++++ It's...Gravity [V2] ++++

FLOW

Seated in his small office, Yuki stared down at the short story in his hands, his face blank.

That had been...

To put it bluntly, if anyone but his seven year old daughter had written it, he would have tossed it aside after the first paragraph - and that was saying something, since the entire composition was no long than a page.

The author sighed and leaned back in his chair, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose. They were becoming more and more necessary these days, but somehow, that fact didn't bother him as much as it once would have. Maybe it was Ryuko and Shuichi finally getting to him: all those hours of being subjected to their karaoke must have rattled his brain.

Scowling at his wandering thoughts, he turned his attention back to story in his hands. Ryuko was waiting in the kitchen with Shuichi, where the pink-haired singer was already congratulating their daughter on a job well done, despite the fact that he himself had yet to read it.

If only his partner really knew.

The characters were contrived, for starters. The plot was beyond predictable: he had known the resolution from the first few lines. The dialogue - oh, the dialogue - was all wrong. Apparently, Ryuko had to yet to grasp that dialogue was supposed to sound different from regular narration. Even taking into account that she was a seven year old, it was so painfully artificial...

For all intents and purposes, she was her Daddy's daughter.

Yuki grunted, at that thought, amused. The child had taken on many of Shuichi's more annoying traits, and it seemed that this would simply be another one of them.

And yet...

A small crease appeared in his forehead as he went over the second-to-last paragraph again, carefully. And then he went over it once more.

There was a glimmer of something here. Oh, it was only one line of the paragraph, one tiny little line of descriptive narrative...and yet there was something almost melodic about it. Had he spoken it aloud, it would have, well, flowed.

Yuki set the paper down, and crossed his arms across his chest, his eyes never leaving the paper. Never leaving that one line.

Well, maybe, just maybe, if she was encouraged properly - and taught some grammar and syntax - that one line could turn into more.

A smile finally bloomed on his face, however small at the sudden rush of pride in the girl. As deep as his affections for Shuichi ran, the emotions Ryuko evoked in him were very different, and thought he might never admit it to anyone, they perhaps ran ever deeper. The love of a parent for a child.

Only Ryuko could make him sound so hopelessly poetic.

Yuki reached up and slipped the glasses off his face. He hadn't surrendered to infirmity quite yet.

He stared at the short story again and smiled, amused by the sudden thought that if he went out there with a grin on his face, his husband and daughter might burst into a sudden panic.

He took up the slip of paper that held Ryuko's words, the good and the very, very bad.

Whether his daughter wrote poetry or prose, he didn't care. He just knew that his daughter had a gift, and that he intended to nurture it.

The kakaoke must really be getting to his brain.

**********

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By Treble