“Father?”
“Just a moment.” The door closed behind him, and she listened to his steps fade down the staircase of the basement. A few moments later he returned, stopping in the hall to address the shabby, unkempt man in the reflection. He smoothed down his long hair with a palm and buttoned what he could on his shirt, reminding himself to ask her to replace them.
The deep lines across his brow told a history of physical toil, and his sun-bleached, threadbare shirt with missing buttons at the collar revealed self-neglect in every crease. He went by the name of Derrien. He had once told his daughter that his name was Greek for “prosperous” or “great.” Sometimes, she felt that the man standing before her was everything but. The wool shawl that he wore any time he ventured outside looked tattered and moth-eaten and it smelled worse than a dead animal in mid-summer heat, but Thea loved him nonetheless. She watched him for a moment while he busied himself striking matches and lighting beeswax candles around the room, aided sporadically by flashes of lightning.
The sky outside blackened, revealing the enormous shadow of an unknown arrival that suspended itself over the loch and stretched as far as the cottage. The girl, her porcelain face fixed, watched from the window. It separated from one large mass to a few smaller shapes, swirling in the sky.
“What a strange storm,” she observed. “I’ve never seen it get like this before.”
She thought about it. She really hadn’t. She stepped back slightly at the sudden rattling of the glass.
The downpour of rain pelted the window. Thea tried to peer out into the abyss from where she had retreated to, the smattering of droplets obscuring her view.
When she could make out the outline of the darkened sky, it was illuminated by bright, blinding sparks flashing to reveal a series of what seemed like shooting stars. They left trails of white smoke behind them as they floated down into the atmosphere with the grace of dandelion seeds blown by the wind. The shapes scattered and seemed to disappear, landing in various places across the island.
The waves, crashing against the dock, spat foam across the planks, returning to the water before launching the next attack. Overhead, the wind and rain competed to see who could wreak the most havoc. She stood there, still, huddled, watching the storm in controlled awe like a child at a formal gathering.
“Father, what are those things in the sky?” she asked, pointing to the shapes as they fell one by one.
“Thea, do you remember when we first came here? It was during a storm like this.” His voice was low. Serious.
“I was a child, wasn’t I? I barely remember.”
“What you’re seeing before you is something that’s going to put it all right.” He grabbed her by the shoulders, startling her. “Did you know that your father was once a great man? A world-leading scientist?”
His daughter looked him up and down, tilting her head in bemusement. “Are you not my father?” she asked.
