Turtle Hatchlings – Victoria Feistner

Eri can see the ghosts of her ancestors – or so she believes – but her determination to uncover their lives affects her own, until they are forced to intervene.

Originally published August 2020, in TdotSpec’s SpeculativeNorth #2. Fantasy, 5,800 words.

I’ve heard ghosts all my life, of course. But until the old woman crashed through the latticework to disappear through the floor, I’d never seen one.

I touch tentative fingertips to the polished strip of cedar. The wood doesn’t feel any warmer or cooler than its neighbours. “Problem?” floats a voice from the nearby room, as smoke trails from Grandmama’s pipe.

“Only a ghost,” I reply, straightening. “Grandmother.”

A barking cough. “Never mind it, then. Come and rub my shoulders.”

“Yes, Grandmother.”

At night I slip from my blankets, padding silently through the long house. Around me is the symphony of insomnia: snores and snuffling, creaking of ancient timbres settling with the coolness of autumn night. Crickets chirping. An owl hoots, and I crouch over the board, looking for a sign. Any difference in this spirit-touched board from its equally well-worn neighbours. I toss my braid over my shoulder twice to keep it out of the way. I will pry the board up with my fingernails if I must.

Ghost voices have a buzz, like a fly landing on my exposed neck. A tickle and a far-away quality, as if I am crouched with my ear against the plaster walls of the storehouse, listening to Father’s conversations with his men.

I sit back on my heels, shivering from the drafts in only my nightdress. Soon the rough men will need to prep the house for winter, piling straw and stones high against the lean-tos that will cover the verandas.

Me? A child? I am 14, a woman, wearing an adult’s long and complicated garments and already betrothed. In my indignation I spot them–yes, a pair–hovering out of a corner of the sliding door. A man and a woman. Their white death garments must have come loose, no longer swaddling them but hanging freely in the afterlife. The man has his back to me but the woman does not. I do not know her. She is about my mother’s age.

<She’s looking at us!>

<She’s looking at us.>

The dead woman and I keep our eyes locked until she vanishes into the courtyard. I abandon the floorboard and creep back to bed.

Winter wrapped its arms around the long house in an icy embrace before I saw the ghosts again. I stood on the open veranda, well-bundled in blankets and veils, watching the men return from the woodlot. The horses’ breath sent clouds of steam into the air, being so warm from pulling the laden wagon. I and my sisters fought not against living trees and bears and boars but drafts instead, huddled around the brazier while Grandmama and Mother complained. To pace the porch, even as slowly as I did, was a blessing to my cramped legs. A fly tickled my scarfed neck, raising hairs on my arms even under so many layers of fabric my elbows could barely bend.

My ghosts drifted half out of the wooden beams, trailing white funereal clothes behind them, their see-through and indistinct bodies blue with death. They still thought me a child and ignored me to watch the men offloading the horses, discussing what they saw like old aunties, drifting to-and-fro like incense smoke.

Nanu called: “That’s enough! Come back inside before you freeze.” I was already stiff and shivering, but I could not walk away.

My ears pricked up. Legends spoke of a parliament of ghosts, the dead emperors and their ministers serving their people in the lands beyond.

“Eri!” My sister shouted once more, and the ghosts vanished, leaving only the voices of the rough men and my beating heart loud in my ears. One of our men looks up, and sees me, raising his hand in greeting. Is it Sai? I don’t know, but now they’re all watching me, rough and well-bred alike, stopping in their labours to stare at the shapeless bundle of shawls, and I dash inside, finally heeding Nanu’s call.

The upbraiding from my grandmother is painful even for others to listen to. I see their grimaces and averted faces. But the shame of being seen by the menfolk–like an ill-bred peasant from the farms–matters little to me. I turn inward and re-enact the ghostly conversation. Demon troops lay at the gate of paradise, ready to lay siege to the kingdom of heaven; the story feels familiar. Perhaps I heard it as a child. Perhaps, when my grandmama is less ashamed of me I will ask her to tell it to me again.

That night I am awoken by beetles and rats’ whiskers all over me. I open my eyes to see only darkness and yet feel her presence.

I nod.

I hesitate, for it is very dark; I nod.

An exhale from the afterlife. <It should not be.>

And yet it is.

