Oh, God. Her nose stung with tears that threatened to reach her eyes.

She’d manage, or else.

Lory had undergone a recent growth spurt, and half-tripped over her own feet keeping up with Rose.

Rose ran as fast as she could, but her ankles and feet were soaked by the time they got to her own home - there were small holes in her shoes - and her skirts and shawl were heavy with water. She let go of her cousins hand to be able to run up the uneven steps more easily, and burst in.

The small cottage was packed with people. The children had come back to shelter from the rain, and her aunt and some neighbours were there as well.

Mary was pressed to the window, remaining teeth bared in a mournful grimace with every gust. Her shawl was still about her shoulders, pulled tight around her in bony fists. Her head whipped around when she heard them.

“Girls! Oh, God. Tell me it isn’t so bad out there as it looks in here.”

Mary’s accent was thick and heavy, but the writer sucks at accents.

Then, she caught sight of Lory.

“You’re back early.”

“Got lucky,” Lory said casually, meeting her mother’s gaze. “Sold out.”

“There was hardly anything to sell,” her mother sighed back.

Mary’s gaze lingered on her daughter as Lory sat with the younger kids to keep them occupied. Then, Mary turned back to grimacing at the window.

"It's gotten pretty bad, aunt Mary," Rose answered quietly. Her aunt looked stressed and she didn't want to add to her worry, but it was also wrong to lie.

"Easy, Mary. They're on land, that's the most important thing," her mother spoke. She was cutting some onions at the table.

Alice looked up at the women for a moment, but then turned back to showing Anne how to do long division on her slate.

Rose sat down next to Lory, but she watched her mother and aunt nervously.

"Don't just sit around in yer wet clothes, girls," said Hannah, "ye both look like ye've jumped into the harbour. Rose, yer dress is dry. Lory can borrow Maggie's. But first, while yer soaking wet anyway, go fetch some water, will ye?"

Mary’s head whipped to Rose at the relay, teeth still bared. Her distraught frown only deepened.

“No, it’s not,” Mary bit back. “That they return is!”

She plastered back to the window, nose practically touching the glass.

Lory chewed her nail, tasting salt. She hovered above her seat rather than sitting down, perpetually restless. Did Anne need any more help?

Alice seemed to have it under control. She had a bright future ahead of her.

“I can,” Lory said, already heading toward the door.

She felt less and less like she fit in with the others. And the less she fit, the harder it was for little things to matter. The little things had already stopped, and started to roll into bigger things.

Mum said that she would grow out of her willfulness … and she had just felt the gap widen even more.

It was dark when the men returned at last. Dry clothes had been put ready. There was extra coal on the fire, despite the lack of catches and uncertainly about the coming days. There was warm food that the children were begging for, but couldn't have yet, because the weary men would be served first and served best.

An excited young boy who had braved the storm announced their coming to all the houses in the yard, and they all fought for a place in front of the window. When the weather-beaten fishermen finally entered the yard, Hannah forgot her concern about catching a cold and rushed out to hug and kiss her husband and sons, and Rose and some of the other children followed.

"It's alright, lass. We made it. Don't fret," Ben breathed while holding his wife.

"I'll stop frettin' if ye get yerselves inside!"

It was cold. Luke was shivering and felt ready to fall over if he stood still long enough. Why were they still standing around outside, soaked through, when the door was right there?

He reached for Simon’s arm as soon as his aunt was occupied with his uncle instead.

“C’mon, yer mam’s right,” Luke said, pulling his cousin towards the house. He needed a barrier for when his own mother inevitably spotted him.

He could only imagine the strife the storm had put her through, worrisome as she was without turbulent weather.

As if it had been any easier on him.

On all of them, he corrected himself. All of them. Like his father and uncle Ben weren’t lighthouses, impervious to the angered winds and waves. Like Luke and the other boys weren’t building themselves up stone by stone to be the same.

Lory wanted to feel the right things. The relief at seeing them all return, one by one, preferably with nets full of fish. Sometimes she could smell a good catch being hauled down the street … but the door opened, and she smelled no catch.

All she could think of was food. The bread that had already cooled on the surface, which she prayed still held some warmth in the middle. She was sitting with the other girls, quiet and withdrawn as they did their homework together.

She barely seemed to hear the announcement, even as her mother thanked God and relief, that relief poured through the room. The other girls were at the window, but Lory continued her drills. They’d all be coming home from the sounds of it. Didn’t they always? No one fretted this much over the women – maybe half as much when they were pregnant. She knew the amount of time it generally took them to get to the food part get ready for supper. Silently counted the seconds when she could think of little else.

