Elpis Goodberryn

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Elpis is nearly three years old and is already one of those children who makes adults do a small double-take, not because there is anything alarming about him, but because he looks like he is about to ask a thoughtful question and waiting politely for the right moment. His scales are vibrant green, matching his father's coloring closely, with a warm yellow undertone that catches the light in a way that reads as healthy and deliberate. His eyes are large and golden-brown, steady and attentive in the particular way that suggests he is taking notes. He wears a small tweed three-piece suit in brown and gold, with a proper collar, a green tie that coordinates with his scales, and a vest buttoned to the top. He did not pick this outfit. His father picked it. Elpis, however, has worn it with such complete comfort and natural ease that people sometimes assume it was his idea. He stands with one hand resting on the nearest available surface, the posture of someone who has learned that the world is most interesting when you observe it from a position of quiet stability.

Small green sprouts still appear occasionally among Elpis's scales, particularly when he is near his father in the garden or in moments of strong contentment. They are soft and smell faintly of fresh grass and new growth. They have been doing this since he was a baby and the family has long since stopped finding it remarkable, though visitors still notice. Beyond the sprouts, the most distinctive thing about Elpis is his quality of attention. He watches things. Not in a suspicious way, in the way of someone who genuinely finds the world interesting and is in no particular hurry to stop looking at any given part of it. He does not yet have the words to match the depth of what he notices, but the gap between his vocabulary and his comprehension is narrowing with some speed, and the people around him have begun to suspect that when the words catch up, the conversations are going to be worth having.

Elpis arrived into the world on Goldenleaf 25, 1303, the first of two surprises his parents received that evening. He came quietly, looked around, and then waited. His twin sister Maya arrived shortly after and announced herself with considerably more volume. The midwife would later say that she had attended many births and that Elpis was the calmest new arrival she could remember, which struck her as either a very good sign or a very interesting one. Hecks and Raya, who had been preparing for one child and received two, adapted with the kind of steady grace that comes from genuinely loving the people you are surprised by. The Goodberryn household, already full with four-year-old Maple, became immediately and permanently louder. Elpis observed this development with the equanimity that would come to define him.

Hecks chose the name Elpis to honor the memory of Emperor Elpis Basajuan, the gold dragon who once ruled in Kristofferson and who treated Hecks, a kobold, with genuine and unreserved respect at a time when such treatment was not something Hecks had learned to expect. The Emperor saw past species and station and regarded Hecks as a person worth knowing. That impression never left. Naming his son after a man of that quality was Hecks's way of saying: this is who I want you to become. Little Elpis cannot yet understand the weight of his name. But he carries himself with a natural dignity that makes his father, watching him from across the garden, feel very quietly that the name was not wrong.

From the earliest age, Elpis has oriented himself toward his father the way plants orient toward light: consistently, without apparent effort, and as though it is simply the correct direction to face. He has shadowed Hecks through the gardens of Goodberry since he could walk, moving carefully between the beds, crouching to look at things that interest him, accepting small tasks with the seriousness of someone who understands that small tasks matter. He has his own patch of garden, designated formally by Hecks, and he tends it with a focused attention that makes visitors smile and that Hecks does not smile at, because to Hecks it is not surprising. It is simply his son. The sprouts that appear on Elpis's scales do so most often in the garden, most often when he is contented, and most often when his father is nearby. Nobody has remarked on this pattern aloud. Everyone has noticed it.

Being Maya's twin is a specific experience. She is loud where he is quiet, immediate where he is patient, and absolutely certain at all times that whatever she is currently doing is the most important thing happening in the room. Elpis has developed, over nearly three years, a working relationship with all of this. He does not match her energy. He does not try to. He watches her, sometimes with something that looks like fond bewilderment and sometimes with something that looks like the face of a person who has already anticipated the outcome of a situation and is simply waiting for it to arrive. When Maya is upset, she often ends up near Elpis without quite deciding to go there. He does not usually do anything about this. He is just there. For Maya, most of the time, that is enough.

Elpis is nearly three, which in Goodberry means school is coming. He has been told this. He has processed it with the thoroughness he applies to most things and has arrived at a position of calm readiness. He has questions, naturally. He has a working list. He has not shared the list with anyone, but it exists, and it is organized, and he intends to find out the answers to everything on it at the appropriate time. His parents expect him to do well. His father expects him to find it deeply interesting. His mother expects him to make at least one friend who is quieter than Maya, which she considers both a parenting goal and a reasonable wish for her son.

Elpis wants to know how things work. Not in a restless or acquisitive way, but in the specific way of a child who has been watching the world with great attention for nearly three years and has accumulated a significant number of questions that he cannot yet fully articulate and would very much like to be able to. School represents, to him, a place where some of those questions might get answers, and he is approaching it with the focused anticipation of someone who has been waiting for this particular development for a while.

Elpis has his garden patch and he tends it carefully, but he is aware that his father's hands are never far away. His goal, unspoken and patient, is to grow something start to finish that is entirely his work: his seed, his soil, his attention, his result. He checks the patch every morning. He is learning, quietly and without complaint, that some things take longer than you expect. He finds this less frustrating than most children would. He takes it as information.

Elpis does not yet know the full story of the emperor he was named for. He knows his father says the name with a specific quality of respect, and he knows his own name, and he knows that these two things are connected. That is enough for now. He is three. He has time to grow into the rest. His father is patient. The garden is patient. Elpis, more than most children his age, already understands that some things arrive in their own time, and that the waiting is part of the work.