From the rock that had split so the dying Dwynwen could recline and bask in her last sunset, Dylan and Eurig watched the sky turn red and they thought up fables about the gold gimmal ring. The mud had come away easily enough from the ring’s interlocking hands, and the heart that the fingers embraced had retained its lustre. Lost or thrown aside? Some careless lapse or the vengeful and deliberate action of an angry lover? Or perhaps the fish were telling them something after all? Then Dylan kissed Eurig deeply. Their senses sated with sensual pleasures and sex almost took them over. Eurig drew away, fearing that this exquisite promise might be washed away by grief and loss.

The tide rolled in over Malltraeth Bay’s wide sands and the waves restored to Dwynwen a fragile virginity. The sun set, and they sat in silence, high up on the deserted beach, both hoping for a new beginning and wondering if they dared entrust it to the other. And when sex’s possibility made their talking futile, they swam, confident that the effort would tire them and the cold numb their mutual desire. Later, wrapped in one another’s tired arms at the sea’s edge, where dying waves lapped their vulnerability, Eurig yielded to the whispered promise and the rhythm of Dylan’s body.

Dylan

The familiar path in the firebreak through the Corsican pines, which down the years has always seemed endless, brings you all too quickly to the clearing where you’ve left your car. You want to accept Eurig’s invitation to rest for the few hours that remain of the night, but you recognise that the odds are against there being much calm between you. You need at least a few hours sleep if you’re to make it through the morning clinic. And you want some time by yourself to question your motives and consider the fishes’ prophecy.

Eurig

Already missing Dylan, you lay on the chaise-longue and stare at the red light on the new answering machine, almost as though to de-code its Morse-like flashes. You are half afraid to listen to whatever voice has been recorded, in case its message pulls you back into the debris of your broken family. Eventually you hear Seimon say that he’s sorry; he asks if you can meet. Through Fflur’s window, the dawn bloodies the sky over Snowdonia. You tug the chaise across the living room, dragging the rug with it. Lying in its familiar embrace, grateful that you no longer have to watch the comings and goings of the men along the path just beyond the buddleia bush, you roll Dwynwen’s gimmal ring in your fingers. When Dylan comes to you, you slip it onto his little finger and swim with him in the dawn.

A Particular Passion

Over lunch, which they ate in the spring sunshine outside the Education Authority training centre, Ben Pasgen and his two colleagues wondered if either of the workshop facilitators had ever stood in front of a class of fourteen-year-olds; the theories they expounded seemed so untouched by practice.