He was so young back then, and the memories sometimes escaped him. So, when they filtered in through the web of tall tales, the grinding of gears, and the scratching of quills, he clutched desperately to those shades of the past with ink-stained fingers and scarred hands that weren't always quite so marred.
There was a time when he didn't want to remember. Now, he wished for nothing but.
The sounds of his mother humming as she swept the floors; the way his father sipped at his tea (so carefully).
Did she sing him lullabies as he slept, singing stories of knights and goblins and giants as she tucked him in? Did he lift him onto his shoulders and spin, so high and so fast that he could almost touch the clouds? Maybe he dreamt it all, and lost them in those moments—in the silent space between sleep and awake.
Memories were elusive. Fragile. Yet, still heavy, imprinting upon his very self whether they happened or not.
"It was real," his wife once said as he buried his tear-stained cheeks into her neck and shoulder, "if it's real to you. That's all that matters."
Belief. Fervent faith and hope and courage.
It was what got them through it all, right?
He breathed, pressing his nose to the downy-soft strands of his son's dark hair, his calloused fingertips tracing the freckles across the sleeping baby's cheeks.
What would the boy remember of him one day?
His eyes stung as he felt his wife's arms wind about his shoulders, her orange hair tickling the back of his neck.
There was a time when he didn't want to remember. Now, he wished for nothing but. And though the past continued to slip away, he kept the present close to his heart, and the future within his grasp.
Son, I am not everything you thought that I would be,
But every story I have told is part of me;
Son, I leave you now, but you have so much more to do
'Cause every story I have told is part of you.
— "How I Go" by Yellowcard