“Have you always had that necklace, papa?” the boy cast his line next to Averil.
Averil propped his fishing pole against the wall of the makeshift storage shed behind the two of them and sighed, his smile dimming as he grasped the pocket sextant hanging from a bronze chain around his neck. His wistful eyes stared intently, unconscious of his momentary reverie while he took the necklace off to examine its warped an charred edges. His finger traced absently around the circumference of the engraved artifact until it reached one of the bent needles that at one time had pointed to alien numbers that he did not know how to read, “This ol’ thing? I’ve had this since before you were born. It found me and because it did, you were born.”
“What is it?”
“My old commander, your uncle, told me that it was an ancient sextant made by a race of beings far from here.”
“What’s a sec tant?”
Averil chuckled at the gaff, “It’s a tool made to measure the sky. Help’s someone like me or my old captain to find our way when there’s nothing but water and the stars to guide us.”
“So I was born because you found a way to measure the whole sky?!”
Averil laughed and rubbed the boys head, “Not quite, but when I found this little item it was next to a very special gemstone that could hold and heal a spirit that could live inside of it”
“Wow… I’ve never heard of a stone like that before.”
“Well, the stone belonged to someone who’d gotten very lost and the short version is that because I found this sextant, I was able to help my friends find that soul and bring peace to this whole lake.”
“You did that for all of Aerishael? Really papa?”
“I didn’t do it alone, of course, but that is a much longer story. Maybe next time Uncle Jorge comes round we can tell you all about it.” Averil’s smile broadened again as memories flooded back of a very different time. He looked up to the orange Jovian planet in the sky above them and a single tear formed in the corner of his eye as he reminisced. “Creator bless him.”
“Promise you’ll tell the whole story, papa?” the boy asked.
Averil looked at the boy, his eyes ever so faintly wet and he put the necklace over his son’s neck, “Promise.”