Grace watched the captain kneeling on the sand, his head bowed in prayer. Her religious education had been rudimentary at best, following the simple dictate of her father’s…

Her father.

She wasn’t quite numb enough not to realize how numb she felt. After that first awful endless silent moment when her whole body seemed melted by her tears she had felt the tenuous fabric that passed for reality in these lands recede from her. Nothing was real. Nothing could touch her.

A wet whiskery nose bumped her knee and she screamed and jumped. Tuc the Seal King sat back on his flippers and looked quizzically up at her.

“You have a job to do, Saxifrage,” he said.

“I… I don’t know what to do?” she replied. It was the strangest feeling. She knew she could do it. She knew she would do it. But she had no idea how.