It would have been better if he’d just vanished without a trace. A parent can make up all sorts of hopeful stories then, about other shores, other ships, even about a son who hates them so much, he’d rather disappear than say goodbye.

The ocean washing up one board instead, one unmistakable board, just feels like spite. The one where he painted the boat’s name, and you can see the way you taught him in how he shaped the letters, two decades old and still tailing his ‘a’ like a little boy with a pencil in his fist, and you see the stories you once told him in the name, and you can’t wail over that board the way you would a body, but you know it means just the same.

It means, as plain as the ocean speaking from the forked tongues of its waves, that this is all you get. All it will give you, one shattered piece of grief, the name of a dragon-slayer bobbing salt-washed and alone in the tide.