Chapter Text
The morning birds sing Philza to his feet. His bed creaked as he moved, disjointed feathers falling from his wings as the appendages lifted up. His center of gravity shifted as he stretched them out while staring out his bedroom window.
He was entranced with the break of dawn; how the colors painted the sky and illuminated his face through a pane of glass. Mornings were always hard, but the pressure got easier when one woke up to such brilliance every now and then.
Phil crept through the hallway of his one-story cabin, past the room of his son, Wilbur. It was an older home with a lot of history, which is what drew Phil to it in the first place. He loved stories-- he loved to tell them and he loved to hear them. It was a hobby both he and Wilbur enjoyed immensely.
The story of their house was as followed: a man came upon a piece of land in an untamed forest and decided he would make a home out of it. All the wood, the stone, the sand that made the glass, the metal-- every material came straight from the forest. When he finished, he invited his youngest daughter to move in with him-- the rest of his children had grown up and moved on with their lives, and the youngest daughter did not know better.
The man was a great traveler and an excellent builder, but he sorely lacked the skills of a father. Once moved in, the youngest daughter grew to resent her father’s absence, but felt she could not return to her mother since the youngest daughter had made a big show of going to live with her father, and her pride could not allow her disappointment to be a spectacle to her mother.
One evening, she had enough, and bludgeoned her father to death with his walking stick. She had been a completely different person from who she had been before-- but her father’s death seemed to be a moment of catharsis for her, just a bit unwanted. She cried over the loss and voluntarily became a recluse, learning all sorts of alchemy in order to bring her father back. It did not work, and she died alone in that house, the same as she lived. The bodies were discovered by one of her elder siblings, who had come to forgive the father for his negligence.
While Phil had never checked, he was told the bodies were buried not far from the house, still in the forest. It was quite the story-- Phil thought it was riveting, but it always made Wilbur go quiet, which was no easy feat. When asked about it, though, he’d only say he didn’t think it was such a very good story and then left it at that.
When Phil first surveyed the house and learned about it, he thought he was a lot like the traveler father in the story, but only considered his best traits. Phil had been a traveler in a past life, before he had his son, Wilbur. His job had him traveling the world looking for old artifacts, learning their stories, uncovering strange magics.
Then he had Wilbur, and that sort of life just wasn’t sustainable for a little boy, so he found this house and called it home, and when Wilbur learned to form words with his lips, he too called it home.
This didn’t mean Phil stopped working entirely-- he still did some research and wrote papers, but his life was far more sedentary. Every few weeks he’d receive some folders in the mail, detailing some new discoveries universities all over the world wanted him to look at and write about. Sometimes they sent the real artifacts.
He’d keep them in his study where Wilbur couldn’t touch them and spend hours looking them over, unlocking their secrets. The exhilaration of finding it himself was lost, but he still had an incredible time unlocking its secrets.
His latest research object was sitting on his office desk, still kept in the plush wooden box it arrived in, but his papers and papers of notes and old drafts of essays covered the living room and kitchen. The kitchen table was swimming with papers, barely enough space for Wilbur to eat his breakfast without making a mess of his research.
Phil entered the kitchen and witnessed this firsthand. He played with the idea of cleaning up a little, but ultimately decided against it. He wouldn’t want to ruin the organized chaos so perfectly set up. It looked like a mess to the unfamiliar eye, but Phil knew exactly where everything was.
This particular artifact was sent a couple of weeks ago. It came from an ancient legend of a group of anachronistic nomads-- people that lived in the ancient times but their technologies far surpassed that of their contemporaries. It was thought that this particular object that now sat in Phil’s office, a golden box with ancient inscriptions on it, held the key to time travel.
It was far-fetched, but Phil had seen much stranger things.
Phil was startled out of his reverie when he heard footsteps behind him. Wilbur had crept out of his room and popped into the kitchen, rubbing the sleep away from his eyes. His feathers were in disarray from a comfortable night’s sleep.
“Good morning, Wil.”
“Morning, Papa.”
Phil began opening cabinets, pulling out pans to start cooking breakfast. Phil felt that it would be such a good day that he wanted to make something better than just a bowl of cereal and some toast that morning.
It certainly brightened up Wilbur’s day, who eagerly stood by the counter as Phil started whisking some eggs in a bowl with a fork. As he prepared the food, he talked. “I’m feeling really good about the Time-Retriever today. I think it will finally tell me its secrets today.”
“That’s great,” replied Wilbur. “I’ve been feeling like that with my guitar lately. I couldn’t figure out B-minor--”
Phil interrupted, the sound of the sizzling pan covering Wilbur’s words. “I’ve spent the last month and a half on it. It’s the longest I’ve spent on preliminary research without really coming up with a thesis.”
