From his earliest years, the ritual felt ordinary because it had never been explained. Each birthday, without fail, his grandfather Henry handed him a small green plastic soldier, wrapped carefully in yellowed newspaper. There was no speech, no joke, no explanation. Just the gift, passed from one hand to another. Too young to question it, the boy accepted it with the trust children give instinctively, sensing that some things did not require immediate understanding.
Henry filled his grandson’s childhood with wonder. Ordinary afternoons turned into scavenger hunts. Backyards became unexplored territories. Riddles led to quiet laughter, and stories drifted somewhere between truth and imagination. These moments often ended not with answers, but with pauses — reflective silences that suggested meaning was something to grow into, not something handed over all at once.
Then, on his eighth birthday, the games stopped.