Timing Klaus

[06.04.00] » by Nik

This is a day like many others, and unlike so many before these days. My father, Kiba, is here today. He visits when I feel confused, or lonely.

I am a sensitive boy, often called by pet names and shown delicacy in mockery, but I am more than just that. I am a haunted boy. It may show in the dark beneath my eyes, or the faint voice I've grown with. I am the way I am without decision, and to he who mattered the most, the way I am mattered not at all.

I have often been teased for my pale skin, frail ways and my dark curtain of hair. Kiba always proudly displayed me as his son, despite our differences. Our blood was the same, regardless of my penchant for flowers and shy acts. Father always said I was beautiful because I was intelligent, and he gruff because he was made to hero a war.

That he did.

On some battlefield, there was a war. The name and time I don't remember, the place is overshadowed by the wind that washed the fields we fought on. The playful breeze that at first bannered my hair carried away the last breath of my father. I do remember the fine lines around his eyes as he smiled briefly at me, and the draining sparkle contained there. The wind was taking him elsewhere, and leaving me alone against blood-stained green and fleeting intelligence. This is the part where I lost it. The memory exists only in this way.

Others explain my strength as stoic, my face determined as I continued without my anchor. I wasn't me, but no one believes that. As my father was sung the hero, flat on land that he died for, and would soon be buried beneath, I left me alone. He left me alone. I don't blame him for doing what he'd planned all along, and I envy his adventurous spirit, but I do miss him.

Considering these things I try to piece myself whole again, but something prevents this. Someone loves me and yet I can't return this sentiment. Someone feels complete by my side--and yet I still splinter. I can't go on like this, without him. Perhaps I was too coddled; too loved.

I can think of him in the most valiant poses--on rocky cliff edges, before pounding surf, beneath an unforgiving siege, but his face escapes me. The eyes that look up at me from way down low are all I remember, those lust lost eyes--gone with some well-placed arrow, or genius stroke of sword. In a strong, handsome face; a jaw, a brow, a nose; I remember only the eyes. His eyes. Green like the grass he grows above him; green like my own.

I've been told that past things can not be undone, but I've seen it occur before. Someone reminds me that Kiba is honored in death, and though I nod my head, I long for a different answer. Stoic, they remind me, I remind them of him. He was stoic: a solid figure against a stampede; spirited strength against hardship; intelligence in the riot of war.

Intelligence in the riot of war.

I give my best to my father. May he forever rest with my eyes on his, and my heart awaiting my return to his side.

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Note: I know the actual circumstance differs from what I wrote, but I wanted this to be spoiler-free. Thank you for reading.