To remain humble, Phil would not consider himself a genius. The multiple awards and ceremonies held in his honor would beg to differ. What would take a normal researcher years to understand it took Phil mere months. It was as if he had an innate connection to the world around him, the answers growing like vines over his arms and entering his brain through his ears.
Of course, he would never say this aloud, and he would always give credit where credit was due, which made him incredibly well-liked on top of his revered intellect.
The truth behind it all was that Phil just loved what he did. He loved learning and he loved discovering things no one alive would know. There was nothing more important than knowledge in this world, which made Philza the richest person on earth.
“That’s cool, Papa.” Wilbur moved over by the window, staring out into the pink streaks in the sky. “Hey, the weather looks really good. Do you think-- do you think today we can do the flying thing?”
Wilbur had been begging for Phil to show him how to fly for about three months now. It wasn’t as if Phil had been putting it off on purpose-- he’d just been so occupied with his research and writing and making sure his work was up to his personal standard. Flying was a really important part in a little avian’s life, and Phil didn’t want to miss it, but legacy was just as important.
Phil looked at the pile of papers on his desk, then back at his son’s eager face. Disappointing Wilbur did pinch his heart, but he could learn to fly any day. It wasn’t as if there was a time limit on learning how to fly. Phil’s work, well, it was a little more time sensitive. “Sorry, mate. Um, maybe another time. I just-- I really think I’m onto something today and I kind of want to chase the feeling.”
Wilbur’s wings dropped with his face. “Oh, yeah, no, that’s, that’s-- um, that’s alright, Papa. Yeah. I can just-- I can just keep going with the guitar today. Maybe I’ll get the B-minor, yeah? Chase the feeling…”
Phil smiled fondly before turning his attention back on the eggs as he scrambled them together. Wilbur got to work on the toast, sticking it in the toaster and lathering it in butter. They ate standing up by the counters, as Phil now adamantly refused to move his papers.
Phil shoveled the food down his throat and stuck his plate and the pan with which he cooked in the sink. Usually Wilbur took care of the dishes when Phil cooked, and on the days he doesn’t make a fuss about meals, then they just take care of themselves.
He shuffled over to the kitchen table and grabbed a few stacks of papers he thought he might need for the day and closed the door behind him in his study. He never locked the door because he always wanted Wilbur to feel as though he was welcome, but it became apparent that Phil did his work better when Wilbur kept the interruptions only to emergencies.
When Wilbur had been younger, he’d come in for just about anything. If he was playing outside, he’d come in to show Phil some rocks or a worm he found and named Gary. If he had been drawing, he’d show Phil what he had created. It had been cute at first, but when they came in quick succession on the hour every hour, it became hard for Phil to tolerate it.
He worked through the morning and halfway through the afternoon before he began to feel the effects of hunger once more. He regretted leaving his work-- he had been right about that feeling. He had done some digging on the nomads and made a connection about their appearances to the Time-Retriever. From ancient records, they knew these people were known for their black, necrotic limbs. The members most affected by the necrosis were the people called the ‘Time-Keepers,’ a select group of people that were allowed to handle the device.
He trudged out of his study and went to the kitchen, intent on making a quick sandwich. “Wilbur?” he called out, hoping to kill two birds with one stone and check in on his little bird.
When he received no response, Phil decided to go ahead and make Wilbur a sandwich anyway and find him later. He got out the loaf of bread, sandwich meat, and cheese. He tried to remember if Wilbur liked mustard on his bread or not, and ultimately played it safe by leaving it plain. He grabbed some chips from the snack cabinet and put a healthy dose on each plate.
“Wilbur?” he called once more, his voice carrying further through the house.
No response.
Phil took the plates and headed down to Wilbur’s room. The boy was like Phil in some aspects-- sometimes he got so obsessed with what he was doing he tuned the whole world out. When Phil first got Wilbur the guitar, he was in his room for hours at a time just strumming and plucking the strings, trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t.
Phil knocked on the door with his elbow and waited for a response. He received none. “Wilbur? Can I come in?” It was completely silent. Finally, Philza had enough of this treatment and just barged in, a chip from Wilbur’s plate falling onto his floor.
The room was empty.
His window was cracked open, a slight breeze sending some air through his baby blue curtains. His bed was made, his blue stuffed sheep his mother gifted to him before she passed tucked in between the wall and his pillows. Phil never thought Wilbur was a tidy person-- Kristin certainly wasn’t, and in recent years, Phil couldn’t say he was either.
Even so, Phil did not panic.
He had a feeling Wilbur was outside, so he dropped the plates off in the kitchen, making room for them in between all his papers, and headed out the front door.
