GET SOME REST TALL CHILD | intro

[MYERS]

[align=center][div style="text-align:justify;width:55%;font-family:verdana;"]The faintest notion of unfamiliarity behind Ahab's eyes is enough to make him feel guilt in the deepest recesses of his soul. He doesn't remember him. His own grandson. He recalls the tree hollow and the little bodies crowding for their mother's milk, and out of all the faces and names, only a few remain in The Typhoon for him to dote on, to mark in his mind as real. And the grandfather he speaks of is not him, for he holds no dragon's scale and had none to do with the return of this child - which means that Jaime forgot about him, too.

It's the same hollow feeling that comes over him when his own daughter's name will not rise to his mind. The forgetting - it makes him feel sick, both of mind and soul. Another side effect of his longsuffering past, he supposed.

Ahab forces down this bitter thought, pushes the unfamiliarity deep and replaces it with the same happiness he tries to show Roan, Roxanne, the rest of his adopted kin. It's a shallow smile, but they're used to the uncertainty - Jaime would come around to the uneasiness someday, too. "Lost," he remarks, turning over the thought in his skull. (It was, if he would allow himself the thought, yet another fault on his part for not taking a head count.) "Are you hurt? What happened to you while you were gone, hm?"