Three Line Thursday: "Cast Away"

I am shipwrecked once again in this distant, familiar place
And my body will contribute, appropriately enough, to its firmament,
Coral islands being chiefly constructed from remains of the dead.

The Strange Case Of The MacDonnell Children

"What are we doing here, Carl?"

"Just wait."

She rubbed her eyes, sighed. Her phone was dead, and with it, her patience. "I've been waiting."

"We got here early, I… I got us here early, I'm sorry. It doesn't always happen early."

"What doesn't, Carl?"

"You'll see it. When it happens, you'll see them, right through there, past us, down the hall."

"Who?"

"I don't know." Calmer, with eyes closed: "I don't know. I tried to take pictures once but they didn't show up. I mean, they showed up, but not in the picture."

There was a laugh, a squeal: distant and warped as if the sound had been carried down a copper pipe or a high-tension line. Before she could ask, the blurry, ethereal children climbed through the window, bounded down the hall past them, and disappeared through a doorway that was boarded up solid.

"What the hell, Carl?"

Come Find Me When You're A Man

"You sure about this?" Father sounded genuinely concerned, which was perhaps the strangest thing to happen yet on this strangest of days.

"Yes."

"Outside the gate, ain't no more protection. Old Wadnell's wards won't stick on you, you go down the road. You're all on your own, down the road." It had all been said before, of course, but his Father was never shy of repetition. "Ain't nobody coming to your rescue, you run into troubles."

"I understand." He hefted the bindle stick onto his shoulder, checked the position of the morning sun for about the tenth time. "Best be off, now."

He opened the gate, only halfway, only enough to pass through, closed it behind him. He lingered, hesitating without looking back.

"I wish you had more than a knife." Not 'I wish I had more than a knife to give you'. But then that was the way of things, always.

"It'll do. I know how to use it."

He took a step, then another. His boots fit well, thankfully; they were his most important possession now, besides the knife.

"Hope she's worth it," came his father's voice from behind him.

He chose to mishear. "I'll miss you too."