Engraver

[Kotorikun]

[Declyn continued from Evergreen]

What is family?

Is it people connected by blood, by bonds, by something else entirely?

Sometimes, you walk the same path, but in opposite directions, and even if you try to walk after them they will walk through a door you cannot go through.

Sometimes, you meet someone and it's so clear that, on some level, you belong together. Life was full of it. Take care of yourself. Take care of your friends. Take care of your family. Take care of nature. Take care of your body. Take care of your heart. Take care of your mind.

Take care. Be there.

The TV echoed in the other room along with his father and Alice’s, his father’s girlfriend, voice while Declyn checked the timer on the oven that would soon give him hot and crispy potato wedges. He’d usually skip dinner but today he allowed himself to self-indulge in something he’d been craving for a while. He was musing about the day before, Alice’s birthday, including the new faces he had met during the pretty bog-standard birthday lunch, Alice’s appreciation after he had given her her gift, and his father’s smile that seemed more than happy. Seeing him like this has been, was, and always will be nice.

The boy hopped down from the bar stool and walked over to one of the cupboards when he was suddenly interrupted.

“Declyn!,” his father called. “I think you might like this.” Some show about distant tribes.

“Coming.” He was in the process of taking a plate out and putting it on the table to have it ready in advance. The timer said five more minutes. A quick glance through the oven glass to make sure everything looked alright and then he went on his way.

Might as well pass the time in the living room and join them for a family-like evening.

[Declyn continued here]