Ever Fall [✔️ 2016]

Chapter 6

Days passed, and Timothy's affection for Sophie grew. He didn't know what it would have been like for him to have had a sister, but he suspected that the love he felt for her was exactly where it would have gone had he had one. Being an only child didn't matter to him; it never had, but now he was grateful to have an actual, living, breathing friend.

Every day he could, he'd go out to their poond and play imagination games with her while he rested from their running. Slowly, as time dragged on, he started running farther and farther and the doctor visits grew fewer and fewer. He was starting to feel stronger, sharper, more capable as a young boy. He could lift some tree limbs with less difficulty than he ever had before and heft rocks he never could have otherwise.

Sophie seemed to be helping the lad's spiritual and physical health, something that astounded his father to no end since he had no clue that his son was friends with a little girl out in the woods.

"These woods have to be some kind of magical," he'd mused quietly under his breath one of the many times he'd checked on his son during the night. It was a ritual now, one he could not skip over even once lest his paranoia drive him insane.

For Timothy, it was the greatest thing in the world, Sophie was the greatest thing in the world. She showed him feats of imagination he'd never imagined before and he would show her things about the forest she'd never known. It was a symbiotic relationship driven out of necessity, but had grown to be so much more than that. Now, it was a kinship between the two.

It was in this time that Timothy grew more against the idea of death. You couldn't watch a mother deer after it was dead; it was disgraceful and boring. Would he be left alone like the deer's fawn if Sophie left the world first? Would he leave her if it was vice versa? He didn't like those options, for either one left one of them lonely and alone again.

He found through this that getting close to someone and loving them meant that along with the joy and happiness that they bring you, you also have to come to terms with the saddness and the hurt of loosing them at the same time. The complex thought wasn't something Timothy wanted to do and it gave him a head pain, and so he decided to not think about it until that day indeed did come.

Because it eventually would.

But until then, he was content to stay with her in the forest, running and racing among his ancient friends and the low-lying shrubbary. He would take that much more pleasure in his games with Sophie and be sure to make the most of it.

Because he didn't have a magic watch that told him when he would loose someone, he didn't know when that time would be.

He didn't want it to come, not ever. The little world he'd built inside the forest with Sophie with their imaginary salamander dragons, dragonvines, griffons, and so on had literally become his world. It was all he really cared about, his father safe inside their cabin so he didnt have to worry. This little world inside of this vast forest was all Timothy had and he'd never give that up without a fight.

He'd fight all his life against the strongest adversary to maintain this, but every hero grows tired with time.

Until a time like that came, he'd be content with what he had, running through the forest with his friend, giggling and laughing at the top of his little lungs.

Here, nothing could bring him down.

Here, he would never, ever fall.