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[Christopher Sherwood]

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Christopher was very much accustomed to the comings, and leavings of many different people.

Some came to be with his father. He imagined he was well liked as far as that went. Arahim smiled and laughed alot.

Some, however, came to see him, and when they did, his father remained silent, and did not smile as he used to.

They tended to be old. Much older than anyone else could be, Christopher thought. And the things they said to him, or to one another, he never understood, even though the talks always ended in one them asking him,

"Do you understand?"

Sometimes they said nothing...but even then, he had always heard them.

These weeks were different. Markedly so.

His father's smile seemed rarer, and so far away. A ghost of what it was.

They saw less and less people right until dinnertime when he brought Christopher back to camp, with the dimming of Day's lamp.

So, stalwart and determined, Christopher held Arahim's hand during their long walks together. Lending him his wordless support, and pointing out things of interest he saw with boundless enthusiasm. The boy also took great pains to just be silly when the mood called for it.

Under the Autumn sun, they could smile, and forget together...until later, which Christopher just -knew- was looming ahead, but with no clear sense of when.

Things were changing, and he hoped his private hope that when later came, his father would not find himself so alone.

At nights, Arahim walked under Night's starry parasol by himself. Coming to bed much, much later as if racing the pearl limned Dawn.

He always looked tired.

Christopher, eyes shut tight, would fill his mind with the secret voices from far and near while his father was out. Listening to a world he may never see or know, but wishing oneday to.

Quiet, and wrapped comfortably in the welcoming dark.

Alone in his bed until Sleep found him to claim.

[Christopher Sherwood]

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So many of the voices were sad.

So many lost.

In a world that Christopher recognized on a very real level to be larger than he could explain, so many seemed so all alone.

And at moments like this, sleep never found him.

Even as sadness, and raw empathy pushed him to send his own voice out into the ether with childlike words of comfort, the crushing vastness he found himself within shouted him down, and froze him out.

The voices, the people, like marble statues lined into infinty, and untouchable.

His tiny voice, alone and echoing, unheard amid the World's damnable choir of life.

[Christopher Sherwood]

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Other children were a rarity for Christopher.

There were some at some of the camps he and his father had stopped by, but very often they were older.

And wilder.

It was at times like this, as Arahim encouraged him to go make friends, that the lonely uniqueness that hung upon Christopher like a rain laden jacket, forced its way to the forefront of his thoughts.

A shy and silent smile was the most he could muster. His deep green eyes watching the ease in which other kids fell into a natural pattern of play, and in a larger sense, finding the beginnings of where they belonged.

And though surely no child ever stopped to take note upon it, nor felt odd being around him, Christopher could not escape the sense that this comfort of just being would ever be just beyond his reach.