Ramiel looked at his aunt - younger than him by a couple years - with gentle sympathy. He wished it wasn’t this way, that her family would have been here and forgiven her absence and closed that piece of her heart that so clearly needed and deserved to heal. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case and, as she pressed him about leaving the Inlet to travel for the Bay, he found himself floundering. Was it important she talk through her sadness here on these shores, find things beyond her blood family that would help heal the wound she had from this territory? Or should he be gentle, let her take this moment to leave this behind and maybe want to return to these shores another day?


He hesitated for a long, drawn-out moment, in which the silence was filled with the cold ocean brine crashing atop the black pebble beach they were standing on.

“You aren’t stupid for thinking they’d still be here.” He said carefully, knowing she had every right to tell him he was in the wrong for commenting and bringing it back up. It was important though that he reassure her, even if she wasn’t in the right headspace to take his words in. “This was so brave of you, Tavas.” He said, smiling and looking up at the shoreline and then back to her. “Despite knowing how hard it would be to come here and face them, or face an Inlet empty of them,” he added the last words softly, “You still did so. The islands have a way of bringing others back who we thought we’d never see again. They may not be here now, but maybe they will be one day.”

He hoped he hadn’t overspoken as his dark blue eyes held on her with familial love and concern. He waited a moment and then nodded, taking a sharp breath and glancing southward. “Let’s go check out what the Bay is looking like these days. We’ll see if I actually remember any of it or not. Maybe it’ll be new to us both.” He grinned and started forward, helping ease her of needing to make the choice or feeling like they had to stay in the Inlet any longer.

— ☼ —