Wheeling Gull Isle turncoat

this thread takes place between the events of this thread & this one, and this will be my only post <3 @John @Nakano @Malakai @Ava Amara @Anathema @Simeon @Dinah

caracal's family buried him in the lavender fields overlooking the sea. heda brought down armfuls of dried azalea, magnolia, honeysuckle; she sprinkled the potpourri of a gathered life into the grave dug from rich coastal soil.
she was unreachable.
this was unreal.
they buried him.
they buried caracal.
mothers are the ones expected to hold all things together no matter what torment befalls the family, and in that moment heda clung desperately to that role, to the knowledge that the redhawks were not only them. that they had others. that they could carry on in his name.
in whose?
you loved bartholomew too much, that's why he died. maybe if you'd been devoted the way he was to you, he wouldn't have been left here to get so sick.
heda sucked in a breath.
"he's gone," she said in a wavering voice, a high-strung voice. "i-i don't know why god took him." her face twisted. they had searched all over for judah, for judah, for her son; her mind had let go of the potential that he still lived, and with that she had lost a great portion of herself.
"but it's always for a r-reason," and then heda was staring off to sea.
staring. buried. mouth tasting of dirt. loam beneath her claws.
caracal would never come back. they would never be reunited. they had given everything to god and god had —
god had
— buried him!
her eyes turned blankly to @Towhee, suffused with something beyond mourning, beyond death. one paw before the other; the last words she would likely say were: "i want to find a place god can't go," on the edge of a hiccup; she met each set of eyes in turn.
another step. another. and then heda was stumbling down from the lavender fields, ears closed to all voices, for she no longer trusted herself to make another decision, not for herself, not for her children, not for sweetharbor — she had given it all to god! and god had plunged them all into terror and horror and pain, and taken all their offerings with him.
heda found a desperate peace as her conscious mind fell softly behind the plod of instinct.

”It’s not what you take when you leave this world behind you, it’s what you leave behind you when you go.” Randy Travis, Three Woden crosses.

John had eventually found the Island Family, but everything was a mess. Apparently Caracal, once John’s friend and brother by spirit, had passed away. As the family buried him, he said a silent prayer for Caracal’s safe arrival in heaven, and for peace to befall on his family, and those he left behind. John remained silent, as he felt that at this moment in time, it would be the wrong place to ask for a recap of what all happened besides this.

He let a few tears fall from his eyes, for it was not wrong to cry. He then looked around at the family gathered, wishing he could speak words of love and comfort, but did not. Nothing he could say would bring them much peace.

Amidst it all, Heda had left the funeral. John couldn’t imagine what they were going through, as he never felt it.

caracal redhawk sat in a bed of fall harvested lavender, more peaceful in death than ava had ever seen him in life.

she frowned and twirled a knot of coneflower, gone to seed this late in harvest.

daddy? can you hear me?

she closed her eyes and thought of judah; judah, who had shown her how to pray. if her inner voice was just loud enough, maybe they could hear her.

the wind stirred the fur along her flank and then sighed somewhere between caracal's cheek and his soul -- gone now to some other world ava could not follow.

her mama's voice rose over their heads, high pitched as it clung somewhere in clouds of pastry white.

ava worried the dry stem again.

dear daddy i am sorry
i did not stay with you
and judah

and i am sorry if i
forgot the way
i should have tried harder to come back for you
and judah

i am sorry for the whale
and mama
and i am sorry for betraying you
and mama
and i am sorry most of all for the curse that followed me
from blackwater, to you

i will keep it with me forever.

she closed her eyes as the rustle of heda's footsteps fell away. while john was nearby, ava's reception of him was colder than caracal himself -- she willed it all to not be true. maybe if she closed her eyes and hoped hard enough, she could collapse into herself, folding over and over again until this day had never happened;

but when she opened her eyes again caracal was still dead, and the seagulls still shrieked overhead, and john -- infuriating john! -- was still there, and why could it not have been him instead of daddy and judah?

with tears stinging her eyes she flung the shriveled coneflower towards caracal. it landed aimlessly, the wind gently rolling it off his chest.

the thud of dirt scattering over his body was a sound she would never forget. 

ava amara buried the last of her hope with her father -- and she did not look back.

Towhee also wanted to leave this godforsaken island the moment Caracal was laid to rest. But when Heda departed the graveside with words she didn’t really understand, she made herself stay put and look to what was left of the children.

I’m going to head to Moonspear. Anyone who wants to come with me is welcome, she said simply, knowing they would find care and comfort with family in the Moon villages.

