Again, the only sound was the impact, a single, hard knock. The dull echo and the clatter after the fact.

Love Lost’s eyes traveled the exact same path as before, as if moving along a groove. First to the slash of red, the gap between nostril and teeth, where the upper lip had split. Then to Everly’s eyes, which each moved independently of the other. Gone.

The dull echo of the impact against the table was the only sound as she reached for her daughter. The movement of the crowd didn’t let her make contact. People moved in, trampling the two of them, separating them, and Love Lost fought, with nothing knightly or good about how she clawed with fingernails.

A sound tore from her lips, a sound in many parts, for a feeling that couldn’t be put to words or wordless scream.

Then that sound, too, went quiet.

Tear-blurred vision with light from the windows slicing in through the brief gaps that appeared between people became something else. Light on the horizon.

Love Lost sat with a ten-year-old Everlyn, facing the water, and the soft glow on the far side of it. All around them, people milled, noisy.

“Do you want to do anything?” she asked.

Everlyn looked up at her, confused, then looked back.

Love Lost followed her daughter’s eyes. The orb of the sun was behind them, peeking in between buildings.

She turned to look at the light on the horizon. Gold.

“Do anything?” Everlyn asked.

“We could go to the ice cream truck over there, and see if we can get anything.”

Her daughter looked at her as if she was crazy.

“We could go to the shelters, but I don’t think it would help.”

People ran this way and that. Not sure where to go. Love Lost seemed determined to stay still, stay calm.

She reached for her daughter’s hand, and that hand trembled as she took it in hers.

As if something had swept over it, the water briefly went still, every wave stopping, the ocean appearing as a flat expanse of ice or glass for the briefest moment.

The golden light flared, and it took nearly five seconds before the effect touched the water, breaking the spell. The ground shook as the effect carried into the ground beneath them, and some people who were running lost their balance.

Everlyn’s hands went to her mouth. One was the hand that Love Lost held. Love Lost gathered both hands up in her own.

“I don’t understand why the ice cream,” Everlyn said. A sentence garbled by confusion and stress.

“I wasted so much time. I thought—”

She didn’t finish the statement.

Her daughter gave her a look, confused.

“I don’t know what to do,” Love Lost said.

“Hug me,” Everlyn said.

Love Lost hugged her daughter without hesitation or reserve, burying her face in Everlyn’s hair.

“Too tight. That hurts,” Everlyn said.