Chapter 8 .:Arrow:.

.:Arrow:.
Identity: Rook Shaw
Date: April 2nd, 2022

As soon as I walk in the front door, Evi runs up, crashing into my legs, her little arms immediately around my waist. "Papa," She jubilantly cries as she looks up at me, her bright pink eyes wide, her curls springing around her small pale face.
"Hey, there," I put my hand on her dark hair, brushed silky and soft by Kestrel in the early morning. With Evi still attached to me, I step to the side and hang my coat up, allowing the front door to be pulled open more broadly. The lanky young boy standing there steps into the house, deliberately. I reach past him and yell out the door to his father, "Thanks, Hunter," before he drives off. I slam the door shut and look back to the boy, who's still standing there uselessly, his hands drawn up to his chest. "Take off your shoes, Milo," I tell him. I still have to tell him this every time he comes over; even after years he still acts as if this is his first visit here. He dutifully obeys and holds his hands behind his back, blinking.
Evi leans backwards, her hands clasped behind me. "Hi, Milo," She greets him, softly swaying her body back and forth. "Want to play?"
"Um..." Milo glances around helplessly around the room.
Kestrel, standing in a doorway across the room, sees and recognizes his blatant incapability. She leans back and calls, "Arrow!" down the hallway. Then she turns back to us and smiles. "Haven't seen you in a while, Milo. I didn't know you were coming tonight."
"Oh," Milo says nervously, bringing his hands back up near his chest again. He blinks at her. His anxious eyes are a soft hazel color. "Is it okay? I..."
"No, no, it's fine. Of course," Kestrel assures him, smiling.
Evi has by now ceased her undulating motion and is now leaning back, clinging to me, gazing over her shoulder at Kestrel. She blinks before letting me go and running across the room, past Milo, who steps back cautiously from her, and joins Kes in the doorway, holding tight to her wrist with a little pale hand.
Kes blinks at Evi and looks up to me. "How was your day?"
"Fine," I shrug. "A little busy. How about you?"
She mirrors my shrug, crossing her arms. "We went on a walk. Nothing much."
Evi tugs on Kestrel's sleeve. "Mommy." She is gazing up with those wide, pleading eyes, specious but always irresistible. Kestrel sighs as she picks up Evi and swings her over onto her hip. Pleased, Evi smiles and leans on Kestrel's shoulder. Evi's about eight now--approximately, their aging is frequently abnormal, but in chronologically normal terms, eight is about correct--and still both of us carry her around like she's much younger. It isn't something we talk about. It's not something we expected. That's just how it is. That's how it is with her, always.
Arrow enters the room now, his dark gray eyes typically blase and perceptive, walking past Kestrel and Evi while acting like they aren't there, something he has perfected; the ability to walk through the house and observe everyone else as a translucent, innocuous ghost. He looks up as he goes through the doorway, flicking his pale blond hair to the side. His eyes fall on Milo, he blinks. Immediately, like a magnet, Milo comes over to Arrow, and, like a release, his arms relax at his sides.
Arrow looks at him directly and blinks. "I didn't know you were coming today."
"Sorry," Milo says, smiling. Timid by nature, subservient by Arrow's unspoken request, Milo is temperamentally eager to please but also very satiable. I suppose that's why he and Arrow go good together; Milo is looking for someone to follow and Arrow enjoys having someone look up to him. This is purely figurative; although a year younger, Milo stands about four or five inches taller than Arrow. Standing next to each other, Milo hunches his shoulders and tries to look smaller.
With no more words than that, the boys go off to Arrow's room, leaving Evi, Kes and I alone in the living room. Milo and Arrow have always been able to communicate well with each, interpersonally, something that neither of them are very good at with the rest of the world; Milo because of his timidity, Arrow because of his distinct and arcane view of the world.
From across the room, Kestrel's eyes are focused on mine, deep and dark. They have that cold backlighting that I've become so used to. It seems permanent. Usually she can hide it; Kestrel has a way of hiding things that makes her eyes so unreflective and impenetrable. The way this coldness looks is an exhausted acceptance. A hopeless acquiescence. It is paired, as it usually is when I see it, with Evanthe's varied existence; she has her arms around Kestrel's shoulders, her pale little fingers toying with Kes' hair, her round pink eyes gazing off as she gives her perpetual little-kid smile. She swings her feet a little, her legs wrapped around Kes' waist.
