Thursday, May 14, 2026

*** Pete the Puggle and the Bravest Splash of All *** 2026-05-14T13:24:32.330189400

"*** Pete the Puggle and the Bravest Splash of All ***"🐾

--- ## Chapter One: The Morning of Many Butterflies The sun peeked through my bedroom curtains like a golden paw tapping me awake, and I stretched my velvety white legs toward the ceiling with a yawn so big I could've swallowed a butterfly. *Today*, I thought, my tail already wagging against my cozy dog bed, *today is John Paul Jones Park day!* "Pete! Pete, wake up, little buddy!" Roman's voice tumbled down the hallway like a cascade of marbles, quick and bright and full of promise. I tumbled out of bed—well, my special corner bed with the worn blue blanket that smelled like every adventure we'd ever had—and skittered down the hallway on paws that still weren't quite awake. Roman caught me at the kitchen doorway, scooping me up in his strong arms, and I pressed my velvet snout against his neck, breathing in that familiar scent of bubble gum and boy-sweat and something uniquely *Roman* that made my whole body relax. "Guess what?" he whispered, spinning me once so the kitchen became a blur of morning light and Mom's yellow curtains. "George is coming! He was in the Navy, Pete. He swam in the *ocean*. Like, the *deep* ocean." My tail gave an uncertain wag. The ocean. I knew about the ocean from television—vast and roaring and endless, swallowing the shore like a hungry beast. I'd never seen it, never needed to. My water experience was limited to the bathtub, and even that made my four legs tremble like jelly. "Morning, my brave little storyteller!" Mom floated into the kitchen like she always did, as if gravity were merely a suggestion. Her eyes found mine, and I saw the whole universe in their brown warmth—planets of patience, stars of gentle understanding. She set down her coffee mug and scratched that perfect spot behind my ears where my fur grew thickest. "Are you ready for the biggest adventure?" I wanted to say yes. I *tried* to say yes. But my throat felt full of cotton balls, and my mind raced to the bathtub, to the way water crept up my legs like invisible fingers, to the way my heart hammered like a trapped bird against my ribs. "There's my boy!" Dad's voice boomed from the doorway, warm and round as a hearth fire. He wore his ridiculous flamingo-print shirt that he only brought out for Special Occasions, and the sight of it made my tail wag despite the nervous butterflies doing somersaults in my stomach. "Lenny the Flamingo King, ready for the beach!" "You're not allowed to call yourself that," Mom laughed, but her eyes sparkled with that magic she found in ordinary things. "Maritime law says I can," Dad insisted, striking a pose that made Roman groan and me bark with surprised delight. "Section four, paragraph two: any father wearing flamingos automatically becomes king of whatever beach he sets foot upon." "That's not a real law, Dad." "Prove it." I watched them, this sparkling constellation of humans who were my whole world, and felt the knot in my chest loosen just a fraction. *If they are happy*, I thought, *maybe I can be too. Maybe the water won't be so bad. Maybe.* But as Dad packed the car with blankets and umbrellas and enough snacks to feed a small army, I caught sight of Roman's swim goggles hanging from his backpack—alien eyes of blue plastic staring back at me—and the butterflies in my stomach turned to bats. --- ## Chapter Two: First Steps on Alien Sands John Paul Jones Park announced itself with sounds before we ever reached the parking lot: the *shhhhh* of waves becoming friends with sand, the delighted shrieks of children conducting symphonies of joy, the distant call of a seagull claiming territory I didn't understand. My nose pressed against the car window, drinking in salt and sunscreen and something wild that made my paws twitch with ancestral memory. "Easy, Pete," Roman murmured, sensing my trembling through the arm he wrapped around me. "I've got you. Always." Those two words—*always*, like a promise carved in stone—settled something in my racing heart. The sand met my paws like nothing I'd ever felt: warm where the sun touched, cool where shadows lingered, shifting and alive beneath my weight. I lifted each foot carefully, then less carefully, then found myself bounding in small circles just to feel the give and take of this new earth beneath me. "Pete! Over here!" A voice like wind chimes in a hurricane cut through my explorations, and I turned to find— Timmy. He stood no taller than my shoulder, this brave and mighty long-haired Chihuahua, but he carried himself like a wolf who'd tamed the moon. His fur flowed around him like a caramel warrior's cape, and his chest puffed with pride that somehow didn't reach his kind, dark eyes. "Pete the Puggle," he announced, trotting forward with the gravitas of a general reviewing troops, "I have been waiting to meet you. Roman's little brother, yes? The one who tells stories?" "I'm not his—well, I suppose I am, in the dog way." I found myself standing