Here’s a thought: A young petronille and younger Bonnie walking along the beaches of bambouche in the evening, finding shells and poking tide pools.
Spotting something large and darkless being hauled in along the waves.
A sail, maybe, balled up and forgotten by the thing which once held it above the water.
Cephalopod or shark, maybe, torn up and spat out by its home with no memory to define what it once was.
Still, they wander closer, curious.
Then, they are pulling it- no, them- to shore, waterlogged cloak and bright hair plastered to a cold forehead, pulse thrumming weakly beneath it all.
Petronille makes Bonnie go fetch defenders as she starts CPR demanding under her breath they live, live, live.
The first stars of the evening twinkle into view as the person coughs, retches, is turned so that they can expel the sea water from their lungs, shakes and shakes and breathes.
Bonnie returns with Defenders and a stretcher. The stranger is hurried away to the nearest House to rest and heal and live, live, live.
She tries to visit him a few days later and is turned away. He can’t have visitors yet, the housemaidens say. She tries again, a few days after that, but he’s already left. The maidens say he didn’t have a name. They say he didn’t speak, didn’t understand when spoken to. They say he had memory loss, brain damage maybe, but no head injury. She is as baffled as them.
They say when he was told he could leave, through drawings and gestures, he simply stood up and left, nothing but the clothes on his back, meandering until his darkless cloak was swallowed up by the horizon.
She does not see him again.
Lightless cloak drifting back from whence it came. She thinks about a bright form dragged by the waves. She thinks about bright specks weaving in and out of the sky (she forgets).
She learns he saved Bonnie, found them and hauled them out of the grip of death time and time again. She learns they’re friends, family.
She learns that she, among the rest of her new family, has a brother, gifted to her by her sibling and the sea and the sky.
She has a brother, and their name is Siffrin.
