Like Father, Like Son
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Title: Snowflakes
Summary: As Daddy teaches Little Lloyd about snowflakes, Little Lloyd teaches himself the value of life.
Spoilers: DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU HAVE BEATEN THE GAME!
A/N: My winter holiday special fic for 2006, written in under an hour. Enjoy, and happy holidays! X3
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Lloyd gazed upward at the sky, cloudy and grey with peaceful clouds. Any other day, it would be pouring down with rain, but not today. Today was... special, he had deduced.
On a normal day, he would be walking beside Noishe, or holding one of his parent's hands, if not both. On a normal day, there would be green and browns spread out beneath him. On a normal day, he would not be given the chance to sit atop his father's shoulders and on a normal day, he would not be given the chance to feel like so tall that could graze the clouds with one swipe of his hand.
Today was very special indeed.
Wrapped tightly in a small red parka and equipped with matching red mittens, he held firmly onto his father's head for balance as he reached upwards to intercept a falling frozen drop of rain. Holding the ice captive, he brought his hand down to his line of vision, curiously inspecting his catch. For only a second did it look different than anything he had ever seen in his three years before melting into a puddle of water upon his tiny mitten.
Little Lloyd frowned, leaning forward to catch another one. More quickly this time, he looked at it closely—alas, it met the same fate.
"...Daddy?"
"Yes, Lloyd?"
The boy leaned sideways so he could get a profile view of his father's face. "Why does the rain hide?"
Kratos, confused by the wording of his son's question, asked, "What do you mean?"
"Uum..." was Lloyd's response. He looked away and sloppily caught another snowflake in his hands, hurriedly pointing to the water droplet that had formed in its place. "There! It wasn't water before!"
Skimming through his recollections, Kratos recalled that Lloyd had never encountered any snow—well, not at anytime in which the boy could remember it, anyway, as they had stayed mostly near the midline of both the planets; neither of the planets experienced seasons to a degree to make any snow fall. Now, however, they decided to take a quick detour to Flanoir to stock up on supplies before heading back to Sylvarant. And Flanoir, being Flanoir, had snow covering the ground year-round.
Thinking for a moment, he asked, knowing full well the answer, "Do you think it's cold here?"
"Yeah!"
"Well, here in Flanoir, things are different." He started, taking—a now rather unhappy—Lloyd down from his shoulders and setting him down on a bench where Kratos joined him. "Everywhere else, when it gets cloudy, it rains, but here it snows instead."
His son forgot his discontentment from being taken down from his perch as he looked up at the clouds in wonder. "Snow?" he said, "I don't get it."
"Snow is..." Kratos paused, searching for the right words. "...Snow is like tiny pieces of ice, very, very tiny pieces." He scooped up a small handful of the substance and held it for a moment, saying, "This is snow."
Lloyd grabbed a handful of snow as well, observing it closely. "But Daddy," he said, "if this is snow, and the stuff coming from the sky is snow, too, then how come the stuff coming from the sky is different from the stuff on the ground?"
Looking at it from the general standpoint, he inquired. "How are they different?"
Noting all the snowflakes stuck in his father's hair, he pointed to various ones, explaining, "Well, this one looks like a circle with holes in it—and this one looks like a circle with a hole in the middle and poke-ys sticking out of it—this one looks like a star—and this one looks like a square with holes in it—and here—"
"Is that so?"
"Yeah!" Lloyd giggled, then gasped as he nearly lunged for a clump of hair on the back of Kratos' head. "Daddy! This one's so pretty! Can I show it to Mommy? She would like it!"
Before he could even respond, Little Lloyd cupped the precious snowflake inside his hands and hopped off the bench in search of his mother. Kratos, though a bit surprised, leisurely sauntered behind him as he weaved around people and stands like a little red-clad mouse.
When he found his mother at a small vegetable market, he jumped in front of her and held his hands up over his head for her to see. "Mommy! Mommy!" he squeaked with glee. "Look! I caught a really pretty snowflake!"
Anna smiled sadly as he opened his hands to reveal nothing but soggy mittens. "I think the snowflake melted, sweetie."
Flabbergasted, the boy looked frantically at his hands, then at the back of them, and then hastily removed them to look inside for the missing jewel. "But... but—!" his small chocolate eyes welled up with tears; he cried softly, "It's gone! It's gone!"
After placing the appropriate amount of money on the counter, she knelt down to Lloyd's level and placed a tender hand on his shoulder, saying, "But Lloyd, look!" she said, pointing to the sky. "There are a lot more snowflakes coming down from the heaven's at any minute!"
Little Lloyd shook his head. "No! But none of them are like the one I found! They're all different and there will never be another like it ever again!"
As Lloyd continued to cry, Noishe wandered over to Kratos' side just in time to hear the seraph murmur to himself, "Even a boy his age realizes the worth of a life." He sighed quietly. "If only Mithos could see the same thing he does..."