They lived in a forest, so they were surrounded by trees besides the clearing that made up their yard. The forest grew on a mountain, rising til it tapered off halfway up. That was another draw to this house-- avians naturally preferred elevated areas to live in, and what better than a mountain?
Wilbur liked to play by the stream, if Phil remembered correctly.
Or did he like to climb trees?
“Wilbur!” Phil called.
The birds chirped back at him, but it was not the bird he wanted to hear from. He traveled further into the forest, his calls getting louder and more passionate. If Wilbur wanted to play outside, he should’ve been in sight of the house.
That boy was always looking for trouble.
“Wilbur! Lunch is ready!” Phil shouted. “I’ll eat without you if you don’t come out!”
All he could hear were his footsteps cracking twigs and digging into the dirt. Where was the sound of Wilbur’s sweet laughter?
It had been such a beautiful day that morning. Phil had thought it prophesied something good, but perhaps the beauty in the morning was to pay for the disgusting bitterness that would follow in the afternoon. It was not something for which a parent prepared. No one brought a child to this earth and expected to watch him leave just as quickly.
It had been such a short time with Wilbur.
Eight years. And just like that, he was surrounded by a pool of blood-- all his-- with his bones poking out of their sockets and a giant gash from where the blood seeped out onto the forest floor, marking it red with Wilbur. Next to him was a massive tree branch that had been ripped out from its place in the tree, the smaller branches on that one also torn.
“Wilbur?” Phil gasped. Nothing registered. It was like Wilbur was asleep, and Phil had to berate him for being so silly. Who slept in the middle of the forest?
Foolish boy.
Foolish, foolish boy.
Phil crouched down by his son, running his hands through his little wings. Wilbur had never fixed his feathers from this morning. They looked even worse now. Phil fixed them for him then, adjusting them into place and picking out the unnecessary ones.
“Wilbur,” he said, “It’s time to wake up now.”
Wilbur didn’t respond. It was as if he was mad at Phil. He glanced up at the tree, noting that the branch next to Wilbur happened to have been the highest branch on the tree. What had Wilbur been doing up there, flying?
Well that couldn’t be, for Phil promised him they’d do it together. He promised him that they would--
Oh.
Well, Phil had just kept promising, didn’t he? He didn’t follow through.
Wilbur had every right to be angry with him.
“Okay,” Phil sighed, crawling over to the base of the tree. He settled in, wrapping his arms tightly around himself as he sat and waited. “I’ll let you rest now, but we have to go back later, okay?”
No response.
He couldn’t respond; he was sleeping.
Phil himself fell asleep, his head falling onto his shoulder. Perhaps it was the effects of burnout finally hitting him. He had been working himself endlessly trying to nail the Time-Retriever. He thought about it when he woke up and when he went to bed, when he was in the shower, when he was with his son.
Oh, he was doing it again. Here he was, finally spending time with his son, and even his dreams were consumed with the Time-Retriever. He let them leave his body. He left his mind clear and devoid of any thoughts at all.
He was a doll at best.
He woke up and the sky was dark. His neck ached like it never had before, and Wilbur was still laying in the position Phil last remembered him in. It was summer, but without the sun, Phil worried Wilbur would be cold.
He didn’t know what time it was.
“Wilbur, are you cold?” he whispered, as if he was disturbing the gentle peace of the forest. As if he was disturbing Wilbur. Phil took off his outer layer and threw it over Wilbur’s chest. The blood around him had dried, and it looked more like paint now than anything else. As Phil tucked Wilbur in, he noticed something peculiar on Wilbur’s face: a small black fly. It landed on his son’s cheek and reposed there.
Phil slapped it off, his brows furrowed and his breathing picked up as he realized he had just slapped Wilbur. “Oh, I’m sorry, mate. You had a bug on you.”
He looked at Wilbur’s face.
He was sleeping, so why were his eyes wide open?
Where did the light go?
Dawn broke as the heavy realization settled in Philza’s stomach.
Wilbur was not asleep. How could he be so delusional? There was blood-- oh, there was so much blood. His arms-- his arms were crooked! His wings! His wings were in utter disarray, and his eyes-- oh, his big brown eyes had been open this entire time.
He had tried to fly.
He fell.
His boy had tried to fly and he fell.
“Oh, no,” Phil murmured, his hand sliding underneath Wilbur’s head and picking him up, finally bringing him close to his chest and cradling him gently, like he did when Wilbur was just a newborn.
Phil had been so happy to be a father. He was an adventurer, a traveler, but there was no journey like fatherhood. And what man would not want to have a child with the love of his life? Wilbur had been such a gift. He was a little symphony.