straighter, my tail betraying my excitement with its furious wagging. "You know about my stories?" "I know everything," Timmy said, then his ears flattened slightly, and his voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "Almost everything. I do not know the ocean. Not truly. I watch from the shore, like a king surveying his kingdom from a balcony." "You're afraid of the water too?" The words tumbled out before I could stop them, and I braced for laughter. But Timmy simply sat, his small form surprisingly regal against the vast beach, and when he spoke, his voice carried the weight of honest confession. "Terrified, Pete. Absolutely terrified. My first owner—" He paused, and I saw a shadow cross his face like clouds over the sun. "She threw me in. Thought all dogs could swim, she said. I nearly drowned in a swimming pool no deeper than your kitchen table." My heart cracked open like an egg, and I pressed my velvet nose against his caramel ear without planning to. "I'm so sorry, Timmy." "Don't be sorry," he said, but his voice wobbled like a tightrope walker. "Be brave. That's what I tell myself. Be brave, even when your heart says hide." "George! Hey, George!" Roman's shout pulled our attention to the parking lot, where a tall figure unfolded from a dusty Jeep, all broad shoulders and easy smile and skin the color of sun-warmed sand. George waved, and even from this distance, I saw the easy grace of someone who'd made peace with water, who'd learned to move through it like some people moved through air. He wore faded Navy tattoos like secret stories on his forearms, and when he reached our group, he knelt to my level with the respect of someone who understood that small creatures carry large souls. "Well, hello there, little captain," he rumbled, and his hand was gentle as a tide pool when it found my head. "Roman's told me all about you. Says you're the bravest puggle in the business." I wanted to tell him I wasn't brave at all, that my heart was currently attempting to escape through my throat, but Mom's laughter rang out like church bells, and Dad was already setting up what he called "the perfect beach encampment" (three umbrellas, two coolers, and a folding chair with cup holders), and the moment passed like a wave receding. That was when I saw the ocean truly for the first time—not through a window or on a screen, but stretching to forever in shades of green and blue and something deeper than either, something ancient and patient and utterly indifferent to my small, trembling life. And I knew, with the certainty of tides, that it was waiting for me. --- ## Chapter Three: The Shadow of the First Wave The morning passed in a blur of sunscreen smells and sandwich crumbs and Timmy's running commentary on beach sociology ("See that golden retriever? Thinks he's guard of the volleyball court. He's not. I am. In my mind."). I chased seagulls who mocked me with their easy flight. I dug a hole to China that collapsed halfway through, leaving me with a snout full of sand and dignity in tatters. I even let the foamy edge of a retreating wave tickle my paws, though each time the next wave approached, I scampered back like the sand itself had turned to hot coals. "You're doing great, Pete!" Mom called from her blanket kingdom, where she sketched the horizon with charcoal that turned to magic in her hands. "Little more! Little further!" Dad encouraged, though his own feet remained firmly dry, buried in sand up to his ankles like colorful flamingo-patterned totems. But it was Roman who mattered. Roman who kept glancing at me with eyes that saw too much, who finally set down his shovel and walked to where I trembled at the water's edge, the world stretching terrifying before me. "Hey," he said, sitting cross-legged in the wet sand so we were eye to eye. "You know what George told me? About being scared?" I shook my head, though my body stayed frozen, watching a wave approach like a wall of green glass. "He said the ocean doesn't care if you're scared. It doesn't care if you're brave either. It's just... there. And the only thing that changes is what you decide to do anyway." Roman picked up a shell, smooth and spiraled, and pressed it into my paw. "He said in the Navy, everyone was scared. Every single person. The brave ones were just the ones who moved anyway." The wave retreated, and my toes remained dry. Another would come. They always came. "I'm scared, Roman," I admitted, and the words tasted like relief, like finally scratching an itch that had burned for hours. "What if it pulls me under? What if I can't find the air? What if—" "Then I'll find you," he said simply, and in his young face, I saw the man he would become, steady as a lighthouse, bright as hope. "That's what big brothers do, Pete. Even when you're scared too. Especially then." The afternoon sun climbed higher, and with it, my anxiety twisted into something sharper, more desperate. When Dad suggested a walk to the far rocks to "hunt for pirate treasure" (read: interesting shells), I leaped at the distraction, Timmy trotting beside