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“Papa?”
Caleb looked up from his book, already smiling. He wondered how many times that exact word had been said, with the exact same questioning, curious cadance, in the past fifteen minutes. It was likely coming close to thirty.
He wondered if he’d ever get tired of it. He couldn’t imagine a possible future where he did.
“Yes Trinket?” he performed his part of the script without hesitation, his tone patient and prompting, wanting to coax free the question that clearly sat on the tip of his son’s tongue.
Trinket was just a little way off. His little toddler legs still seemed too small and unsure to support the rest of him but he pottered on manfully across the sand, refusing any offers of help, insisting he could do it himself. His tail helped him balance, sticking out of the specially sewn hole in the waistband of his trousers, swaying and trembling with excitement and curiosity that never seemed to lessen even a little.
Caleb trusted him but still, he sat cross legged on the little bluff of grass poised and ready to jump up if his son took a tumble.
“Why is the sea blue, Papa?”
Caleb chuckled, “It reflects blue light, liebling. It likes all the other colours so it keeps those for itself but the blue light, it doesn’t like so it sends it back into our eyes.”
“Oh,” Trinket nodded as if that made perfect sense. He stomped his feet lightly and rapidly on the ground, like a seagull trying to trick worms to the surface. Caleb thought it was just because he liked the feeling of the sand between his little lavender toes.
“I like blue, Papa,” he announced after his dance was complete, “I wouldn’t send the blue light away.”
Caleb smiles, “I like blue too. You and me, we have blue eyes.”
“The same!” Trinket chriped, grinning widely as if that was the best thing in the whole world. He made Caleb think that it definitely was.
He continued down the beach for a little while so Caleb snuck a dive back down into his book. He’d gone through all of the intense, wracking nerves of a new parent in a very short space of time which led to a few week’s worth of minor insanities. Like how he’d get up at all hours and patter along to the nursery, dodging the cracked floorboards that would cause a splinter, just to see if Trinket was still there, still breathing. Like how he’d fly into a panic if he saw Trinket reaching up to grab something off a too high self, head filled with horrific visions of it all coming crashing down on his poor head.
So many times he’d catch Molly looking at him with a soft, mildly exhausted expression. An expression of having been there before.
He was better now. Every day he settled more into his new role as a father, grew to love it that little bit more even when he thought it was impossible for his heart to grow any bigger.
And he’d learnt a lot about the durability of toddlers.
“Papa?”
There it was again. Caleb grinned and tucked his usual bookmark into place.
“Yes, Trinket?”
Trinket waddled up the bluff, opening his pudgy hand to reveal a stone. It was as perfect as a pebble could be, stripes of different shades of orange caught up in its surface, sized perfectly to fit in a little palm.
“Where did this stone come from?” Trinket asked, his brow furrowed in extreme confusion. He always felt things so deeply. Fear, anger, love, happiness, it was all magnified on his little face.
Caleb stroked the surface of the pebble, feeling how smooth it was, how it held a little heat from the sun. It was evening time now, the whole beach wrapped in the gentle cool of the last few hours of daylight, but it had been scorching the rest of the day.
“They come from all over, Trinket. The sea picks them up and carries them to new places,” he said, smiling admiringly. He loved how being with his son could make him see fascination in something as simple as a pebble.
Trinket pooched his lips, “I know, papa. But where did this one come from?”
Caleb blinked and laughed, putting his hand lightly on the top of his son’s head, “Well, I can’t be sure exactly, Trinket! There’s hundreds and hundreds of variables. There’s the weather, the tide, the currents…”
Trinket seemed unable to hold that thought in his head, he rejected it outright, tossing it aside without a care, “Papa knows everything.”
Caleb felt a lump in his throat, one he had to quickly swallow away. He couldn’t imagine having that level of faith in himself, but he saw it there, shining in his son’s eyes. And seeing it planted a small seed of something inside himself, a beginning. Something that, with time and nurturing, could become feeling content being Caleb Widogast.
He took the stone from Trinket and held it up to his ear. He was quiet for a few moments before nodding and mumbling, “Yes...ah, yes...okay, I see…”
Trinket’s eyes went wide and shone with excitement, hunkering down next to his papa eagerly.
“Well, this is an excellent find, Trinket,” Caleb declared, “This stone has come all the way from the Elvenpeak mountains, far away from here. It used to live on the very tip top of the mountain before rain and wind swept it into the river. Then a mama otter found it and used it as part of her nest for her babies for a little while. But when the babies grew up and didn’t need the nest anymore, the stone fell back into the river and wandered along to the sea. It stayed in the sea for a little while before deciding it was time to move on. So it swept its way up here to Foamside.”
Trinket was practically vibrating with exhilaration by the time the tale was done, eyes wide with awe.
Caleb gently set the pebble back into his hand, closing his fingers over it, “Now I think what the stone needs is a nice home to rest after such a long journey. Say, someone’s bedside table?”
“Oooh!” Trinket throws his hand in the air, bouncing on his tiptoes, “Mine! Me!”
“The stone would love that,” Caleb grinned, nodding with perfect confidence.
Trinket giggled and happily tucked the stone into the front pocket of his dungarees, “Safe an sound!”
“Safe and sound,” he agreed, gently brushing Trinket’s locks out of his face. Molly’s colour in his style.
He thought of the fading sun on his back. He thought of a slowly rolling ocean with thousands and thousands of pebbles with their own journeys trapped inside them. He thought of a young boy who had the same eyes as he did and smiled and trusted him.
Safe and sound.