“Do you like it?” she asks, eyes shining with excitement. It is the first place she has had that is truly her own, and her enjoyment of this fact would be humorous if it wasn’t so sincere.

He looks around, facing her, taking in the worn furniture and careful decoration. He knows that most of it has come used from various relatives of hers, but she has taken everything of theirs and made it uniquely hers. He is proud of her, but also sad that there is nothing here that reflects his contribution to her life. It would be impossible, since her family does not know about them.

As he turns around to take in the rest of the room—mostly for her sake—a small object catches his eye. On a little shelf next to the window rests a paper owl, folded and charmed so that it had flown about the room for a few hours after its creation. He knows this because he made it for her a long time ago, intending for her to unfold it and read the message inside. But she was so enamored of it, so taken with the thought of his small present, that she never opened it. He smiles, but she does not see.

“I like it very much,” he responds after a moment.

One day, she will open the little owl.

--

“That’s how you feel?”

He clenches his hand, a reflexive gesture he picked up years ago. “That’s the only way it can be right now. I’m not saying forever, but—”

He stops, in order to duck the shoe that comes flying at him. It’s his own shoe, and its mate comes quickly after it, along with several other objects that he recognizes as things he’d given her. She is shouting, but he doesn’t make out all the words in his haste to avoid the flying objects.

There is one thing he understands, though. “Get out!” she screams, stopping short of throwing her favorite lamp at him. Suddenly, she sucks in a shaky breath and collapses boneless onto the nearby sofa. In a soft, broken voice, she continues, “I was all right with you never saying... it to me, because I believe actions speak louder then words.” She looks up at him, and he feels a nearly physical pain lance through him with her gaze. “But this is your child, and you won’t even…” A sob breaks through her words. He finds that he cannot speak.

After a moment, she stands, and softy mutters, “Goodbye”. She walks away, locking herself in the bedroom. When she hears the door close behind him, she begins to sob.

Later that night, after she has cried herself numb, she enters the room strewn with all the things that meant something to them. A bolt of panic shoots through her as she sees her precious little paper owl lying crumpled and smashed on the floor. She feels the tears start again as she kneels down next to it, softly touching its broken body, as though it were a real animal. That’s when she notices the ink on what had been an interior fold. Gingerly, she picks it up and reveals it.

There, in the little bird that had stood for years as testimony to his presence, she finds words written in his hand.

Love you.

--

He knew the exact moment that his world shifted. Time slowed to a crawl as he watched the ruffled pillow arc to the ground, crushing the origami figure he’d crafted years ago. Before he knows it, he is alone in the room.

He looks down at the mangled little bird lying forlornly on the floor. The revelation sings through his veins.

He is like the bird. He is broken, damaged; he is nothing.

They are better off without him.

--

Those of you who are left will waste away in the lands of their enemies because of their sins; also because of their fathers' sins they will waste away.
Leviticus 26:39

Once upon a time there lived a little boy, who had the best dad in the whole world. He bought him toys and read him stories. He taught him how to fly his training broom. He let him eat sweets when mum wasn’t looking.

But little boys have to grow up, and growing up is hard. The world of his father was comforting, it was familiar in its static certainty. But that world was gone, sunk under the weight of its own darkness. He was the scion of an accursed house; his blood ran with that of a traitor, and his name was vilified.

The world was changed, and he was a relic of the past. She belonged the new order. The offering of it to him was in her very gaze. But how was he to accept it, when he was so tainted?

He wanted to give his own child sweets in secret, and to buy presents for her. He wanted to teach her who he was and to help in forming her identity, but how was he to that when everything was gone, and wrong? In resurrecting the past in her, he would be visiting his sins upon her. And that was not something he wanted to live with.