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“...and so we wanted to ask,” — Cole laced his fingers together until they cracked — “could you maybe… well…”
“Watch the kids,” Geo finished for him, because his husband had been agonizing over the right words for a full minute now. “For a couple of hours. We want to go out… just the two of us. For the first time in five years.”
Lou set down his mug of hot chocolate and slowly shifted his gaze from one to the other. Something flickered in his eyes — surprise, or maybe mischief.
“You want to leave me with two children so you can go on a date?”
“Three,” Cole corrected. “Bonzle is also a child. Morally speaking.”
A creak came from the kitchen windowsill. Bonzle, sitting there with a book, lifted her empty eye sockets.
“I am not a child. I’m over a hundred years old.”
“You act like a child when it comes to sweets,” Cole shot back.
“That’s slander.”
“You stole Kai’s jar of peanut butter last time and ate it in secret.”
Bonzle fell silent and demonstratively buried herself in her book. Her jaw, however, sagged slightly — a sign of embarrassment. Lou chuckled. He watched this squabble, and something inside his chest slowly began to thaw. Noise. Life. Family. He had almost forgotten what that sounded like.
“Fine,” he said, surprising even himself. “Bring them over. Just warning you: I might not remember how to entertain children. Lilly was always better at that.”
Cole froze. His mother’s name, spoken so calmly, so naturally, hit him like a punch to the gut. He couldn’t suppress a short, ragged breath.
“Dad…”
“Don’t,” Lou waved a hand, but without bitterness. “She was a good mother. And I was… a decent father, I suppose. I’ll learn to be a grandfather. Don’t worry.”
They exchanged glances — the kind that say more than half-hour conversations. Geo gently squeezed Cole’s shoulder.
“We’ll be back by ten. Thank you, Lou. Really.”
“Just go already,” Lou grumbled, but warmth crept into his voice. “No funny business. And call if anything happens.”
When the car with Cole and Geo disappeared around the corner, silence fell. The kind of silence that usually precedes a disaster. Fritz and Spitz stood in the hallway, exchanging looks as if they had just lost their commanders and now didn’t know who to obey. Bonzle lingered by the window, pretending to read, though her book was upside down.
Lou leaned on his cane and surveyed his new “troops.”
“Alright,” he said. “Here are the rules. Don’t set anything on fire. Don’t kill anyone. Sweets are after dinner.”
“What if we really want some?” asked Fritz, eyes gleaming.
“Then you’ll have to convince me. And I’m made of stone.”
Spitz snorted.
“Dad says you’re like a rock. Literally.”
Lou smirked. Something pricked inside — Cole had talked about him. At home. To the children. So he had been in his thoughts, after all. All these years.
“Come on,” he said, nodding toward the living room. “Show me what you’ve got. Cole says you’re learning fencing.”
“Only with wooden swords!” the boys shouted in unison and dashed forward.
Bonzle lowered her book and gave Lou a long, studying look.
“You don’t have to pretend to be happy,” she said quietly. “We can just sit in silence. I’ll make sure of it.”
Lou looked at her — this ancient skeleton in a dress that Cole had chosen with such care, at those empty eye sockets where, if you looked closely, a faint, almost human light flickered.
“Girl,” he said, “I’m not pretending. This house has been empty for too long. Even noisy children are better than an echo.”
Bonzle paused. Then slowly nodded.
“Alright. Then… Grandfather. Will you show me that place where you used to rehearse? Dad said you had a troupe. ‘The Royal Blacksmiths.’”
Lou froze. His heart skipped a beat.
Grandfather.
When was the last time he’d heard that word? Lilly used to call her father that, but he died when Cole was still small. And Lou himself… he never thought he’d live long enough to be called that.
“Yes,” he said, his voice faltering slightly. “Yes, I’ll show you. But it’s not a dance floor anymore. Just an empty room. After the Merge… I had to leave a lot behind.”
He led them to the farthest room — the one he had never been able to turn into anything else after moving in. Inside, it was nearly empty: old parquet flooring, scratched and warped in places, mirrors on the walls covered in a fine web of cracks, and a few framed posters that had miraculously survived.
Fritz and Spitz ran inside and spun around, their footsteps echoing off the walls.
“This is so cool!” Fritz exclaimed. “Like a big hall!”
Lou leaned on his cane, watching their reflections in the cracked mirrors. For a moment, he thought he saw himself again — young, light, strong — surrounded by his troupe. The thunder of music, the rhythm that made your heart stop, and that moment before stepping onto the stage when your whole body vibrated with anticipation.
