Silver knows his father is Different.

He's known it in ways that he cannot quite articulate to the other children when they play in the forest— they seem to pick up on it anyways and give him a wide berth nonetheless.

His father's eyes are a bit too large, illuminated in a color of the dying sunset that he's never seen replicated before but gives light to Silver's entire, measly world. His father's teeth are a bit too sharp, gleaming in the dark hole of his mouth when he tosses back his head and laughs uproariously at the things Silver says— they aren't really that funny, are they? Still, hearing his father laugh even if it is at his own expense hardly puts a damper on the warmth he feels in his chest.

His father's nails are a bit too long, pointed and dark with a polish that Silver has never seen him need to reapply, but they are the most wonderful headache soothers when Silver lies there in frustrated tears at his inability to stay awake, gently rubbing at his scalp in all the right ways to calm his lonely fears.

But these are all things that make his father, well, special. Things that Silver loves him for, identifies him by, would know him blindfolded and struck dumb if only by the lulling rumble of his father's voice that belies his rather youthful appearance.

Where the other children whisper of the long-haired monster in the woods, Silver giggles as his father indulges him to braid flowers into the flowing dark locks, the pinpricks of white petals like stars in an inky galaxy.

Where the adults murmur of the strange rumors they hear from their children about a boy known to be missing living in the dark forest, Silver kicks his feet happily at their dining table as his father serves him something simultaneously both scorching and all too wet, the idea of a family meal outweighing that of sheer inedibility. For the smile on his father's face— the real, fragile one— he'd eat platters of it, chattering away about his day while his father sucks lazily on something long and thin and white.

And where the elderly know in the chill of their bones, muttering prayers and locking their shutters tight, Silver crawls into bed alongside his father who's always so worrisomely cold and snuggles close to him, laying his head against a still chest. "You are my heart," his father had explained so simply when Silver had exclaimed with worry one day to not find that steady beat. "I did not know I was looking for one until I found you."

Yes, his father may be Different. But not, to Silver, in the ways that matter.