Author's Note: Listen to "Ladies and Gentlemen we are now floating in space" by Spiritualized.

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She is still swinging when he approaches. She has been flying all morning and soars even higher when he comes into sight.

Are you ready, My daughter?

I am, I am!

She is floating in space. She has left Earth and oh, how she wishes he would reach out and take her hand for then they could leave together. Instead, he stares at his converses and she no longer curls her legs under herself so that she might slow her flight down for him. She allows her bare feet to rush against the grass still damp with cool morning dew. This does not mean she has stopped floating.

Reach out, now. Gently. Gently. He is fragile, my love.

I will, I will!

He hasn’t been looking at her, and this is okay. She doesn’t expect rapid words and movement. He moves like everything is made of glass. One wrong move and it’s all gone, nothing left to save for them. Yet, she knows differently. She refuses to believe that what has been broken between them can not be fixed.

She knows better.

And tell him. Tell him he must not fear.

“You’re forgiven you know,” she says and she plants her feet into the grass. The soft earth makes a mold of her small soles and ten wiggling toes. By now he has settled down in the groove of the tree, a seat made by God for his aching, frail body. He is not listening, he is being pulled under by something not worth his attention and it shows in the way his expressions contort into that of puzzelment.

Tell him.

“Devon Alexander Worceston! Are you listening to me?” And if he wasn’t before, he certainly is now. His blue eyes are drawn up from the ground to her lips as they form the fullness of his name. He is surprised by how much authority she commands, this small elfin like girl.

“I told you, you are forgiven. I love you. I love you and I always will. Always.”

It is then that she sees the very core of him become soft and malleable. She watches the coldness in his eyes melt away with a flood of tears and she watches the slightest tremor in his lashes and the tremble in his bottom lip.

She is watching him break under the very force of God.

Then she is watching God pull him together piece by piece, and she sees how God smooths out every fissure and every crack until he is made anew. This new creation has the faintest of smiles and it curls outward into something wide and uncontrollable.

She is on her toes when he gets to his feet, so that when they embrace her small chin can find the slight curve of his shoulder and neck and his hands can fit so perfectly on the swell of her hips. His whispered prayer for salvation is wild in her ear and now they are both there.

Now they are both floating in space.

Welcome home, my children. Welcome home.