not quite contorted in rage, but barely restrained; tensed with the effort of keeping a tantrum in check while negotiating an incline made of steep and jagged rocks.

“WHAT DID YOU—“

He ran, as quickly as the wet rocks would allow, over to his now-struggling-to-get-up stepfather.  He didn’t look hurt.  Their eyes met, and the initial flash of outrage in his eyes was gone.  In the span of time required to nearly greviously injure himself, parental outrage had become what usually characterized Llewelyn – gentleness, behind which was mostly genuine compassion and a non-trivial degree of disconnection.  Which was what had, most likely, made him raise his voice; less offensive than the latest in a long chain of childhood misbehavings had been the intrusion into a reverie that could as easily have been rooted in a day in 1965.

“Are you OK?”  Brandon reached out to him.  “I hope you-“

“I’m fine.  I’m OK.”  He winced slightly, having pulled an underused muscle.  “Listen, back there, I—“

“WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING??  IS HE OK??  I’M TALKING TO YOU!!”

His aunt’s voice issued forth from midway down the rocky incline.  “HE’S FINE,” Brandon replied.

She paused.  Her face relaxed.  “Jesus Christ…Llewelyn, what were you thinking?

Llewelyn looked up at her and smiled.  “Not enough, I guess.”

She shook her head and made her way back up the incline.

“Look…I wanted to say…”

Brandon interrupted.  “I know…I’m sorry.  I was mad.  I was trying to break them up, and  I got blamed—“

“You’re right.  I should have listened to you.”

Brandon hugged him.  “You scared me!  I thought you were—“

“Dashed on the rocks?  Not this Norweigian mountain goat.”

They stood, watching half-interestedly as a distant lobster fisherman hauled his pots in.

“You know…your mother and I love you.  Very much.  I know that things have been challenging for you.  For us, really.”

Brandon kept his eyes fixed on the fisherman.  He thought he heard a muffled curse as a pot slipped as he was lifting it over the gunwale of the  boat.

“I know.”

It was the best answer, at least in that moment.