Harper Raithby

‚The Dolphin‘s Cry‘ (inspired by Live) The rain hadn’t stopped for hours, just like it hadn’t the night they said goodbye. He’d forgotten how the air here smelled—salt and storm, wild and alive—but the moment he stepped out of the car, it came rushing back. The ocean sounded the same, that low, endless pulse, as if it had been waiting for him all these years. He told himself he came here by chance. That the detour meant nothing. But when he saw the old pier cutting through the mist, something inside him cracked. Ten years hadn’t dulled the memory of standing there beside them—laughing, trembling, promising that distance could never touch what they had. It was the kind of thing you only believed when you were seventeen. The loss came after. Sudden. Brutal. A single phone call that broke him clean in half. He packed his life into silence and left before the echoes could find him. Love had become too big, too dangerous; he’d learned how to live without the pulse of it. Until now. There they were, standing at the edge of the dock, hair damp, the same rain tracing their face like a memory. No anger. No surprise. Just that quiet, aching stillness that only recognition brings. For a moment, neither of them moved. The ocean roared between them, and then it didn’t matter—because the world narrowed to a breath, to a heartbeat that felt like coming home. Somewhere deep within him, something long buried stirred. And when they finally met his eyes, it was like hearing the dolphins cry— the sound of everything lost finding its way back to shore. (At the end of high school, Harper lost his younger sister in a sudden accident. He carried a deep guilt for not being there to protect her, and afterward withdrew completely, leaving his coastal hometown and avoiding close connections, afraid of losing anyone else. (28, 6‘2, image from Pinterest)