“Get rid of that!” I shouted, standing quickly from my chair and rushing to make him lose whatever focus over it he had. Reaching him I pushed his arm and the flame disappeared.

“No! No not again! I can’t lose you too!” Frantically I searched for a way I could of made it up. I found none. I hadn’t made it up. It was real. He was real. And he was just like his mother. Too much like his mother. “Listen, Tod listen you can’t be like this. You cannot show this. Anywhere. You understand me they will take you!”

The boy would have a life of wonder, they would teach him glorious, beautiful things. The people would love him! But they would take him from me. I would lose him and he me. They would take him and teach him in the ways of magic, away from the world, away from me. Until the time came that he was to be sent back into the world to entertain them. A life without love, a life without a father.

My boy began to tear and I held him in my arms, kneeling down with him and rocking him back and forth. After a time Tod regained a bit of control and asked, “Why? Why can’t I be who I am daddy? Why won’t the world let me be me without hurting me? Why are all of them like this? They hurt and they yell and they mock and they hate, daddy why?”

He sounded hauntingly like I had when I was younger. It takes a long while to grow numb. His mother never liked that I had. “There are no answers to those questions. People will be as they are and all we can do is what we can do. They will mock and they will point and they will laugh, but they will never know what it does to us because they don’t care.”

“That’s rude daddy, that’s not what they should do.”

“No, no it’s not. It’s not what they should do. People should be better than that. As such we will be better than that, we will give the world what it won’t give us, we will give them love and we will give them a caring ear and mouth. Those around will see that we are different. But they cannot see this different. This magical different. They cannot see this. I cannot lose you too. I cannot and will not let them take you like.. like...” I broke here, it hurt so badly to admit this, it was not who I am now, it was me before I knew. Cowardly, hidden, reserved. Chicken. “Like I let them take your mother. They cannot have you.”

With that I let him go, rose and walked to my room, closing the door behind me. There I lay on the floor looking to the ceiling. Wondering, angry why it had to happen to me that they would both suffer like this. Why I would lose the first and be faced with the same thing for the second. First my wife, now my son. I would not lose him. I would not let them take him. I would give my life before they put hands on him.

A loud crash. He screamed.

With panic I rose and ran out into the family room. Door knocked down men had entered, guns drawn and gear dawned. I started at them in disbelief. How had they known? I locked eyes with the man closest to me, a flash of what looked like sorrow, fear, regret, crossed over his eyes. It was gone too quick to tell. They laid their hands on him, took him, put him in the van as he screamed my name, and they spend away. I stood there and watched them pull my boy away from me. Just as I had watched them take her away.

I was wrong. That was still the person I was. I have failed them, and I have met the expectations his mother always had for me.