The clouds clear and moonlight peeps through the lattice, dim and grey, robbed of any glory, but it is enough to see a ghost with my heart’s eye. “Who were you in life?” I whisper-ask. With a name, perhaps I can find a priest to set her soul to rest. She must have been a courtier to move about so unencumbered, and partnered with a man. She must have come back to her family’s homeland when she left the kingdom of heaven, making her my ancestress. Perhaps she was expelled by the parliament. Perhaps she has a mission to undertake.

My sister Nanu rolls over in her sleep, grunting, and I freeze. The ghost is halfway in the closed sliding door, her face cut off by the wood and paper. She shakes her head–can she feel the lattice?–and paces almost to the foot of our bedding. she says, retrieving a funeral name tablet from underneath her wrapping. I strain to see the characters. <But I am worried about you.>

About… me?

She tucks the burnished name-stone beneath her robes. Her words are drowned in a chorus of unholy screams. <No. I thought I had more time–!> She looks over her shoulder towards the wall, and is gone.

The coals in the brazier pop and hiss. I pull my blankets around me, and curl back into my bedding. My mind is a bonfire of leaping ideas and low-flickering worries: my ancestress has pulled herself away from her sacred parliament to warn me of… something. Whatever it is must threaten my eternity.

I roll over.

For a moment I think I see Nanu’s eyes open but no, she is asleep.

Scraps of paper from Father’s record keeping: the trimmed edges often fall to the ground, left for servants to use as kindling. Instead, the narrow pieces find their way into my sleeves. Ink is not a problem, nor is time to keep my diary. Mother has set me to learn the 100 more practical mantras as calligraphy practice, so that when I am in charge of Sai’s quarters I may make sure that he is kept in both correct accounts and prayers. But she does not watch me, staying over my shoulder long enough only to see that I have written it correctly the first time. Inscribe a mantra; shift to a narrow strip of my ghost diary to record my observations; repeat.

Eventually the calligraphy lessons will end but by then I will be in Sai’s quarters with more time to myself. Will the ghosts follow me? I don’t know. Weeks will go by without seeing them or even hearing snatches of beetle-wing conversation. They do not speak to me, only comment on household chores or servant fashions.

They do not talk about the impending war with the demons and I have yet to see the elderly woman ghost again. Perhaps she is another of my ancestors, recalled to her court. Perhaps, like here in the land of the living, courtiers are rotated through their duties.

I will stay vigilant until then, and learn all I can about the land of the dead so as to help. Perhaps Grandmama has more legends she can tell me.

Two years since the elderly spirit crashed through the floor–since the first time I saw my ghosts. I am married now, and already regretting it.

Sai is a good man, well-mannered and conscientious about married life; he will serve Father well and grow our lands. And yet, he is so dull! He doesn’t care for idle chatter; at first I thought him strict, and was afraid. But time has worn my edges. I am not the ignorant girl I once was. How I had longed for my husband to be my partner in all ways!

It never occurred to me that Sai could be stupid.

He is good-looking enough; he is gentle when he needs to be; he maintains our quarters and behaves himself around the servants; I should be grateful. And yet. And yet, when I try to talk to him of other-worldly matters, of anything that he cannot grasp with his two hands, his eyes grow dull and his temper peevish. He does not want to hear of ‘that childish ghost nonsense’, he snaps and snarls when I mention the legends and how they may be based in truth, and what that would mean for us still alive. He simply doesn’t understand and is irritated at being asked to think of things beyond storehouses and woodlots and the hunt. And so I despair, and withdraw to my diary and keep my observations to myself.

A ghostly sigh like a moth’s flutter. <You must not enjoy or be displeased by any of it. It does not affect us. We are above it. You would do well to remember that.>

Grandmama coughs in her sleep, tossing and moaning, and Mother replaces the dry cloth on her forehead with a wetter one. I rest the back of my head against the cold wall, closing my eyes, still chanting in ‘a low breath, like the wind through leaves, or the whisper of a ghost’. I startled then, when Mother had mentioned ghosts, but she did not mean anything useful by it, only what a woman speaking mantras should endeavour to sound like. She herself has not heard ghosts since she was a young child.

Nanu nudges me and I open my eyes, straightening. I haven’t stopped in our vigil, I was only resting my eyelids, but I can see her sneer anyway by the light of the brazier. Who is disturbing the spirits now with such a scowl? And anyway, the spirits do not seem concerned with our chanting but with the servant girls in the corner knotting Grandmother’s burial shawl.

