He knows with absolute certainty that his soul is ever restless lest he be at sea, but he's known nothing like the warmth that floods his heart when he's home with his brothers and his sister, his mother and his father.
He halved the distance to the house when his heart suffers another swell of that life-sustaining warmth. From the house emerges a woman, lean and browned by the sun. Her hair is tied away from her face in the way she keeps it when she's working in the kitchen. With flour-caked hands she pushes out of her eyes the strands of hair not quite long enough to be restrained. It leaves streaks of powdery white through otherwise obsidian locks.
Guillermo smiles and chuckles at the way his mamá, dressed for baking and covered in the ingredients, can shame the sun with her fairness.
René hasn't spoken for nearly a minute and a half, having told of every notable feature the puppies possess in no more than two breaths and with such speed Guillermo wonders how he understood any of it. Instead he's been conversing with the birds, answering their twitters and calls with precise whistles of his own, but upon hearing Guillermo's amusement, René's head springs up from where he'd dropped it on his eldest brother's shoulder.
"Mamá!" he cries the instant his gaze alights on his mother, and twisting in Guillermo's arms, he wriggles out of his hold to run for his mother.
Guillermo nearly reaches his mother, but suddenly out of the open door comes the hurtling mass of his fiery Spanish sister. He loses balance completely and falls to the earth only to be pinned a second later. When his lungs are finally able to pull in a descent amount of oxygen, he cracks his eyes open and sees the beaming smile Ramona.
"Took you long enough," she chides before ruffling his hair and rolling away.
"I'm sorry I missed your birthday. And the puppies," he adds as he manages to sit up.
"You made it home," Ramona responds with an undertone of sadness Guillermo wishes she never know. "That's all that matters."
"Still, I got a present."
Her expression brightens considerably at this.
"Ramona, take René and tell your père Guillermo is home," his mother shoos them toward the door and turns once more to her eldest child.
"Guillermo," she smiles, her arms held open to him.
He stands and moves into her embrace. She smells of cinnamon and warmth and home. He's missed her, and he says as much. She squeezes him and then holds him at arm's length, her gaze searching.
He's been expecting this, his mother's need to verify that he is whole and healthy.
"What's this?" she tuts, runs her thumb across the scar running from the bridge of his nose to nearly an inch below his right eye. The words 'it's nothing' almost come tumbling out of his mouth, but he manages to swallow them before they do. Guillermo's father, his mother's first husband, was a sailor, so she knows scars, knows that it may be nothing now but at the time…
"English privateers attacked us in the night."
She takes another step back and circles him, searching for any sign that he's injured. "Is that the only one?"
"Nah, I'll show you later," he says with a wink which earns him an eye roll and a playful swat at his arm.
His mother heads back into the house, and Guillermo calls after her, "I got a tattoo!"
"Heaven help me!" he hears her declare in response. He leads his horse to the stables laughing all the way.