Rebirth

...stepped out of the sea, slipshod and dripping in a suit, davy dark with cuffs all seafoam and polished pebbles. Even with the evidence that was impossible to imagine him waiting on gamely into the ocean, or even diving slick like a salmon noiselessly into the waiting sea. I knew then, salt tongue on my tongue, that I’d witnessed a kind of birth. Not the usual screaming battling and forced unknowing free from the womb. It was dignified and conscious. Rebirth, rebirth. You know it when you see it. It’s not always a dramatic shivering emergence . Sometimes its a first step on a street or first tortured syllable drawn from a new tongue.

This case however was dramatic. Complete.

One doesn't simply leave an infant alone wailing its first breath of cold dry air. at least no one with a heart pumping warm blood. I spent some time plastering a comforting smile on my face. I put my left arm most of the way round his shoulders and waited until dusk. When no one came to collect him I took him from Twilight’s bleak beach and swaddled him. Stopped him from shivering.

Talc white scholar’s robes began the process of teaching.  Teaching him was like assembling an endless bouquet.