Pāhonoa te oro

I remember the moment I turned away. The others kept walking—steady, certain, bound together like they had always been. The wind howled, the ice cracked beneath us, and still they moved as one. But something in me… paused. A quiet pull, like the ocean whispering from a place I had never seen. They called after me at first. I could hear it in their voices—confusion, maybe even fear. Penguins don’t just leave. We follow. We endure. We survive together. But I wasn’t lost.