Towhee sat there beside her son’s tomb and looked at each of them, wondering when and where she would see them again if they decided to follow their mother or even stay here instead. It was a cruel, impossible decision and they were so young, though she would respect whatever choices they made.

In the hours, minutes, seconds that passed since she had discovered the fate of her father, Dinah fell between fits of agony and of shock — and for a long while, it truly did not seem to sink in.
There were moments of odd calmness, like the tide as the ugly black-blue of stormclouds bellow across the sky, and there were moments of inconsolable panic and terror. But her brain simply did not seem to fully recognize reality — she felt not her feet as they touched the ground, the weight in her lungs, the throb of her head. She spoke; too much, too little, and in the lapses of chaos she clenched her knuckles and bit her tongue.
It did not feel real until the family began to pour dirt over what was left of him.
Dinah had come alongside her careworn siblings and had brought her flowers to add, ones she thought he would like, as she promised; she brought phlox, lupine, beargrass, aster, and she numbly placed them in between his wrists as if he held them. And at last, she tore a clump of her fur from the first place she could reach, and beside him it too went.
But she did not lose it until the earthdrawn soil began to cover his face.
Her face contorts from haggard to horrified and she cannot even hear herself as she screams from the lowest part of her lungs up to the high heavens, up to a God who had abandoned her, who had stolen and ripped and unleashed an unfathomable hellscape upon the Sweetharbor clan.
She screams, over and over and over, again and again until her vocal chords feel as if they may snap and she could no longer suck in the air needed, and—
Nothing, after. Nothing.
The flicker of Hell's flame was no match for this.
Daddy daddy DADDY
Dinah would not leave the site of his burial until the sun dipped below the horizon.

Father was buried in the lavender fields. 

Judah (remains) to be seen. 

Kai's mother's whispered blasphemy make his lip twitch. His sister's screams cause his ears to flatten against his skull. Grandma speaks about going to some spear place- wot!? 

In these moments, Malakai too wishes to scream, to tell everyone to STFU!! This was the death of his father. This was the death of a holy man. Only he lay upon Malakai's attention this day. 

So, while everyone else tried to get their shit together, Malakai looks to his father below- then to his father above. 

The righteous perish, and no one takes it to heart; the devout are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil.

Those who walk uprightly enter into peace; they find rest as they lie in death. 

Caracal Redhawk now lie. Son of Towhee Redhawk. Father of Malakai, Judah, Simeon & Dinah Redhawk. Husband of Heda Redhawk.

Caracal felt no more weight of this world. No more of its wretched ways. It's evil spirits. Its weaknesses. It's filth and fucking deceit. One father had been in heaven above- now were two.

since no rounds i hope it’s ok to chuck an endcap

before ava left the island, she listened to the muffled sound of dirt being poured over the face of her father. 

she listened to the words of the bereaved. some, like her mother, were twisted with anguish. 

some, like malakai’s, caused a different kind of knife twist. 

ava’s eyes closed as his voice rose over the fading of dinah’s tormented screams. 

her eyes twitched beneath their lids: don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry, she urged herself.

his words fell upon a sorrowed congregation. 

 father of malakai, judah, simeon, and dinah.

ava waited for her name to be called too; the names of her siblings already forgotten, souls who had lived here once and been raised as caracal’s own. 

her acknowledgement never came. she and her kin were as dead to malakai as caracal; no love for them existed in malakai’s heart. he would never see ava as anything but the dirt beneath his feet. 

was she not a child of god; a child of heda and caracal? was he not supposed to love her?

ava’s eyes opened with a knowing flutter. in that hour she saw malakai for what he truly was — and knew he would spend his hateful life denying her god’s light.

There was nothing. There was everything. All a little too much, and he felt it all and nothing at all.

When Dinah screamed.

When Malakai preached.

When Ava finally fluttered open her eyes.

Dad, gone. Juju, gone.

He stared ahead blankly, eyes blurred with a shield of tears. He looked, but did not see. Did not want to see; did not want the last thought of dad to be anything less than who he'd been in life.

Laughter. Love. An image of who he wished to be relected back to him.

He hadn't told him that enough.

Did dad even know it?

Would things have been different now if he had only stayed?

if he'd just broken his promise?

if he had never chased after Dee?

But he had no words. He only stared, jaw clenched, body trembling beneath the weight of tears that threatened to spill if he did not hold them back. They would find the light when he found a quiet place, when he had a moment of quiet thought, when he was alone, and he could be the rock the seawater broke instead of the one they only broke against.