[Open] The Wind and the Waves

The town was full of too much noise and color and movement, too many people and all of them strangers. Haulani left him feeling even more lost than he already was, and after prowling its edges again he'd retreated for the second time, returning to the more comfortable quiet of the jungle and the beach. The trees and the wind wouldn't speak to him here, and now he knew why, but he still searched for some sense of the familiar in this alien world, desperately clinging to a past he'd been told was gone forever. His sisters, his aunts, his mother...

Gone.

The haunting music played by the sea breezes had drawn him down the beach and out along the strand to approach the ocean's cathedral and Kellan stepped within, looking around in wonder at the graceful arches of coral and sea glass. The dryads made similar constructions of living trees and plants, but as it had since he arrived, the sea surrounding the structure made him feel small and unwelcome in ways the trees never had. Still, the music sang to something in his heart, the wind's song a bittersweet reminder of home, even if it wasn't meant for him, and he sank down to his knees to close his eyes and listen, letting himself pretend, if only for a little while, that it was his mother's voice traveling through the coral spires and not just a soulless wind off an uncaring sea.