It is not yet the end. Moss descends from the oaks, thick as curtains, veiling the night’s secrets from the living. A wild mare and her foal are out to feed before the dawn. Seagulls bark their hunger at the sky. And Lyra, our island, remains above the sea. The ocean has not engulfed all this, even though I have woken from that dream I’ve had again and again over the decades. In last night’s rendering, after the island had burned and sunken into the waters and all the stars had fallen into the Atlantic, I could still swim. And beneath the surface, wandering among the blue constellations like a mermaid, at last I found Gabriel.