Phil remembered shaking Wilbur’s pudgy fingers, eyes cracked halfway open, father and son examining the other and liking what they saw.
Oh, Wilbur had been such a beautiful boy.
“My boy,” he said, “ my boy. Oh, my boy.” He sobbed into Wilbur’s curls. He smelled of the forest floor and a distinct metal scent. It wasn’t right. Wilbur had never smelled like this before-- not even when he scraped his knee when he was younger playing chase.
None of this right.
It was not something for which a parent prepared. Wilbur was meant to mourn Philza, not the other way around. Wilbur should’ve been the one in tears. Wilbur should’ve been able to be more than just a boy.
The bird’s harmonized on a funeral theme as Phil carried Wilbur back to their house. The front door had been left ajar. The sandwiches were left stale on the kitchen counter. Phil pushed open Wilbur’s bedroom door with his back and set him down on his bed. He grabbed the sheep and placed him in Wilbur’s armpit, as his arm did not turn the right way and could not hold the toy.
The funeral was held the next week.
The same people at Kristin’s funeral attended this one.
The words were short.
A lily was placed on his coffin. Then they threw dirt over it.
Wilbur was lowered into the ground.
“He was so young,” the old ladies said at the reception. “Such a tragedy.”
Philza’s mail kept piling up.
It had started out cordial.
“We’re so very sorry for your loss, Dr. Craft. We understand you need time to grieve. We can discuss your research at a later time. My condolences.”
“We’re so very sorry for your loss, Dr. Craft. We understand you’ve had time to grieve. Perhaps we may meet and discuss your research? My condolences.”
“We’re so very sorry for your loss, Dr. Craft, and you’ve grieved, but we need to move forward with our research. Please write back.”
“Dr. Craft. It is urgent that we know and understand your progress on the matter of the Time-Retriever. We’ve been lenient thus far, however--”
Every message ended like that. Begging for Phil to enter his study. Look at that wretched Time-Retriever and tell them how it worked. Tell them the stories and the nuances of the artifact and its fake magic. But it was that same fake magic that had killed Wilbur.
It replayed in Phil’s mind over and over and over again until he was nauseous with his mistakes. How Wilbur looked out the window into the morning and asked him to teach him to fly. It was a reasonable request; it was something a father should do for his son.
Had he not been so caught up in ‘chasing a feeling,’ they could’ve gone out and Phil would’ve taught him how to fly. He’d be soaring through the sky and he’d hear the jingle of Wilbur’s laughter as he swooped through the clouds.
His study was a prison, and the rest of the house was just as torturous. It was as if the ghosts of the traveler father and youngest daughter lingered in the house, promising their misery to anyone who dared to call their house a home. There were cold spots, or maybe Phil just wanted to feel cold spots.
A cursed house for cursed fathers.
What made it all the more torturous was that his research was everywhere.
At one point, a few weeks after the funeral, Phil felt something crawling in his brain, forcing him to lose his mind, and he had swept it all to the ground, flooding the floorboards with his work. It had made him feel better for one second, as if he was showing Wilbur he wasn’t a slave to his research, but then he just as quickly started sweeping it up with his hands.
It was on the coffee table and on his shelves and under his bed and in his mind. He couldn’t get rid of it.
For three months he was listless around his house.
The first month, women from the neighboring village would trek to his door and leave him some food. They made him all kinds of casseroles and pies and salads. He hadn’t been all that hungry, and most of it was wasted after a few bites. When the women returned to retrieve their dishes and saw the uneaten food, they considered their kindness wasted and did not return.
It was hard to feed himself after that. He didn’t want to. He didn’t feel like he deserved to eat at times, especially when he knew Wilbur never got to eat his lunch. Phil still didn’t know if Wilbur liked sauce on his bread or not.
But starving to death was the coward’s way out.
He had been sitting at his clear kitchen table, feet in between a stack of papers when he noticed something scribbled on one of the top sheets. It was something nearly illegible, but Phil’s mind was able to fill in spots he couldn’t quite read
It had been a note Phil had made about the Time-Retriever the day Wilbur had gone away. It was what he had been so excited about. The necrosis of the limbs, most defined on Time-Keepers, was a link to how the device worked. The working theory was that this device helped these people either look into the future or step into the future and learn better ways to survive and pick up objects to help improve their lives. But what was the cost of such a device?
Phil had thought life-force, judging by the cell death, and then he had gone to make lunch for his dead son and himself. He read the note and let the question pass through his brain like a visitor.
Very interesting, moving on.
But something hooked itself into his brain, dragging him back to the way he was before. What-ifs infected his mind. If life-force was the key, well, Phil had a life-force. And what if the device could not only go to the future, but the past too?
