Tides and Goodbyes

The Coast of Alden, Nine Hundred and Forty Years Before

The ocean sparkled in the bright afternoon sun, the glare making it hard for Thaelen to make out the fishing ships that bobbed gently on the waves. He squinted, watching as a woman, basket on her hip, made her way from the beach up the sand dunes to where his hut was.

“Ettel is coming,” he said.

“Stay still,” Delwyn scolded, placing her fingers under his chin in order to change the angle of his head.

Thaelen hummed his sigh wearily.

“Looking very pretty, Thaelen,” Ettel smirked as she approached and set her basket down on the floor, taking the stool that Besafora had recently abandoned, and drawing it closer. “What is the occasion?”

“He needed a haircut,” Besafora left the hut, holding a small wooden bowl and stirring its contents with the stylus that she had fashioned from the feather of a large seabird. “And Delwyn needed to practice her skills. This is the traditional way that a man of our people wears his hair and beard.”

“It