“Girls,” Mother says, her own voice low like the counselled breeze, or perhaps like an icy draft across the floor. “Go and refresh yourselves. I will chant while I attend Grandmama.”

We do not need to be told twice, rising from our cramped knees, bowing, and leaving the room with only rustling of layered fabrics as our response.

Nanu’s breath sparkles in the moonlight. The cold brightens our senses and refreshes us, as Mother suggested. I clap my hands together, gently, to rouse my blood. Scrap paper flutters from my sleeve.

“What!” Nanu gasps, snatching it up before I can reclaim it. “You are cheating!” She squints to make out my mouse-trail writing. “This is not any mantra…”

“It is not any of your concern,” I retort, grabbing it back to secret it inside my robe. She watches me, her head tilted in confusion, her hair flowing down over her shoulder and across her broad belly. “It is nothing. An amusement for myself.”

“An amusement!” She sniffs. “You need more to do. You are an idle and useless wife.” She does not mean that, she knows I perform all my duties to the household. She means she is jealous, for her husband Keyun works her like he does the rough men, barking orders and double-checking her labours as if she is simple. For all I know he is like that in their bed at night! She does not have time for amusements. Keyun is dedicated to Father; he has been given an opportunity to prove himself a successor and he will not fail. But Nanu does not match his ambition and suffers for it.

Sai is in charge of less and is happy with that arrangement; he has time to practice his archery in the courtyard and lead hunts, and I to my diary. If only we could speak clearly to each other to unburden my heart, I would be happy. I wonder if I can say such things to Nanu for we have never been close as we ought to have been, she has always resented a younger sister as an added responsibility, especially one as prone to wandering off as I am. But we are both married women now, and perhaps things can change.

I open my mouth to ask her a question but falter, my eyes drawn over her shoulder. The ghosts have drifted in the room, as they do, like smoke, and one of them is poking through the latticework.

<No. Then the rites begin; that, we must watch more closely.>

“Close your mouth, you look like a simpleton,” Nanu whispers, irritated, and as my jaw snaps shut I shake my head.

“It’s Grandmama. We must go back inside.”

“How–?”

I am already sliding open the door. Mother looks up, stricken; Nanu peers over my shoulder. The rough girls in the corner pause and then silently redouble their efforts.

I do not get rebuked for letting in the cold; Mother is only glad that she did not have to take one moment away from chanting prayers to call us in before Grandmama slips away.

Being the younger daughter means I have little to do in the funeral preparations, mostly I serve as a second pair of hands while Mother and Nanu wash the body. I must stay both out of the way and nearby to help without being asked. Nanu keeps giving me glances out of the corner of her eyes while Mother remains focused. Outside the men gather to chant loudly to the gatekeepers of heaven to prepare for Grandmother’s arrival. In the corner, the ghosts watch, whispering to each other over each step of the ritual, and I am glad to hear that Mother is doing it correctly.

Nanu catches me smiling, and her eyes narrow. I am not allowed to speak, no one is, and so I cannot explain. But I sense her grow cold, and angry.

We do not speak much after the cremation.

In spring her baby is born, a son, and the house rings out in triumph, cutting willow shoots for celebration, eating noodles for long life at each meal. Keyun struts around the courtyard like the rooster he should feel, but I watch, apart, and notice something I wish wasn’t there: a suspicion across his face when he glances towards our quarters.

Sai questions me as to why I have not yet gotten pregnant; I respond with a bowed head and disappointment, as is required of me. But truth of the matter is, I don’t want babies and can wait much longer before I supply him one. I tell him that if I am not pregnant by the fall I will journey to the shrine. He grumbles, but agrees, watching Father parade his grandson among the rough men, his gaze tainted with jealousy. Let him wish for children all he wants; I am still waiting to once again see my older ancestress and find out what she would warn me against.

We are all of us waiting for something; such is the nature of life.

I awaken one morning to shouts and wails. I pull on robes as fast as I can and dash to the veranda. Keyun pushes Nanu to the muddy path of the courtyard; she begs him to stop.

She is my sister. I run to put myself between them. Her face is blotchy both from crying and from where Keyun struck her. I shield her while our father pulls Keyun away. Nanu cannot speak, her voice consumed by her misery. “What happened?” Mother asks, arriving to help us, dishevelled from sleep. “Nanu, what has happened?”