Phil was all too aware of the philosophical debates surrounding time travel-- it was what made the artifact so controversial and why it was sent to Philza first before anyone else, and why they were so desperate to hear from him. If the Time-Retriever was a true legend, then that would aid in the discovery of how time moved.
It would be revolutionary.
It could also… Perhaps there was too much hope in this thought, but Phil dared himself to think it once and then think it again. It could also bring Wilbur back. Philza could see Wilbur again.
No matter how hard Phil tried to shake it, the idea clung to him like a parasite. He went to bed that night running through the possibilities and the paradoxes that time travel invited. When he woke up the next morning, he had already decided that any price would be worth it if he could see Wilbur again.
He continued his research.
Six months of intellectual labor.
That was how long it took for Philza to finally unlock the secrets to the Time Retriever. He figured out how it worked three months into his endeavors, but Phil wasn’t going to just jump right into time travel without a basic understanding of how it worked. So, he continued to observe the device, linking together what he knew from ancient records to what he knew for fact from the artifact sitting in front of him.
He knew that people died from over-using the artifact. He knew that since the Time-Keepers retrieved items from the future, they were able to enter into the future. This could’ve meant two things: their consciousness was transferred over to an existing version of the Time-Keeper, or the Time-Keeper physically entered the timeline.
The first could be ruled out since the nomad graveyards showed evidence of technology from four hundred years into the future, meaning unless the Time-Keepers lived abnormally long, it was impossible for them to enter their own consciousness.
The second was the most likely, but that was where the paradoxes of time began. If Phil were to do anything other than look at Wilbur again, it could shift the fabric of reality past a point of reconciliation. It was possible they would end up in a time loop. There was another likely outcome, one far more amenable to a time loop: new timelines.
Should something change in the past timeline, it would just open a new timeline rather than rupture something foundational. It was still something dangerous to touch, but it was a more hopeful diagnosis of time.
Phil wasn’t going to touch anything anyway. He would just watch. He just wanted to see Wilbur running down the hall again, standing by the kitchen counter, strumming his guitar.
He just wanted to see his Wilbur again.
The other three months were filled with torturous experiments of how time worked and how the device itself worked. He knew it required life-force, but there was the matter of how the artifact absorbed it and how much of it absorbed at a time.
When he finally came up with his conclusion, he wrote it all down, stuck it in a massive folder and sent it off to the university that tasked him with this research in the first place.
He returned to his office and opened the box that held the Time-Retriever, his fingers dusting over it until they found the right spot to land. There were three holes on the bottom of the Time-Retriever that Phil had to slot his fingers into. Inside the holes was a switch. The rest was a matter of will.
Once the switch was on, the artifact began to glow purple, particles growing bigger and fizzling into the air, trying to form something out of nothing. Phil thought hard about that fateful day, that morning before tragedy struck.
He had been in his bedroom.
It was dawn.
The birds sang.
He thought about Wilbur, sound asleep cuddled close to his blue sheep.
There!
He could see it! It was more than just Phil’s imagination now; the particles were forming the image. It looked so real. It was real. He could see the corners of Wilbur’s desk and his clothes from the previous day in a pile at the foot of his bed.
Phil watched with rapt attention as Wilbur’s chest moved up and down, his lips slightly parted as he slept.
He wanted to reach out; he wanted to caress his son’s cheek and tell him how much he missed him. How if he could, he’d do it all again.
Oh, how he’d do it all again! And he would be there for him this time. He’d teach him how to fly and he’d listen as Wilbur complained about B-major or whatever chord he was struggling with and he’d never be parted with his son ever.
Phil thought he’d be content with just a glimpse of Wilbur, but all it served to do was make his heart ache so much more. If Phil hadn’t already existed in the past he would’ve taken his own place in a heartbeat. That man didn’t know the value of his own son, but this Phil did. He already learned his lesson.
His cravings almost controlled him. He shut it off before he could reach in.
Phil grabbed hold of his chest in an attempt to catch his breath. He had really seen Wilbur. It was real. It was real. And it was so close and he couldn’t have it.
Wasn’t that too cruel?
And that thought returned-- that disturbing, selfish, grieving thought returned-- what if the Phil of the past no longer existed?
The more he thought about it, the more his heart raced, excited by the thought of having a son again.
It was like this: Phil’s physical body would enter the past, and then two Phil’s would exist. By killing his past self, he could take his place, parent Wilbur and avoid Wilbur’s death. He would just cease to exist in his current timeline, and a new timeline would open up when Wilbur did not die.
There were holes. There were most definitely flaws.
But Phil couldn’t wait anymore. He had to hug his sweet, sweet boy.