Her head shot up when the door opened, and not a moment sooner. Lory’s count had begun.

Mary touched her husband and sons’ arms as they came in, a routine she’d had ever since her first child to pass in the night. Her sons, she hugged like it was the most gracious miracle they were back. She got to Luke, frowned because her arms couldn’t fit fully around both him and Simon, then squeezed them both into lung-crushing arms.

“I’m so glad you’re back,” she wheezed, to Luke. “All of you.”

All of you boys. Lory’s gaze was flat. Plenty of women disappeared from the market, and she suspected the end the sea offered was far kinder – but they had too many daughters, didn’t they. Meanwhile, the men were made of [fool’s] gold.

Matthew smiled over at his cousins and sisters. It was always a bit of a hero’s welcome back, as it should be! Lory smiled flatly back, and Matthew sheepishly shuffled over to ask his cousins about their day instead. He was older, but she still had a way of making him feel like he was two feet tall. She could shoot some of the same looks Ma could.

Lory contented herself with making Matthew squirm. Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine … now if Luke just kept his mouth shut so they could eat …

Simon hated fishing. It was insufferably boring, the same chores and routine every day, the endless wait once the lines had been tossed, the same harbour to return to every day, to stand about with the same unimaginative fishermen who couldn't talk about anything but the same boring chores they were up to and the same dull people they knew and didn't seem to have dreams at all. It was banal, like the rest of his life. Enough to suffocate him when he was perfectly safe in the boat. Sometimes he'd rock the boat a little or tell a crude joke and have his father or uncle shout at him just for the variety. More often he'd use the long wait to daydream about the greater, more thrilling life he was destined for in the big city. He wouldn't do this all his life.

And then, some days, out of nowhere, the dullness was broken by something worse: storm and a rough sea that made him dread that he would die before he could fulfil those dreams. What a waste.

Today it was even worse, for after surviving the waves and reaching the safety of the Staithes harbour, they had been forced to walk for miles through the rain. Simon was cold, sore, hungry, and angry. He hated fishing.

When they reached the yard, he gladly joined Luke in their escape to the warmth of the cottage - only to be stopped by a frantic aunt Mary. He pulled a face when she hugged them. "Matthew's been havin' a cough, aunt," he quickly lied to make her Matthew's problem instead.

When they managed to get in with a generic greeting to the shouting children, he noticed Lory at the table, apparently unaffected. He liked Lory but she could be so stuck up. When he passed her he ruffled her hair and placed his very wet hat on top of her head. Then he took the set of dry clothes that had already been put ready for him. "C'mon," he said to Luke, we can change upstairs." He took the ladder from the corner and placed it against the trap door in the ceiling, that led to the attic where the boys slept.

"Matthew! Stop talking and get changed first!" shouted Hannah. "You'll catch your death!"

As if they hadn't already.

As he climbed up the ladder, he could hear his father explain to his mother that they would need the cobles carted back the Whitby. Never mind the expense. At least they hadn't been wrecked. But of course she would mind the expense.

If there was anything Luke hated more than being cold, and wet, and achy, it was being suffocated in a woman’s arms when he was cold, wet, and achy.

“Ma!” grumbled Luke, when his attempt to sidestep her embrace failed miserably. Least he had Simon to take some of the pressure off. He’d have been embarrassed by all the constant fussing if his cousin’s mother had been any better. If his sisters had sons, he hoped to God they learned to stop fussing.

It took Simon’s quick wit to get her attention off of them, and Luke wriggled out of her arms and added, “he’s been hackin’ the whole way back.”

Having an entire horde of siblings should have made it less difficult to direct attention away from him, but most times it didn’t. Why couldn’t he have been born a couple of years down the line instead, and let Matthew take the brunt of being older son? Or maybe, if the next storm favored him, Luke would drown before he had to come back to all of this.

Ugh.

He grabbed a set of dry clothes and wiped at his face, but it didn’t do much good when his hair and his hat both were still dripping wet. Gave a frown when he noticed Lory at the table by herself. Luke opened his mouth to say something, but – fortunately for Lory – his focus strayed when Simon called him to the ladder, and he followed him up to the attic instead.

“Thought we’d never make it back. My stomach’s eatin’ itself,” he complained, while he stripped his wet clothes and replaced them with the dry ones. Didn’t help much with the cold when it’d already sunk deep into his bones.