They would surely think he had gone mad. Lost his marbles a bit after what happened to dad and Judah. They all had gone a little mad, hadnt they?

Yet to Simeon, all the reasons he gave held all the weight in the world.

What was a servant of God if he cared more for a piece of rock than the people He'd given him there? But Kai's outburst stayed Simeon's mouth in a tight line. Judah is not dead. It had not occurred to him until that moment that he hadn't heard anyone else in the family say that he was, except for his own admittance now. Did everyone else believe Judah was still out there? Should Simeon? No, that was one hope he couldn't cling to; it was easier to take reality for how it looked be, and be surprised later on, than to get lost in the expectation that even now they might look up and see Judah running across the landbridge, alive and well again, and pleading with them to stop fighting, because God had told them to love their neighbours -- and fighting was not what love looked like.

His eyes fluttered to mom, widening as a voice cracked from her like a parched stretch of sand. It seemed she had more of an effect on Kai than Simeon and his stupid mouth did -- yet Kai still seemed decided.

There were more words Simeon could have spoken, but he knew they would only pour fire on the calmer waters mom had washed his brother with. And he realized, too, that he didn't understand Kai -- only that perhaps, he wasn't so much unlike the rest of them in this. Holding on to what they could, deciding through their own stubborn and limited scopes.

There would be no easy end to this. Only a choice that would pull them apart, one way or another.

I'm sorry, Jesus, his words finally turned upwards, Please. What do I do?

I'm sorry, he said, glancing past his brother, and letting his sorrow settle. He knew he still meant every word -- but he should have been more careful. I do love you, you know. Even though he had said he'd hated him. There was a part of him that did, but Kai was still his brother, and Simeon knew in this, he had a choice.

And he would try to choose to lean into that side he knew God smiled on, that side he knew was better.

in fury, in draconic and bleak rage, malakai redhawk railed against his brother. her consolation was that his love and respect for her did not carry such a price, though she bowed her head beneath the onslaught of his pain.
she and caracal had built a wonderful family here.
she and caracal had built a home.
she and caracal had built a life.
and now, a quick look into the eyes of each son told heda that there was nothing of that here. that they had lost everything in the fall.
she felt aged in that moment, wizened, ancient; she reached an aching arm first for malakai, kissing his forehead, and then the same offered to simeon.
her heart felt filled with sharp-edged pieces of glass; it was hard to draw a breath that did not taste of guilt. "i ... need to go back ... to your ... sisters." and that was that; she loved them and while they were upon this island, heda knew they were — knew that they existed somewhere she could conceptualize. 
but she could not stay here, not when every second she thought caracal was going to appear in front of her and smile and say this had all been a;
dream;
heda turned away before they saw her weep.

"Farewell, Heda."

Never far. When the call of light came, when it was Heda who touched their island again, their home, their temple, their sanctuary, he stayed upon the edge of sight.

And he did not intervene.

For they were his and his heart, there would be no one closer Malakai, Heda, Simeon could find than one another. Blood.
The choice was Malakai's, and he had made it. To Simeon, he gave a blink of acknowledgement. Oh, how he missed their younger days. Where Simeon would sneak out to touch the waters, and they'd speak kind. He would mourn Simeon, he would mourn Heda.
But he would not leave.

Pray he would-- that Simeon did not see him as taking his brother in blood. That one day he would return.
A flick of a tail, his back turned.

I'm sorry. Simeon spoke the words and Malakai's ears flattened, the sadness in his facial features deepening as he continued to look away. His duel colored eyes still remaining fixed on the ocean waves washing over the sands until Simeon spoke again. 

Love him!? When Kai turned around, his face now filled with some shock and confusion, obviously having been caught off guard. When had any of his siblings said they loved him, other then Judah? When had Kai ever said it to them? 

Kai's mouth opened, but it is hesitant there and then his mother is sweeping a paw around his upper foreleg to draw him nearer and placed a kiss to his head. Then Simeon's. Heda races then from the island once more. 

Watching her leave yet again, Kai's attention fixed back to his brother. What will you do? Live happily with his sisters, mother, grandmother? Or die here with him?