He let go of his chest and examined his hand. His finger was beginning to appear discolored, but otherwise he felt fine, and he could still use the finger just fine. The necrosis was probably a slow burn.
Philza shoved his fingers through the holes and flicked the switch once more, bringing him back to that moment. He thought about himself this time and his bedroom, and the moments before he woke up. He removed his hand from the Time-Retriever and tentatively stuck his hand through the vision, satisfied when he could move around in the timeline’s space.
Then he grabbed a knife.
It was a strange experience to lord over one’s body with a knife pressed up against one’s throat. But it wasn’t his throat, it was a different Phil’s throat that was very well once Phil himself. But they were two separate entities in Phil’s mind-- Older Phil, Jaded Phil, Wiser Phil.
The blade connected with his jugular and Phil had to turn away as he sliced through. His sheets were covered in blood, but it was nothing a little hydrogen peroxide couldn’t fix.
He heaved the body underneath the bed. He’d dispose of it after he made sure Wilbur lived.
Phil went over to his closet and changed into clean clothes, then he washed his hands of his blood in the bathroom down the hall. He scrubbed for a long time, and though his skin was clear, in a way he still felt as though he was covered in red.
It went as well as committing one’s own murder could.
Once he was clean, he headed down to the kitchen. The table was covered in his paperwork. Phil immediately got to work stacking papers and placing them on the floor in neat piles, carving out spots to sit in for both him and Wilbur.
Wilbur approached later, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. His feathers were in disarray from a comfortable night’s sleep. Phil’s heart was caught in his throat.
“G-good morning, Wil,” he choked out.
It was like time had never passed at all. Wilbur looked just as he did that morning. It was the same morning. He was really here. He was really doing this again.
“Morning, Papa,” Wilbur replied. Phil paused what he was doing, his fingers slipping out from under the pages and dropping them everywhere. Wilbur was startled out of his sleepiness. “You’re moving your research? Won’t you lose things?”
Phil looked down at the mess. “Oh, um, no. I just thought it would be better if we had somewhere to eat. That’s okay, yeah?”
Wilbur grinned. “Yeah!”
“Good,” Phil murmured to himself, before directing his next words back to Wilbur. “I’m going to make some eggs. Can you get started on the toast?”
Wilbur pulled out the toaster and slotted in the slices of bread. Phil cracked four eggs and mixed them in a bowl with a fork, pouring in some milk, salt and pepper. His hand shook as he whisked, nervous to look at Wilbur. The chance that if he turned around and Wilbur wasn’t there anymore was the most frightening thought to him right now. Still, he eventually had to grab some plates and he had to hear the ding of the toaster reminding Wilbur to pull out the toast.
“Are you alright, Papa?” Phil stopped. His hands holding the plates were trembling like earthquakes, threatening to drop the ceramic onto the floor. “Papa, you’re shaking. Are you sure--?”
“I’m alright,” Phil breathed, “Yes, son, I’m alright.”
Wilbur, the kind boy that he was, took the plate from Phil’s grip and placed two pieces of buttered toast upon it. It was Wilbur who made their plates while Phil staggered over to the kitchen table, sliding into the seat at the head of the table.
Wilbur probably thought he was weird or insane right now. He needed to reassure Wilbur everything was alright-- he needed to reassure Wilbur of everything--
“Hey, the weather looks really good. Do you think-- do you think today we can do the flying thing?”
Phil glanced out the window, watched how slants of light hit the table as if trying to burn a hole through the wood. The dawn chorus sang a song of warning. He would teach Wilbur how to fly, but not today. He needed Wilbur to survive through the day, and then they could do whatever they wanted tomorrow and the day after that. They would do more than just flying; they would do tricks and traveling and everything his Wilbur could not do.
“I don’t know, mate, the wind looks like it’s going to pick up. How about we spend the day inside together.”
Wilbur set Phil’s plate down in front of him, taking the seat adjacent to him on the left. There was something hesitant about his behavior. “Together? Don’t you have work to do?”
“Oh-- that could be done any old day. I feel like I haven’t seen you lately, Wil. We can-- we can play cards, I can read you a story, we could draw together--”
“You really want to do that? With me?”
Phil put his fork down on the table, his hand gliding over to his son’s. This was his failure-- his own son didn’t even believe him when he said he wanted to spend time with him-- that he could spend time with him. “Yes, of course. I want to spend time with you.”
“But no flying?”
“No flying.”
“Even though you’ve been promising--”
“I said no flying!” Phil snapped. Wilbur visibly wilted. He withdrew his hand from Phil’s grasp and his wings drooped down, feathering the floors. Phil immediately regretted it. “I just-- it’s just not the right conditions.”
“You fly through wind all the time.”
“I know how to fly.”
