The Last Tide

Written By Charles W. Powell

The Last Tide

The fire had gone out an hour ago. Maybe two. Ezra hadn't moved.

He sat in the low canvas chair, knees apart, elbows on his thighs, a bottle of Maker's Mark hanging from two fingers like something already dead. In front of him, Ruby Beach stretched into the dark—Diane had always called it the most honest place on earth because it didn't pretend to be beautiful. It just was. The sea stacks rose out of the black water like broken teeth. The Pacific did what it always did here: pressed in, low and constant, foam catching what little moonlight made it through.

He hadn't put up the tent. Hadn't seen the point.

She would've, some part of him insisted. She would've had it up in ten minutes, the Dutch oven going, ordering him around like she was doing him a favor while she did all the work.

He took a long pull from the bottle.

Read the rest of “The Last Tide” in Table Salt Press, Issue 1 Homesick, Coming NOV 2026 f

Charles W. Powell

Charles W. Powell (he/him) writes about people who break things trying to fix them, and the ones left behind to write it down.

A historian by training and a storyteller by compulsion, he holds a Master's in Education with a History focus and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He has spent years studying the way civilizations construct meaning — and the catastrophic things that happen when those constructions fail. It turns out fiction is a better place to explore that than a thesis.

He lives in Seattle with his partner Emmy and three dogs of escalating chaos, a watch collection that has gotten out of hand, and enough coffee to sustain the kind of hours serious world-building requires. He has traveled to more than sixty countries, which is either research or a problem, depending on who you ask.

THE HERETIC ENGINE is his debut novel — a bisexual author's love story about two men who broke the world, and the woman who refused to let it be forgotten. It took the better part of his adult life to write something worthy of the ideas. He thinks he got there. Talla Vei remains unconvinced.

https://charleswpowell.com
Previous

The Second Book
Next

The Torque in the Roots