me with the energy of a creature who'd found his tribe. We wandered further than we meant to—drawn by a sand dollar gleaming like a fallen moon, then by a tide pool teeming with miniature life, then by the simple intoxication of having somewhere to go. The cliffs rose beside us, casting shadows that hadn't been there before. The beach narrowed to a ribbon between stone and sea. And then, in what felt like a single breath, we realized: we couldn't see the umbrellas anymore. "Timmy?" My voice cracked like thin ice. "Timmy, where—" "I don't—I thought I knew—" His brave warrior's mask slipped, revealing the pup beneath, trembling and small and desperately far from home. The sun slipped behind the cliff edge, and in that instant, the world transformed. Shadows lengthened like grasping fingers. The ocean's song changed from playful to something hungrier, darker, full of secrets I didn't want to know. And above it all, the pressing, suffocating *dark*—not the comfortable dark of my bedroom with Roman breathing softly nearby, but an open, empty dark full of unknown sounds and movements just beyond seeing. "The tide," Timmy whispered, and his voice was the smallest I'd heard it, "Pete, the tide is coming in. We're trapped." I looked where the cliff met the water, and he was right—the narrow beach that had seemed so wide was disappearing beneath rising waves, each one closer than the last, each one erasing our path home. My three fears rose up like a tidal wave of their own: the water, reaching now with cold fingers for my paws. The dark, pressing against my eyes like a blindfold I couldn't remove. And worst of all, the separation—my family somewhere beyond reach, beyond knowing, perhaps already forgetting the little white dog who'd wandered too far. "Roman!" I howled into the growing darkness, and my voice came back to me small and broken, unanswered. "ROMAN!" The first real wave reached my feet, and I screamed—not with dignity, not with courage, but with the pure animal terror of a creature who suddenly understood how very small he was against the world. --- ## Chapter Four: The Courage of Small Steps Darkness in a familiar place is a blanket. Darkness in an unfamiliar place is a coffin lid pressing down. I pressed against the cliff wall, feeling its cold seep through my fur like the water already soaking my paws, and tried to remember how to breathe. Timmy trembled against my side, his magnificent caramel fur plastered flat by spray and fear, and I felt his heartbeat racing against my ribs like a second pulse. "We're going to die," he whispered, and his voice held the flat acceptance of someone who'd faced death before, in swimming pools and abandonment and all the small deaths that scar the soul. "No," I heard myself say, and the word surprised us both. I thought of Roman's shell in my paw, still clutched tight, its spiral a map of patience and persistence. I thought of Mom finding magic in ordinary things, of Dad's ridiculous flamingo shirt and the way he wore joy like armor. I thought of Timmy's confession by the shore, his bravery in admitting fear. "We're not going to die," I said again, and my voice grew stronger, gathering itself from scattered places inside me. "Because I know someone who swam in the ocean. The *deep* ocean. And if he could do that, I can do *this*." "But the water—" Timmy began. "Terrifies me," I finished. "The dark terrifies me. Being away from my family terrifies me. But Timmy—" I turned to face him, and in his eyes, I saw my own reflection, small and wet and somehow still standing. "What would our story be if it ended here? Who would believe it? Pete the Puggle, eaten by the dark because he forgot he could swim?" A sound between a laugh and a sob escaped him. "You really are a storyteller." "I'm going to be a *living* storyteller," I declared, and the words felt like pulling a sword from stone, impossible and inevitable. "The tide is rising, yes. But look—" I pointed with my nose to where moonlight silvered the cliff face, revealing ledges and handholds I hadn't seen in my panic. "We can climb. Not far, just enough. And we can call. Not scream—*call*. My family is looking for me. I know they are. I just have to help them find us." The first ledge was slick with spray and my paws slipped, my claws scraping stone with a sound like screaming. But I found purchase, and another, and Timmy followed with the determination of the truly desperate, his small body surprisingly strong, surprisingly agile. We reached a shelf barely wider than my body, but dry—gloriously, impossibly dry—and I turned my face to the darkened beach, to the world beyond the cliff, and I called. Not with panic this time, but with purpose. With the story I wanted to live, not the one fear had written for me. "Roman! I'm here! We're HERE!" Silence answered, and the ocean's eternal murmur, and the chittering of night creatures beginning their shift. But I called again, and again, my voice growing hoarse, growing strong, growing *real* in a way it had never been before. "Pete! PETE!" The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, and