Wheeling Gull Isle In this twilight.

While his wife went inland, Mou trailed the beach. His skin prickled and went numb as he left the shadowed trees, feeling a pulse of cold rolling off of the tide. His haunches trembled—for a moment he was not sure if it was the cold that caused this or the memory of his broken body, as this had been the place he had recovered after being so broken.

Mou could remember fighting for every step across the sand. The piles of bleached tree trunks and branches, of Moorhen guarding them tenaciously. Such arrangements persisted but they were shifted to different extremes: lining the sand bars closer to the surf, not yet dragged back to where they could dry properly, or bobbing out in the dark while the sea worked at them.

He slowed to a halt and looked around in the dimming light, breathing in the familiar salt-laden air and finding nothing but strangeness beneath it.