Wilbur had no arguments left in his arsenal, and surrendered to a quiet day with his father.
While Wilbur was getting dressed for the day, Phil tore through his shelves looking for something fun to play with Wilbur. They had cards and board games that had belonged to Wilbur’s mother. She was the one who loved to play these sorts of things. Phil couldn’t recall playing these games with Wilbur alone.
They had collected dust on the shelves.
Phil had fond memories playing with Kristin, though. She liked to lay out the rules before the games started, but she was always the first to devolve into cheating. She was the kind of person who’d do anything to win a card game.
Wilbur returned dressed in a T-shirt and knee-length shorts and socks that rolled up the ankles. It sent a flash of nostalgia through Phil, as though he’d seen this outfit on his son before.
Perhaps he had.
“What do you want to play? I’ve got a normal deck of cards, and there’s Monopoly and something called Worms: Revolution--”
“Cards are fine,” Wilbur answered, hopping onto the couch, drawing his knees to his chest. His wings enveloped around him, keeping the cool breeze of the air conditioner away from his skin.
Phil put the other games back and kneeled in front of the coffee table, moving his papers out of the way. “Watch this,” said Phil, his finger breezing through the deck. He separated it into two piles and set up a bridge formation, though it ended with the cards on his floor and Wilbur laughing hysterically. “Your mother was better at this.”
This was what Phil had wanted! He wanted to hear Wilbur laugh! He wanted to eat with him and play these games with him. He just wanted to be with his son.
“Yeah?” Wilbur scooted closer to the coffee table. “You never really talk about Mama.”
“I don’t?”
Wilbur shook his head.
“Your mother was a great woman. She was incredibly talented, and charismatic, and-- well, she loved you immensely.”
Wilbur smiled.
Phil dealt them both cards and they began to play. “This was your mother’s favorite game. She was quite the cheater, though, so whenever we played I always knew never to bet any money on it.”
“Really?” Wilbur giggled. “Did you guys usually bet money?”
“Oh yeah. We bet money on just about anything. We’d do loops in the sky and bet who could do more in less time. We’d bet money on cleaning the kitchen-- your mother started a jar for her earnings and I always suspected she put some of her own money in there to beef it up--” Phil laughed as he recounted these memories, the corners of his eyes moistening.
It occurred to Phil that he never taught Wilbur the game, and he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to learn. Phil pointed at the cards and explained their function, and then they played a practice game so Wilbur could understand the rhythm. He was a natural, just like his mother.
Oh, his boy was a natural.
Phil taught Wilbur new card games until he heard protests from Wilbur’s stomach. Phil cracked his legs as he stood up to go to the kitchen. He turned to Wilbur. “Do-- do you like sauce on your sandwiches? Mustard?”
“Yeah,” answered Wilbur, who did not turn his head to look at his father. He was too busy teaching himself how to shuffle cards. Phil untangled the bag of bread and set four slices down on two paper plates. The sandwich meat. The cheese. The mustard. The chips.
These sandwiches would not go stale.
He brought them over to the living room and slid a plate in front of Wilbur. He put the cards down and shoved the sandwich into his mouth. “What else do you want to do? Maybe you want to play your guitar for me?”
Wilbur’s cheeks bulged, full of food. “Really?”
“Yes. I’d love to hear you play.”
Wilbur swallowed. “I’ve only ever played for Friend.”
Phil lifted an eyebrow. “Your friend? What’s their name?”
“No, no. Friend. My sheep.” Phil’s mind supplied him with an image of the sheep that was always on Wilbur’s bed, alway tucked next to the pillow.
“Why would you name the sheep something like that?” Phil chuckled.
“Because she’s Friend. She’s all I have.”
Phil wanted to dismiss the accusation that was never meant to be an accusation. Of course Wilbur had more than a stuffed toy. He had friends, surely, and he had-- well he had Phil. Still, he couldn’t recall seeing any children Wilbur’s age at the funeral. It had been a sparse crowd, mostly family friends and distant relatives.
Did Wilbur not have friends?
While Phil was contemplating his son’s social life, Wilbur had left and returned with the guitar that was far too big for him. Phil had bought it with the intention that Wilbur would grow into it despite the store owner telling him Wilbur wouldn’t be able to learn correctly if he didn’t have an instrument to suit his stature. Served the owner right. His son was a prodigy.
Wilbur placed the guitar on his lap and stretched out his fingers over the fretboard, trying to form a chord. The skin in between his fingers was turning white from how far he was stretching them, and when Wilbur strummed, a disharmonic, scratchy sound came out. Phil tried to hide his wince.