The thin wail of a baby left alone cuts across Nanu’s sobbing. Mother glances over her shoulder. Nanu only cries harder. Keyun shouts something obscene at Sai, and beetle legs brush my skin and mice feet dance across my neck. No, not now.

But yes, now. She hovers by the veranda so that she can see both parties: me and Nanu in the mud, spring drizzle soaking our hair and clothing, and Keyun and Sai tussling, Father between them, shouting at the rough men to keep back, it is family business. From the shouts I gather that one of the rough men caused this, saying something vile to Keyun while they looked over the cattle for sale in the early dawn. He did not bother to clean himself before coming back to the long house to drag Nanu from her bedding.

“Nanu, is this true?” Mother demands, a trace of Grandmama about her, but I don’t have to listen to the answer. I know it is true because she is here, watching. She only comes when something personal is happening. She doesn’t care about weaving techniques or rituals; she cares for us, for her family, and that’s why she is here, alone. I straighten, and stare at her face-to-face.

“Is this what you wanted to warn me about?” I ask, casting my voice across the courtyard, silencing even Keyun. Ignoring the puzzled and fearful glances, I walk towards the ghost. “Answer me! Or shall I fetch the priest and cast you out, spirit!”

I cannot see the male ghost, but I know his voice anywhere.

“Answer me!” I shout, fists balled at my side. “I will not be ignored!”

My ancestress looks upon me with pity and sadness, her shoulders slumping. <All I wanted to do was help.>

“Then help me!” I demand, shrill, as Father’s hand comes down on my shoulder. And I do the unthinkable: I shrug him away.

“Eri!” Mother gasps, as if Nanu’s shame is somehow eclipsed.

I focus on the beetle-wing voices, reaching out to my ancestress, beseeching her with my heart’s longing to stay. Stay and speak to me, woman-to-woman, as I have always wanted her to do. For the first time she stays in one place, not leglessly drifting, and her edges seem to sharpen. As if I am looking into our pond as it settles, the ripples coalescing into a dark reflection.

I reach out, and she reaches towards me.

Father’s hand once again grasps my shoulders, just as an unearthly howl rises up from the ground, from all around the courtyard, roiling like thunder. I shudder, feeling hundreds of hands–ghostly fingers–pluck and stroke and pinch at my skin. Then suddenly I am flying. I am in the air, above the clouds, there is nothing but blue sky. My ancestress is there with me, straining like I strain, and our fingertips touch.

The sky rushes to black, like ink dropped in clear water. There is only black, and I am suddenly alone. I cry out, but my voice produces nothing; I inhale but there is no air and I find I no longer need it.

I am dead.

The afterlife is a blackness, a void, no above or below. I cannot see my body any longer, simply a soul adrift. And I scream, soundlessly. I do not have a throat to cry out but my mind does anyway. The souls of the damned answer my cry in thin shrieks and wails. They scream as I scream.

<–what have you done?>

<I’m trying!>

The hundreds of unseen hands grab me again and push me down through the void. I fall forever.

I wake.

The ground underneath me is steaming, the spring sun drawing forth the rain from the morning. I am still sodden from it. I raise my head a little and then let it rest, exhausted. My throat burns like the worst kind of alcohol and my tongue is thick against the roof of my mouth.

“Eri?” It is Mother who approaches, not Sai. She kneels beside me, and when I struggle, she helps me up. But her touch is tentative, as if I am unfamiliar. As if she is not sure if I will slap her away. “Are you… you?”

“Me?” I repeat, parched and aching. I look around the courtyard. All of our family is gathered, many on the long veranda. The rough men and women too, off to the side. They’re holding each other, comforting each other. “What…?”

“You wouldn’t stop screaming. We feared you were possessed. But you are… all right now?” Mother speaks to me but looks over to Father.

“Me? But… Nanu?” I ask. I cannot manage more.

“Eri,” my mother says, quietly, ignoring my question, “What happened to you?”

“I know,” Nanu declares, pushing her way to the front past Father, ignoring the look of surprise both on Sai’s face and Keyun’s. She’s waving something at me, mud-stained, but recognizable, and the blood drains from my face. My ghost diary. It must have fallen from my robes. “She’s in league with demons. She hears not only ghost-whispers–like a child–but sees them! And they talk to her! They plan to overthrow our Emperor! And she will help them!”

