He spent a silent era sitting, just sitting in the darkness as the world outside plunged ahead as it always had. But in here, there was quiet. Travis was unaware of exactly how long it had been- it had been a while, a long time, but time was an idea, and lately ideas were few and far between. If one came to him, he looked at it blankly, apathetically until it went away embarrassed it had even presented itself. The shades were drawn and the lights were out, and he was home. Just sitting quietly, peacefully at the blank wall in front of him. And yet somehow, the thoughts still attacked, still sometimes pressed in, surrounding and suffocating his besieged solace.

Toren screamed in pain, the slivers of frozen rain all around him, in his eyes, in his skin. The ship, massive as it was, spun violently like the Mayflower in a hurricane. The captain and several crew members had already gone overboard, and most of those left onboard were hanging on for dear life, however abbreviated they realized it would be in this storm.

He stopped, listened. The thoughts had abated for the moment, as if they had taken pause to listen to his pleadings to let him be. No such luck.

More screams, the ship turned halfway on its side, then tossed in the air, turned to the other side and completely around in a whirling gyroscope. Thirteen more were sent flying into the water, dead on impact if not by drowning. Bones shattered, the sharp particles tearing brutally through skin, severing spinal cords and finally filling every conceivable crevice in the body with salt water.

“I don’t have to listen to you,” Travis told the storm. Dream on, the storm said.

Travis walked the deck from end to end unhindered as it swayed and bucked in the storm. He heard nothing but a deafening silence, saw everything, the look of sheer terror on the faces of the remaining survivors hanging on for dear life and in one fleeting moment the ship was on its side and he saw the eye of the storm in front, or rather below him. The rain was behind him, now below him, all around him but he was outwardly unaffected.

The storm didn’t pause to let him think.

Maelstrom! was the strangled cry from the few who had breath left. He was calm, convinced he was dreaming. And then he heard a bold, dark song.

Confutatis maledictis
Flammis acribus addictis:
Voca me cum benedictis.
Oro supplex et acclinis,
Cor contritum quasi cinis:
Gere curam mei finis.

Toren heard the words but not the music and they made him all the more terrified; he nearly prayed the last line then- “Help me-” and finished in a scream as the boat spun again and he was left hanging by a rope off the side of the boat. And Travis, unaffected, was walking toward him, saying the words. But this was not Travis’ reedy seven-year-old voice; power resonated from a deep, strong voice that came from his mouth.
See like ashes my contrition
And suddenly in Travis’ small hand was a torch.
Help me in my last condition!
The ship split in two and circled faster than ever inside the Maelstrom, then both parts burst into a flame unaffected by the water as it circled lower and lower until finally at the bottom they shattered into nothing.

Travis didn’t open his eyes yet. The thoughts were gone. He waited a few moments, then opened them, expecting to see his dark room with the shades drawn and the darkness and deafening silence. Instead he was on a beach, dry and warm as if he’d been basking in the sun for just the right amount of time. He sat up quickly. A torch was stuck upright in the sand next to him, burning brightly and needlessly in the sun. Next to that, lying on the ground, was Toren, face and hands no longer bleeding. Travis crawled quickly over to him, touched his shoulder to make sure he was real- it was all real- Toren’s eyes opened and he sat up, terrified still for a moment with the memory of the storm. But then he looked around and saw the beach, the warm sand, and Travis.

“Father,” they both whispered simultaneously.