Time
The thing you are the most grateful for is time.
You realise that while you help your youngest to dress his kimono for his first memorial ceremony of the end of the birdcage seal.
You think about how this is not the life you dreamed about when you were young, but a cold wind blows though your heart when you think about a life in which you have never listened to your son's babbler. He is a lot like is father in appearance, but he likes to chat, and his grandfather says it will one day be a useful talent to use dealing with the council. Those are the things that make you be so amazed by time's power, the miracle that is the child in your arms, and the shock that is hearing your father treating the grandchildren you gave him such differently from how he treated you.
You heard once that time is a wise god, and you can't agree more, when are white the eyes you first see when you wake up. They might seem cold for other people, but to you they are always the most sincere eyes you have ever encountered. They are the eyes of the man who almost died for you, the eyes that followed you in every step not for duty, as you once thought, but for fear of losing sight of you, for dread of letting you ever feel forsaken again, but especially because they wanted to be the first eyes to witness your rise. And they were never as clear and sincere than that day when their owner decided that his feelings shouldn't remain a secret any longer. They are the eyes that silently tell you that none of these feelings changed through the years in each breaking dawn.
Time was kind to you; you decide looking at your hand as he hold it under the table, protected from judgmental eyes. It gave you far more than you bargained for, and sometimes you even wonder if you deserve this kind of happiness.
