A light breeze blew over Rayman Stell as he crouched on a pink sand beach, looking out over the calm blue-green water, lamenting his father's death. Monolith cliffs of limestone, topped with dwarf trees and draped with vines and shrubs, jetted out of the sea, separating the beach from the rest of the world. The equator lay out before him somewhere close, and the sun was hot overhead, searing his skin. The smoldering stand, where his father's body had recently been burned, had turned the sand black and white with ash, and partially dissolved into a cloud in the small shore break. Rayman let a handful of ashes and sand fall between his fingers. The incoming tide brought small waves to the shore, churning up a semicircle of ashes and burned chunks of wood. His father's watch hung on a branch of the last support of a stilted platform. The watch had been put there for his benefit, so when he arrived he would know whose body had been burned. Someone had respectfully stayed with the body while it was ablaze, making sure nothing remained. He thought of the kindness he had missed these last fifteen years, of time spent at the ranch growing up together without his mother, who had been poisoned before his father was kidnapped. The only picture he could come up with for his mother was in her hospital bed, her death bed. The sun fell behind the clouds, turning the sky orange, red, and purple.