AN: Thanks for the reviews and ideas. I will certainly consider them soon. This here is from "Dead In The Water". Enjoy! Just add salt ;)

***sn***

Lucas POV

My hand is moving the crayon over the paper. The voices in my head are telling it what to draw. I don't even know myself what I draw before it's finished. It's my way to speak, since my lips won't move. I've tried, but they just won't obey.

From the corner of my eyes I see the two men that asked my mom about dad's death. The one was quite nice but still my lips wouldn't move. The tall one is talking to my mom. The nice one comes strolling over. I hope he doesn't want me to talk. What if I still can't bring my lips to move? My hand moves faster over the picture and I concentrate on finding out what I'm drawing.

"How's it going?" he asks and kneels down next to me. I try to ignore him so I won't have to try and speak and he picks up a toy soldier. I can see he's saying more but my ears are buzzing and I don't hear a thing he says. The buzzing stops when he picks up a crayon himself and sits next to me and starts to draw.

"You know, I'm thinking you can hear me, you just don't want to talk. I don't know exactly what happened to your dad, but I know it was something real bad. I think I know how you feel. When I was your age, I saw something."

Sure, I can hear you just fine. But it's not like I don't want to talk. I just can't. It's almost like I forgot how to do it. And yes, what I saw was real bad. What did you see?

"Anyway. Well, maybe you don't think anyone will listen to you, or, uh... or believe you. I want you to know that I will. You don't even have to say anything. You could draw me a picture about what you saw that day, with your dad, on the lake. Okay, no problem. This is for you."

He holds out his picture of... stick figures? Seriously? Hmm, sure nobody will listen to me. I don't speak so how could they listen?

He points to his paper. "This is my family. That's my dad. That's my mom. That's my geek brother, and that's me." He pauses. I see the picture but I don't look at it. He sighs.

"All right, so I'm a sucky artist. I'll see you around, Lucas."

He drops the paper next to me and gets up to go. Don't go! I'm trying to speak. Really. I just forgot how to do it. I pick up his drawing to look at it and all of a sudden my hands want to draw something new.

The nice man is standing by the tall one and my mom again, talking. My hands are flying across my paper drawing out what I see in front of my mind's eye. When I'm done I get up and walk over to the small group. This picture is for the nice man. He didn't pressure me to talk. I think he really understood.

"Hey sweetie," my mom says, smiling sadly.

I hold out my picture to the nice man. He takes a look at it, then looks at me.

"Thanks. Thanks, Lucas," he says, and I can hear he really means it.