for a moment, I thought I'd imagined it, wished it into being like a character in one of my stories. But then Timmy's ears perked, and he whined with hope so sharp it cut through the dark, and there—there at the cliff's edge, a flashlight's beam cutting through night like a saber of light— "Pete! Oh my God, Pete!" Roman. He scrambled down the rocks with reckless speed, George behind him with longer strides and the same desperate urgency, and then Roman's arms were around me, wet with spray and tears and the salt of relief, and I was home, I was found, I was *known*. "I've got you," he sobbed into my fur, the way he'd promised he would, the way he always had. "I've got you, I've got you, I promised I'd find you, I promised—" "You did," I managed, though my voice was raw, though my body shook with the aftermath of terror and the miracle of rescue. "You did find me. Even in the dark. Even in the dark, Roman." George's strong hands cradled Timmy with equal gentleness, and I saw in the old sailor's eyes the understanding of someone who'd been lost and found, who knew the particular geography of fear and relief. "Brave little captains," he murmured. "Both of you. Bravest I've seen." As we climbed back to safety, to the lights of the park where Mom's voice reached us in wordless relief and Dad's flamingo shirt announced itself like a beacon, I felt something shift inside me. The water still waited. The dark still pressed. But I had climbed through both, had called out in my truest voice, and been answered. Not every story ends with conquering the fear. Some stories end with discovering you were braver than the fear all along. --- ## Chapter Five: The Night's Gentle Lessons The bonfire Dad built was more smoke than flame, which was typical, but in its flickering light, I saw my family's faces and understood what love looked like when it had nearly been lost. Mom cried and laughed in alternating breaths, sketching us all with her eyes, committing us to memory. Dad told terrible jokes with suspicious moisture in his own eyes. And Roman—my Roman—held me as if I might dissolve, as if his heart still hammered with the what-if that had driven him over those cliffs. "George saw the ledge," he explained later, when the fire had settled to embers and the adult voices had softened to the tones of story rather than emergency. "He said, 'They'll find high ground. Navy teaches you that. Water rises, you rise higher.' And he was right. You were brave, Pete. Braver than me." "Not braver," I protested, but softly, because the night had taught me that bravery wasn't a competition, wasn't a scale to be measured. "Just... too stubborn to give up the ending I wanted." "That's my storyteller," Mom murmured, and her finger traced patterns in the sand that I recognized: the spiral of my shell, the curve of a wave, the infinite loop of a story without end. Timmy slept curled against George's thigh, his warrior's mask entirely abandoned, all fierce Chihuahua melted into trusting pup. George's hand rested on the small creature with the unconscious ease of someone who understood guardianship, who'd stood watch over sleeping friends in foreign seas. "You know," George said, his voice the rumble of distant friendly thunder, "I was scared every single day in the Navy. Every. Single. Day. The ocean doesn't stop being scary just because you've swum in it. You just stop being the same person who couldn't swim." I thought of the water waiting beyond the firelight, how the moon now silvered its surface to something almost gentle, almost inviting. *Almost*, I thought, and felt no shame in the qualification. Almost was further than I'd ever been. "Tomorrow," Roman whispered to me alone, as the fire died and stars emerged like scattered diamonds, "we don't have to do anything you don't want to. We can build sandcastles. We can chase crabs. We can just... be." But I looked at the water, at the way it breathed with the moon, at the way George's eyes followed it with something like love mixed with respect, and I felt something new stirring in my chest. Not absence of fear—that would be another story, an impossible one—but something alongside it. Something stronger. "Tomorrow," I whispered back, "let's see what happens." --- ## Chapter Six: The Second Sunrise Morning came with the particular freshness of a world washed clean, and with it, a decision I hadn't quite known I was making. I woke before Roman, before anyone, and padded to the water's edge alone. Not far—never far from where my family slept, my heart's compass true north always. But far enough to face the water in the honest light of a new day, without audience, without expectation. The ocean met me with foamy fingertips, retreating, advancing, playing its eternal game. And I stood there, feeling its cold invitation, and remembered: the ledge, the dark, Timmy's trembling, Roman's tears. All of it real, all of it survived, all of it woven now into the story of who I was becoming. "Pete?" Roman's voice, sleepy and worried and so full of love