Everyone stares at her. I want to cry out but my voice is a hoarse squeak. I feebly raise my arms but Father takes the ghost diary from Nanu and flips through it, his eyebrows like crossed swords. He too grows faint.

“My lord,” Mother whispers to him. “Is it true?”

Wordlessly he hands her the ghost diary. I try to take it from her, but she moves too far away and I tumble over, as useless in my own body as an infant. I am still speechless as Father orders two trusted men to seize me.

There is a window in the door of the storehouse. It is my only light. I can see through if I stand on tiptoe. Keyun cut a small hole in the base of the wooden door, usually covered with a board to keep out rats. In the morning I push through a slop bucket for a servant to take away and in the afternoon they push back food and water. They do not speak. They do not react to my weeping or my trembling, grasping hands.

Sai does not come to see me. But I see him by peeping through my slender window. He meets Nanu on the back veranda, the one that faces the storehouse and orchard, out of sight of the courtyard. I only see his back from the very corner of my window, but I can see her arms wrap around his neck. I should feel betrayal, but I don’t. I am hollow. When I do feel anything it is grief: for the life I will not lead, and for Nanu and Sai.

I didn’t ask for this. I only wanted to know more.

I wake, stirring, wanting to ignore the beetle wings brushing my face. But it could be rats. There are often rats, despite the board.

Moonlight streams through the single window, bone-white light splattering against water-stained plaster walls and dust-covered wooden crates. The pile of large splinters I’ve been prying loose lies near me and I place a gentle hand on them. Before they can take me to the swordsman I will open my veins; I did hope to see my ancestress before then. And now she stands in the corner, in her most ancient form, gray-haired and wizened.

I had thought in my youthful foolishness there were were two sets of ghosts: middle-aged and elderly, daughter and mother. But I understand now, in this cage, how I was wrong. There was only ever one man, one woman. They change in appearance because ghosts cannot remember how they look from moment to moment. As in life, they cannot understand how they have aged, how their faces change.

I understand that now.

“Was this what you tried to warn me of?” I ask. The ghost is puzzled; perhaps she has forgotten. “You came to warn me, one night. Was it of this?”

, she says, nodding in understanding. Then she steeples her fingers together, thinking. <Do you know of baby sea turtles?>

It is my turn to be confused. “Only that they are excellent in soup.”

She ignores my reply. Speaking like my Grandmama, imparting wisdom, she smoothly continues: <They are born on a beach. One or two hatch at a time, scout for danger, then race for the sea. Some get eaten by gulls.>

“How sad,” I murmur, to be polite. Disappointment fills my hollow insides. I had hoped for truths and answers, not parables.

<Sometimes, a person will try to rescue a baby turtle from a gull, thinking that they are helping. But instead, they send a signal to the other babies that it is safe. The babies rush at once, and more and more of them get eaten. Do you understand, Eri?> She steps into the moonlight, dust motes dancing through her, still wearing her death shroud garments. She takes her name-tablet from her robes. Does she think that I can still help her? I cannot even help myself. I glance down at the pile of wood shards.

She holds out the name-stone towards me, its black surface smooth and blank. The memory of the tiny hands and fingers plucking at my skin resurfaces.

Horror grows in my mind like vines up a wall, binding and constricting. For all that I planned for this moment, still, I wanted it to be my choice. I throw out my hands against her, my heart beating in my chest until I feel like I will burst. “No!”

But it is too late. The hands have me, they drag me through my storehouse, through the sky, the fields and orchards spread below like stones in a pond. That is my entire world, and it is tiny. I scream into the endless dark.

A light.

My ancestress slumps, leaning against a wall, near her partner who holds his name-stone to his chest. We are in a a storm-cloud gray room, dusted with twinkling starlight, lit by the moon. It must be the antechambers of heaven. “I tried.” Her voice is no longer mouse-whiskers; I no longer have skin with which to tickle. Here, with me newly arrived in the afterlife, she is more solid than I. “I tried so hard to stay above it all, like we were taught. But how could I not grow to care for them?”

“I know.” For once, her partner sounds kind. But also tired, and frustrated. “Believe me. Don’t you think I want to help them too? But remember–“

An unearthly wail echoes where my ears should be. It must be the cries of the damned. Both ghosts look stricken.

