Blacktail Deer Plateau If I die Young

Grayday rarely left his son's side these days. When he did, it was only for an hour or two at a time, and only to stretch his legs and perhaps bring back something for the ailing boy to eat.

He'd been thinking a lot about death, lately. About Sunny. About Sunny dying. About his own mortality. Sometimes, he liked to imagine what Aditya had told him - that they'd all been written into the same stories before, and that their authors would write them into new stories when they died in this one. It would be nice, he thought, to meet his children again. Perhaps Sunny would be his brother in another life. Perhaps Dawn would one day be his mother. He didn't know how these things worked, but he knew that his family's ties were too strong to be done away with by death.

Thy will be done, he prayed. Whatever it is you are doing, whoever you are... just don't let Sunny suffer too much longer. Love my boy the way I have been written to. Idly, he wondered if the same one who wrote his fate also wrote for his sons and daughters. If not, could they communicate? Did the gods speak to each other, or only to their subjects in the dead of the night?

"I'm here, Sunny," said Grayday, as he often did, these days. "Dad's here."