Turned out Wilbur had been trying to play a nursery rhyme, one Phil used to sing to him when he tucked him into bed. Phil applauded him for his efforts. Wilbur had a cute voice, his register high with youth. He was sure Wilbur would be quite the performer when he got older.
After a few more songs, Wilbur grew bolder with his requests. Perhaps he finally realized Phil truly wanted to spend time with him. Wilbur brought Phil to his room to show him all of his drawings, all the drawings his son had made and not knocked on his door to show him.
Wilbur liked to talk a lot, and he was an excellent conversationalist. Phil listened to him speak for hours. He kept a jar in his room that he called his personal ecosystem. All sorts of creatures grew inside this glass jar.
It came time to cook dinner, and he let Wilbur pick the menu.
Buttered noodles and a side of salad.
They spoke and ate, and Phil did the dishes rather than leave it to Wilbur to solve. He sent Wilbur off to get ready for bed, promising a story as he tucked him in. Wilbur was still a little boy-- Phil didn’t even remember when he stopped reading to him before bed. He wondered if Wilbur had missed this as much as Phil did, even if Wilbur couldn’t possibly grasp Phil’s insurmountable grief attached to this catharsis.
Phil knocked on Wilbur’s door before entering. He had grabbed an old favorite of his off the shelf; a story of a family broken apart through war and famine and finding their way back to one another through each disaster. He’d read the first chapter to Wilbur tonight, and then the second tomorrow and so on and so forth.
Wilbur already had his sheets pulled up to his chin, cuddling the sheep under the covers. The mattress dipped as Phil’s weight made a home on the edge.
Phil tried to get through as much of chapter one as possible, but Wilbur was already fast asleep. Phil blew out the candle on his nightstand and slipped out of the room.
It had been the most normal day Phil had experienced in months, so it came as a shock to him when he saw blood all over his bedsheets and an arm sticking out from under his bed. The body wouldn’t start smelling for another three days. He’d take care of it in the morning.
He stripped his bed of the sheets and replaced it with clean ones. He changed into some pajamas and brushed his teeth and washed his face. Briefly he pondered over how weird it was to be using another Philza’s toothbrush. It was technically his, but it had never been in his mouth before, and he couldn’t decide whether that was gross to him or not. The DNA was all the same but it wasn’t his. It wasn’t really his.
When his head hit the pillow, his eyes fluttered closed and he was out like a light. Nothing would wake him up-- not the low buzz of the crickets outside or the creak of the floorboard as a little boy snuck out of his room, wings flapping with anticipation. He wouldn’t hear the sound of the front door opening or closing and he wouldn’t hear a startled gasp and a crashing noise all the way out in the woods.
He wouldn’t hear any of it.
He would hear the song of the birds when morning broke, orange light hitting his face.
It looked like a good morning. Phil had every reason to believe he had circumvented fate, and he made a bountiful breakfast to celebrate the fact. Pancakes, sausage, toast, and eggs.
He set the table and went off to wake up Wilbur, knocking on his door with excitement. “Wilbur, mate, time to wake up. I made breakfast.”
No response.
Phil’s blood ran cold.
He was sleeping. Wilbur was sleeping because he was in his room, in his bed, and most children didn’t even wake up this early anyway. A good father would turn away and wait for his son to naturally come out of his room. But this father had already experienced the death of a son, and he could not wait; he had to confirm it.
He burst through the door, a choked cry filling the air as he saw the empty bed. This time it was unmade. This time the sheep was on the floor, right in front of the nightstand.
“No!” he cried out, tearing through the house and out into the forest.
He had done everything right. He had spent time with Wilbur. He listened to Wilbur talk this time, his endless ramblings. Would the boy still be so stupid as to go flying without him? Could he really not wait?
There it was: the same tree. Phil wagered it was a different branch this time. Wilbur’s pajamas were moist with blood. He took a lot more cuts this way down than the previous time. His legs were broken.
His tawny brown wings with newly grown flight feathers were ripped up and unforgivable. Phil didn’t know who was the one so undeserving between the two, but a voice whispered to him that the sin always falls on the father.
Phil fell to his knees a couple feet away from Wilbur’s corpse, little twigs and rocks digging into his flesh. A mourning dove landed next to him, chirping the song that woke him up, and the rest of the dawn chorus backed it up.
Telling him it was over.
Why did the birds have to tell him how the world was? If a world was filled with mistakes that no one could fix, then the world would fall apart. Anything could be fixed. There was a solution to everything. Phil was a researcher; he knew this as fact. He knew it just as well as he knew Wilbur was his son.
It wasn’t over until Phil said it was over.
He looked down at his hand, a singular discolored finger, and he knew he still had so much life left in him, so why couldn’t Wilbur?
He could do it again. And he would do it better.