I want to be here for Kestrel. I don't know how. I want to be more present, more visible, somehow...somehow I want that defeated cold look in her eyes to go away. I wish I could fix it somehow. This is inevitably impossible. I mouth her name. Her eyes blink back at me, still caught on mine for a minute. And then she turns, Evi still in her arms, into another room, turning her back to me. Her shoulders are broad, beautiful, lightly scattered with freckles. Her pale hair falls down her back, lying between her shoulder blades. I watch her silhouette move around in the other room, peering through the arch of the doorway, listening to the sound of her footsteps. After a few minutes, she starts whispering to Evi. Words I can't hear. Once, I think I hear her say Swift's name. It still strikes me. But Kestrel says these kinds of things to Evi, in soft surreptitious whispers, all the time. Knowing she can't understand. Or thinking it.
This is when I leave. Evanthe is already beginning to drone off to sleep, lulled by Kestrel's whispers and steady pacing footsteps.
I walk down the dimly-lit hallway, and my footsteps echo. I carefully watch the shadows on the wall. There is one strip of brighter light streaming across the floor, the dust swimming in the air clearly visible. It comes from Arrow's room, the slightly-ajar door letting free the illumination--like a crack in a dam that holds back water. The light is pouring out, a selective flood. I linger behind the door for a moment, listening to Arrow and Milo's soft voices. The words sound slurred, indistinct, from where I stand. In a moment I step closer, trying to be silent, and I tilt and lean my head forward to look through the opening of the door. And then, there he is; Arrow; my son.
The room is brightly lit on one side of the room and dimly lit on the other, Arrow's bedside lamp chasing the shadows to the opposite wall. The boys are bathed in this synthetic white-yellow glow from the lightbulb, a vessel of illumination. Arrow sits crouched on one side of a chessboard, opposite from Milo, bent over it in concentration. Milo's slump-shouldered back is facing me. His knees are pulled up to his chest, his arms wrapped around his legs. They are talking but not exactly looking at each other, focusing on the pieces, letting their subtle thoughts be played out in the slow, careful game that is of their style. Only their arms extend as they sit on either side of the chessboard, both of them enclosed within the patch of light, both of them blond-haired; Milo's is downy but thick, always appearing half-ruffled, a subtle not-quite-dirty blond color; Arrow's hair is lighter, a soft bleached blond. The strands that fall around his face are catching the light, and his hair looks ethereal, wispy. His hair is so pale that the light passes through it like evanescent smoke. But after years of paternally running my fingers through Arrow's hair, I know that it's of perfect medium thickness, just as Kestrel's hair is. Both of them have just a slight wave in the tips of their hair; a subtle, eye-catching half-curl. Nothing like Evanthe's dark, thick, intense ringlets. Arrow has a much softer presence.
I watch him there, his lips moving around barely-comprehensible words. He peers down at the board, blinks. He lifts a hand and shifts a knight into a different position. "Your move." He murmurs softly. With one breath, he unconsciously blows at a strand of his pale hair, moving it out of his face. I try to step closer, to get a better view of him. My shoulder touches the door.
Slowly Arrow looks up. His hands are still pressed to the wood floor, his shoulders shrugged up as he leans onto his arms. He's not looking at me, exactly, he's looking through the space between the door and the wall, he's looking right past me, or perhaps he has the concentration to look right through and is gazing at whatever is behind me. Whatever Arrow is looking at, I can see his eyes now, perfectly clear, as they catch the light of the lamp. His gaze is something deeply ambiguous, enigmatic, a puzzle, a maze. His eyes are stone-colored, deep gray. In the light I can see the usually covert lighter flecks in his eyes, tiny pale-gray dots around his black-hole pupils.
Looking at him, I can't help but think; Was Arrow always like this?
It feels, somehow, so magnificently mendacious. Maybe Arrow was always like this. Or maybe he undertook a dramatic, emphatic change and we were too caught up to notice it in the making.  And instead, it has been slowly revealing itself to us, step-by-step, subtly and insidiously, until it has come to the point where we realize that we don't know our son anymore.
Arrow blinks, and suddenly he is looking at me. I step back, touching the doorknob. "Goodnight, boys," I tell them as I shut the door with a click.