A/N: Update 2014
I have finally grown as a writer to where I don't hunger for concrit as much as I used to. Feel free to review if you'd like, but that's entirely up to you. :)
Chicken Soup for the Mercenary's Soul
By Baby Kat Snophlake
The fire learned many secrets, but it was to be doused in the morning before it could tell anyone anything. At its birth, the fire barely lit up a face hidden by a chunk of bangs covering an ever watchful eye. The body was a shadow no matter how brightly the fire burned. All the fire had managed was to sit in its pit and crackle taunts in the mercenary's direction.
What if Lloyd woke up? The mercenary paused, his hand only inches from Lloyd's face. He pulled back and the fire's reflection danced in the small windows of his eyes. The fire seemed to laugh harder than before as if it knew Kratos was blaming it for his lack of courage. Kratos sighed. His eyes softened as he watched Lloyd sleeping soundly, untouched. Of course it wasn't the fire's fault Kratos couldn't tell Lloyd his secret. The only thing the fire could be blamed for was scaring away the darkness with its flickering, and even that was unfair. The fire never asked to be born at night.
Kratos certainly couldn't blame the stars either. They seemed to multiply each night, each one twinkling at a different time. They were encouraging him to shake the boy's shoulders until he snapped awake, just so Kratos could show him the locket that Kratos wore around his neck. Then Lloyd could make his own assumptions. Lloyd could stare down at the locket, shocked from the disbelief, and then look up into Kratos's eyes and know it was true. Lloyd could wrap his arms around Kratos's waist and finally understand why Kratos had wanted him to stay home.
But even as Kratos watched his fantasies unfold, he knew that's all they were. Lloyd was surely dreaming about the destruction of the Desians who killed his mother. And the dwarf who adopted Lloyd would be the one to welcome him home while Kratos wasn't even in the dream at all except as the target for the boy's unleashed anger and frustrations. Kratos tried to envision the happy ending he lost moments ago, but he quickly realized that staring at his son's body in the firelight was as happy as his situation was ever going to get. Even if they spent the next ten years on this journey, Kratos doubted Lloyd would ever accept him as his father.
He knelt at the boy's shoulders finally daring to pull wild bangs from Lloyd's face and he smiled. Lloyd hadn't moved. Looking down at the same young face brought back memories of a boy who would sleep against mom and dad's body and mutter unintelligible words as if telling a story with no ending. The last thing Kratos had always told him had received a reply whether Lloyd was awake enough to understand it or not. He wondered if it was still so.
"I love you, Son."
After fourteen long years believing Lloyd had been killed at the hands of the Desians, it was hard to believe Kratos would have found any kind of happiness in anything. Even the fire's cackling was silenced. Even after fourteen years of going without his bedtime sentiment, Lloyd still replied, "I love you too, Daddy."
A/N: I am working on writing short exercises to improve my own writing little by little. This piece was written for invoking emotion in the reader and to learn to convey the emotions of the characters themselves. I hoped to accomplish by using external objects to help identify with what Kratos was feeling and the words themselves were chosen specifically. Reader feedback is the best way for me to find out whether I've succeeded or not, and to learn from what works and what doesn't. If you like it, and felt a tug on a heartstring, tell me why. If you don't, and were completely bored, tell me why. There is no other way for me to improve.
Thanks! :D
-Kat