Keepsakes

by Rosaura Wells

“Stars!”

“No, Jacob; they are stones.”

This was their first visit to the Crystal Cavern; what a worthy destination for a Vincent and Jake trip. It had been a long journey; but Jacob liked travels, just like his father. Even now, when his little eyes should have been closing in exhaustion, they were wide open, as his arms, as if embracing the beauty.

“Here I found the crystal in your mother’s necklace.”

Jacob looked up, his hand reaching the place where the crystal laid: over his chest, where his parents’ love would protect him. Vincent nodded.

“It had been a year since she first came into my life, when I first traveled here. I wanted a gift for her, something of my world to find a place in hers, close to her, as I wished to do myself.”

The boy seemed to listen, immobile; but when the voice stopped, he just withheld a moment. The cave had its own charm for him. He still wavered a little as he ran closer to the walls. The father’s heart constricted in fear, his muscles hardened, but he didn’t call out. His need to protect his only son, born of his only love, was great. It had almost engulfed him the first months, when Catherine’s lost was closer. It still won, eventually.

Long strides covered the distance. His son looked straight at him as he kneeled.

“You saved months of your mother’s life just being inside her. When I lost her, you were all I had. You saved my life and my sense, just by existing. Can you imagine how much we love you?”

The boy just stared. He was simply too young to understand such words, and his father knew it; but he also knew that not all things had to wait. Words of love must never wait.

“I want you to remember it, Jacob” The father looked deep into the son’s eyes; his eyes were precious stones. “You are, among several things, the keepsake of our love.”

The boy looked at him, enthralled in his father’s voice; but once again, as the father stood, the spell was broken.

The child ran through the chamber and reached a bright green stone –the same color Catherine’s eyes used to be. Vincent removed it from the rock.

Jacob was rapt.

“Now you have a star in your hand.”

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