it made my chest ache. He jogged to where I stood, George emerging behind him with the easy awareness of someone used to early watches. "You're not—" Roman started. "I'm not doing anything," I promised. "I'm just... meeting it. On my terms. In my time." George settled beside us, his bare feet in the surf's edge, and I saw him close his eyes with something like communion. "The water's different in the morning," he said. "Softer. Like it's still waking up too." "Does it—" I paused, gathering courage like shells on the shore. "Does it get easier? The being in it?" George opened his eyes, and in their gray depths, I saw the reflection of countless horizons. "Some days, yes. Some days, it's like coming home. Other days..." He laughed, self-deprecating. "Other days, I still remember the first time a wave held me under, how I couldn't find which way was up, and I have to talk myself into wading past my knees." "Really?" The word escaped before I could stop it, hope and disbelief intertwined. "Really. The trick isn't to stop being scared, little captain. The trick is to make the scared part of you work with the brave part. Like..." He searched for words, big hands sketching concepts in the air. "Like they're partners in the same story. The fear keeps you careful. The courage keeps you moving. Together, they get you somewhere neither could alone." Timmy appeared, shaking sleep from his magnificent fur, and his eyes widened at my position—paws wet, heart pounding but *present*, engaging with the enemy he knew too well. "Pete?" "Partners," I told him, and wasn't sure if I meant me and the fear, or me and Roman, or all of us together against the indifferent sea. "All partners, Timmy. Even the scared parts. Especially those." Mom and Dad joined us, Mom with her sketchbook already capturing the morning's gold, Dad with two coffees and his ridiculous shirt freshly ridiculous. And in their faces, I saw the same thing I'd found in myself: the willingness to try again, to hope again, to believe that yesterday's darkness didn't dictate today's light. Roman looked at me, really looked, and I saw him understand. "You want to try," he said, and it wasn't a question. "Not the deep. Not yet. But..." "Just the edge," I confirmed. "Just where I can still stand. Just where I can still see you all." And so we formed our circle, human and canine, brave and scared, and I walked into the water on four trembling legs while the morning sun painted everything in shades of possibility. --- ## Chapter Seven: The Bravest Splash The first wave was a greeting, gentle as any I'd received, and my paws found the sandy bottom still firm beneath me. The second was slightly bolder, and I felt the current's tug, the ancient invitation to surrender control, to trust something larger than myself. "You're here," Timmy called from the dry sand, his voice carrying the particular courage of a friend who cannot follow but will not abandon. "You're *there*, Pete! In the water!" "I am," I called back, and my voice didn't shake, or if it did, it was with wonder as much as fear. "Roman, I'm—I'm in the water!" "I see you!" he laughed, and I heard the tears in it, the joy, the release of a worry held too long. "You're doing it! You're really doing it!" George stood beside him, water to his waist now, and his presence was a lighthouse, a promise that if the water grew too bold, there would be arms to lift me, eyes that had navigated worse. "Little steps, little captain. The ocean's patient. It will wait for you." And it did. Wave after wave, I met them standing, feeling their strength without surrendering to it, understanding in my bones what George meant about partnership. The fear didn't disappear—it transformed, became a kind of alertness, a respectful attention that kept me careful without keeping me away. Then Roman dove, smooth as a dolphin, and surfaced ten feet further out, his hair plastered to his head, his eyes bright with challenge and invitation. "Come on, Pete! Just a little further! The sandbar's here—you can stand, I promise!" The water lapped my chest now, each wave lifting my feet slightly, setting me down gently, a dance I hadn't expected. The deep water waited beyond, green and mysterious and still terrifying, but the sandbar—*the sandbar*—was a middle ground, a negotiated peace, a story of courage written in compromise. I swam. The first strokes were panicked, legs churning without grace, nose desperately seeking air above the small swells. But then I found the rhythm, the ancient dog-paddle written in my bones, and though my heart hammered and my eyes stung with salt, I moved through the water as my ancestors must have, as George had, as Roman did now with the ease of the young and fearless. Roman's hands found me, not lifting but supporting, and I felt the sandbar beneath my paws, solid and real and *enough*. "You're here," he breathed, and I heard in his voice the same wonder I'd felt on the ledge in the dark, the miracle of being found, of finding. "You did it. You really did it." We stood together, human and puggle, surrounded