“I thought we had more time,” she says, wiping her face. She turns to her partner. “Go,” she says, her shoulders straight. “I’ll shut it all down. It’s the least I can do for you. Get out of here, while you can.”

He reaches out to her, they embrace, and he leaves.

She looks over her shoulder at me. Where I could barely see her in my living world, she is in full detail here. She does not look like me or any of our family, her features strange and exotic. Under her white robes is not skin blue with death like I thought but more clothing, form-fitting and seamless, without drape or weave; perhaps fashioned from skins.

“They will be here soon,” she says to me, resigned, and I know she means the armies of demons that she long feared. “We did all we could to defend ourselves, to keep them out. But I couldn’t leave without setting you to rights.”

She laughs at me. A bark of a laugh, like Grandmama used to make when Nanu and I asked foolish questions, when we longed to go outside and watch the men work. She would bite her pipe in her teeth and shake her head, and I miss her with a strong sorrow. Why could she not be here, waiting for me? If I must travel to the afterlife too soon, where is Grandmama? And Mother’s dead babies, my brothers? Why can I only hear the wail of the damned? Is this what awaits me?

And yet…

“Eri…” Her eyes well with tears. “Damn you?” It is a whisper.

“Oh, my poor girl. What have I done to you? I am so, so sorry.” She takes a deep breath. “I–I am not from the past, Eri, but from the future. I’ve been observing you and your family for most of my life, and I should never have tried to interfere with yours–” Before she can say more, the wails of the damned stop. Her eyes widen. “No… I need more time!” She gathers stars under her fingers and I begin to feel the hands plucking at me again. But this time it hurts, and I scream in heart-speak. She winces. “It’ll be over soon, I promise. It’s the best I can do–they have control over the main–“

There is a sound like a wagon wheel breaking. She lets out a cry, her hand flying up and out, as if in protection. Demons storm the chamber, and I realize all that my ghosts feared has come to pass: the kingdom of heaven is being invaded. I no longer know which side is which but as they work their magic weapons my ghost–my life’s companion–she is rent apart. Blood dyes her funeral robes bright red–how can that be? She clutches at her name-stone, and looks to me, her mouth working with no sound.

I scream as the sky rushes towards me, and I fall for eternity through the heavens.

I gasp, and pull in a lungful of cold, night air. The moon shines full against the paper window coverings. I am on the veranda, wearing my new woman’s nightdress. Familiar scents overwhelm my senses and I rest on trembling arms, my legs curled on the wood slats beneath me.

She looks to me, her mouth still working silent syllables, and then she falls, her name-stone tumbling from her hand, sliding through the latticework to the smooth boards of the veranda, before she vanishes.

“Problem?”

“Only a ghost,” I reply, my voice choking, “Grandmother.”

It is autumn, and I am young. Father and Keyun have been directing the rough men to prepare the longhouse for the approaching winter. If I am to travel overland it must be now, or else I will not reach the palace before I freeze. I cannot wait until spring, they will have me married to Sai by then, and it cannot be. Not again.

I slide the door closed as quietly as a thieving servant. Regret and fear tumble inside my heart, but inside my bedding there is a letter addressed to my parents, explaining why I must seek out the Imperial court and why Nanu and Keyun must not marry. Let Keyun be adopted. Let her marry Sai.

Outside, the storehouse stands filled to the brim with supplies for the winter. The trees of the courtyard whip in the cold wind, but I am well-bundled.

They are my future, she told me, before she died. How can a ghost die? Perhaps she was not a ghost at all, but another demon, trying to trick me. I learned too much of the lands beyond, and so she tried to undo her mistake. But in that, she failed, for I remember.

But my knowledge is incomplete, and I cannot learn more here. This world is too small, I need something broader. I must learn all I can, and then tell the Emperor all I saw. I can serve my land not in childbirth or chanted mantras, but as an advisor with two lifetimes of learning.

The ghost voices grow fainter as I cross the courtyard to the ornate front gate. The threshold of my world; perhaps of theirs, also. I stop to turn back, looking at all that was my life, both happened and undone.

I raise my hands in farewell.

<No. She is simply saying her goodbye to her home.>

I do not know that but whatever comes will be better than the storeroom. I have been given a second chance, saved from the gulls. I wish everyone well in my heart, even the ghosts, and strike out for the ocean, alone.

END

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