Ever Fall [✔️ 2016]

Chapter 1

"Life is not meant to be measured by how long it is or what is accomplished in the meantime, but what one makes of it that makes it worth living."

It was a peaceful morning in which nothing could ever seem wrong. Among the evergreen forest's towering pines and firs and ceders, a thinning number of birds sang their morning songs to raise the slumbering sun from it's nightly depths.

In this forest was a cabin and in that cabin resided two people, a father and a son.

Now, the father was an honest man in his 30's maybe, working hard from his desk at home to keep his small family afloat while still keeping an eye on his ever restless son. For eight years now, he'd cared for the two of them tirelessly, sacrificing all but his life to do so. In honor of his late wife, he'd made it his goal in life to give his precious son the best life he could, safe and away from anyone who would prove a threat to that promise.

The son was 8 years old at best, with shaggy brown hair and bright, hazel eyes. He had a faint spattering of freckles across the pale bridge of his nose and cheekbones. He was a fanciful lad, who would go off for hours at a time exploring the great forest that surrounded the cabin like a great, swallowing sea.

There was only one dirt road connecting the cabin to any route that might lead to civilization, and that was a long driveway of a path that lead away from the front of the building southward, the opposite direction of where the son always loved to venture.

Out in the forest, he was an adventurer, a brave conquerer of lands far and wide. He was a valiant warrior, fighting his way through an unknown land, or a great dinosaur, stalking its next meal for the day.

The trees were his playmates, the sky and earth his canvas. Be it picking figures and creatures out of the clouds that rolled by, or etching a new Picasso into the dirt with a stick, there was never a lack of anything to do.

There were many times the boy was afraid that his dear friends felt neglected, however, even though he had no control over it.

See, there were some days when the son could not go outside and play, thus leaving his ancient play pals to play on their own without him or his direction.

With him laid up with a fever or whatever the doctor had declared him to have during one of his frequent visits, who was to tell the trees who was a guardian and who was a soldier? What about the fortifications of the castle walls or the battlements from which to engage the enemy?

Of course, this only frustrated the boy further that he could not go outside where the air smelled so fresh and the breeze felt so good against his skin. It made him always curse his feeble health and always want to get better, though things did not always work out that way.

Such unfortunate happenings were life, however, and the boy always knew he would be better soon and free to return to his sanctitude among the trees and other assorted undergrowth. Though feeble, his father had always commented on how strong he was.

"You're so strong, little bear," the man would say, ruffling his son's hair.

"Just like you, father," he would readily reply.

His father would smile sadly, knowingly, and nod.

"Yes, just like me."

The man always seemed somber when he said that, like there was much more he wasn't saying, but the son never payed it any heed since he did not know that his father was being secretive. Instead, he'd simply go back to playing whatever game his mind had thought up to keep him occupied while his father would sit at his desk and gaze into a picture frame that contained the photo of a woman.

The boy had never met her, though his father claimed that she was his mother. When he wasn't in the room, the son would get up and sneak over to look at the picture, trying to see and learn as much about what the woman looked like as possible. The topic pained his father and so he never brought it up anymore.

All he really knew was that she was very tired and sleeping in a little house underground. Why she would have a little house underground instead of living with them, he never understood, but guessed that the bed she was sleeping on must have been the most comfortable bed in the world, hence her staying there to sleep instead of here. He didn't know when she was going to wake up, but hoped that it would be a time he'd get to see her. She must have been very tired, since she still hadn't woken up for eight years now.

"Timothy!"

The brown haired boy was startled from his daydreaming of his home and family, looking away from the window he'd been gazing out of for the past who-knows-how-long. Once he was sure his father had actually called him and it wasn't just a figment of his imagination, he hopped off of the window seat and walked into the office room.

It held a few bookshelves along the far wall, a couch against another, and a small desk and chair. Papers were strewn about everywhere on the floor and desk, his father sitting right in the middle of it all. Every foot or so there would be a gap in the papers where one must have been taken and moved elsewhere.

Such was his father's job, though it made little to no sense to Timothy. As far as he was concerned, his father was excellent at organizing and reorganizing papers such as these. He was some strange word that the boy always had trouble saying correctly.

Arthur? No, that sounded wrong in the beginning. Auther? No, his father always put a flair on the end.

Author. That was it.

The work of an "Author" was strange, indeed, with much mystery wrapped in their workings. One time Timothy had sat and watched his father on one of his organizing sprees for an entire day. Most of the time the man would just sit cross-legged in the middle of the room with papers spread around him to where it looked like a typhoon had ransacked the place and just stare and stare and stare. Eventually, he would suddenly straighten his back and lean over to pick up a paper, holding it delicately between his fingers before either setting it back down disappointedly or moving it to a new location with a hopeful look on his face. They weren't blank, of course. His father wasn't crazy. They had lots and lots of doodles, scrawling notes, and inked in characters that Timothy could never decipher no matter how hard he tried. It wasn't his fault; he just couldn't read.

A shame, really, for his father was a well known artist of eloquence that many honored and envied for his skill with the English language. To Timothy, however, he was just him: his father.

Even now, with his brows knit firmly together in concentration and his thin reading glasses perched precariously on his nose, the boy saw the same man who'd just as soon whisk him up and twirl him around while laughing his deep, reassuring laugh. He liked it when he did that. He always seemed so happy.

"Ah, there you are."

The dark haired man had finally looked up after setting one of his many papers down and smiled an aged, worn smile at his son.

"I was just making sure where you were. No outside games today, remember?"

Timothy nodded, grumpy at the mentioning of his temporary imprisonment.

"Not until tomorrow, Doctor said," he said quietly. He felt fine, though the white clad man that his father called a doctor had apparently been worried he was feverish the last time he'd visited.

"Two days rest inside," he'd declared before leaving. "He shouldn't be allowed outside until the day after those two days are up."

But now the second day was drawing to a close, and Timothy was excited for tomorrow to come. He'd be able to go outside again and explore once more. It'd rained the whole day so far, so the forest would be fresh and new and clean. What new things would he find? He couldn't wait to find out.