by water that reached our respective chests, and I looked back at the shore where my family stood waving, where Timmy barked his fierce approval, where the morning sun turned everything to gold. "I did it," I agreed, and the words tasted like every story I'd ever told and every story I hadn't yet had courage to live. "I did it scared. I did it anyway." George's head rose from the water nearby, his gray eyes crinkled with pride. "That's the only way any of us do anything, little captain. The only way that counts." --- ## Chapter Eight: The Story We Tell Together The reunion on the shore was tears and laughter and Mom's sketches smudged with emotional handling, and Dad's terrible jokes finally funny because we were all so relieved, so grateful, so *present* in a moment that could have gone so differently. "You brave, brave boy," Mom kept saying, holding me until I thought I might dissolve into love itself. "My brave storyteller." "Tell that to the water," I tried to joke, but my voice caught, because bravery wasn't a destination, I was learning. It was a path you walked again and again, choosing each step. They spread the big blanket, our beach kingdom for one more afternoon, and we gathered in a circle that felt like the closing of something and the beginning of something else. Timmy curled in George's lap, Roman's arm around me, Mom and Dad's hands intertwined, we looked at each other with the particular intimacy of people and creatures who'd survived something together. "So," Dad began, and even his usual joviality carried new depth, new understanding, "what's the moral of this particular story? Because I feel like there are several. Like, don't wander off. And maybe...bring a GPS?" "Dad." "I'm serious! Very serious moral. Technology and vigilance and—" "The moral," Mom interrupted gently, "is that courage doesn't mean being unafraid. It means being afraid and choosing to move anyway. It means trusting that you're loved enough to be found, even when you feel lost." She looked at me, and I saw in her eyes the story she was already painting in her mind, the image of a small white dog against dark water, choosing to climb, choosing to call, choosing to hope. "And," Roman added, his hand warm on my back, "that family means looking for each other. Even when it's dark. Even when it's scary. Especially then." George nodded, his sailor's face softened by something that might have been memory, might have been hope. "And that the things we're scared of can become... if not friends, then at least familiar. Known. Part of our story rather than the end of it." Timmy stood on George's knee, small chest puffed with pride that needed no puffing, his warrior's heart beating beneath caramel fur. "And that even the mightiest Chihuahua needs help sometimes," he declared. "And gives it. Receives it. That's the bravest thing of all." I looked at each of them—my family by blood and choice, my friends by circumstance and soul—and felt the story settling into shape, the tale of Pete the Puggle who was scared of water and dark and separation, who faced all three and found on the other side not the absence of fear, but the presence of love. "I think," I said slowly, feeling my way to truth, "the moral is that we're always writing our story, even when we think it's writing us. And we get to choose what kind of character we want to be. Scared and hiding, or scared and climbing. Scared and calling out. Scared and swimming." I paused, feeling the weight and lightness of the words. "I want to be the kind who swims. Who climbs. Who calls out and trusts he'll be heard. Who helps his friends climb too." Roman's arms tightened, and I felt his heartbeat against my back, steady and sure. "You're already that kind, Pete. You always were." The afternoon faded to evening, and we packed our things with the particular sadness of endings mixed with the hope of stories yet untold. But before we left, I walked to the water's edge one final time, alone but not alone, scared but not stopped. The wave that met my paws was cool and gentle, retreating with a foamy whisper like a promise. I stood there, feeling the fear and the courage partnering in my chest, feeling the love of my family warm behind me like the sun I'd carry even into darkness. "Thank you," I told the water, quietly, just between us. "For being patient. For waiting. I'll be back." And I would be. Not the same dog who'd trembled at the bathtub's edge, not the same who'd howled into the dark on a narrow ledge. But someone new, someone braver, someone who knew that fear was part of the story but not the whole of it, never the whole. "Pete!" Roman's call came, and in it, I heard every adventure we'd ever had and every one waiting to begin. "Come on, little buddy! Time to go home!" I turned from the water, from the vast and waiting sea, and ran to my family, to my story, to the love that would find me anywhere, even in the dark, even in the deep, even in the bravest splash of all. *** The End ***


Use these buttons to read the story aloud:





No comments:

Post a Comment