“This is where we rehearsed,” he said, his voice growing softer, as if afraid to disturb the peace of these walls. “The Royal Blacksmiths. We were… famous. All across Ninjago. Our dances were a fusion of strength and music, rhythm and freedom. We wanted people to feel alive.”
Bonzle approached one of the posters. On it, Lou was captured mid-leap — hair flying, face focused, body stretched in a perfect line.
“You were a dancer,” she said.
“I was,” Lou smiled wryly. “The best in the troupe, to be honest. And then… then I became a father. And life split into ‘before’ and ‘after.’ And ‘after’ turned out to be far more important.”
He paused, gazing at the dusty parquet where his feet once glided.
“I sent Cole to music school, you know? I thought he’d continue our tradition. Not necessarily dancing, but at least something connected to the stage. But he… he didn’t love it. Too loud, too noisy, too… not for him. I was angry back then. Thought he wasn’t trying, that he didn’t respect what I’d built. Then I realized — he was searching for himself. And he found it. Just not in music or dance.”
“In what, then?” asked Spitz, who had suddenly stopped still, listening.
Lou looked at his grandson, and the corners of his mouth twitched into a smile.
“In the ability to protect. In strength. In being a support for others. That’s not my doing, and not music’s doing. That’s his own. He made himself.”
Fritz ran to an old record player standing in the corner.
“Does this work?”
“I don’t know,” Lou walked closer, running a finger over the dusty lid. “Haven’t turned it on in a long time.”
“Turn it on!” the boys shouted in chorus.
Lou sighed. He walked over, checked the cord, pressed a button. The record player hummed, hissed — and suddenly, from the speakers, an old, slightly time-distorted melody poured out. The very one that the Royal Blacksmiths used to open their performances with. Lou froze. The world swam. He had heard this music thousands of times. But now — standing in this dusty room, looking at the children watching him with expectation — he felt something he hadn’t felt in years. He wanted to dance again.
“Grandfather?” Spitz tugged at his sleeve. “Can you show us? How you used to dance?”
Lou looked at his cane. At his legs, which were no longer what they used to be. At his heart, which still remembered every movement.
“I’m too old for that now, kid,” he said.
“Please,” added Fritz, and there was so much genuine adoration in his eyes that Lou couldn’t refuse.
Slowly — very slowly — he handed his cane to Bonzle. She took it silently, without her usual sharpness.
Lou straightened up. Took a step to the center of the room and closed his eyes.
The music flowed through him like water through stone — not changing its form, but leaving a mark. He raised his hands — the same hands that had once held Lilly during their first dance together. He took a step — uncertain, heavy, not like before. Then he took another. It wasn’t the same dance as before. Not the same flight, not the same lightness. It was a shadow of the past. An echo. But in that echo, a soul still lived. Lou turned, lifted his head — and for a moment, the cracked, dusty mirrors showed him not an old man with aching legs, but who he had been. A dancer. A performer. A man who could make a whole room hold its breath.
The children were silent. Fritz stared, mouth agape. Spitz forgot even to blink. Bonzle stood motionless — even more motionless than usual.
The music faded. Lou lowered his hands, breathing heavily. His leg ached — shooting into his lower back, into his knee, reminding him of age and loss. But on his face was a smile. Not bitter. Not nostalgic. But real, bright, happy.
“Awesome,” Spitz breathed. “Really awesome.”
“You were a star, Grandfather,” Fritz added.
Lou smirked, taking his cane back from Bonzle.
“I was. Now my star is you.”
He looked at the poster on the wall — at his younger self, at his troupe, at the life that remained in the past. And suddenly he understood: he regretted nothing. Nothing at all. Because that life had led him to this one. To Cole. To Lilly. To these children.
“Alright,” he said, dusting off his sleeve. “Who was talking about dinner?”
“Me!” the boys shouted and bolted for the exit.
Bonzle lingered for a second, gazing at the poster.
“You were handsome,” she said.
“And now?” Lou asked.
She turned her head toward him — empty eye sockets, yet somehow a smile read in them.
“And now — you’re family.”
Lou couldn’t find an answer. Or maybe he didn’t need one. Bonzle examined an old sketch pinned to the wall. Pastel. A house. A garden. And a small figure of a boy with a ball.
“Is this your home?” she asked.
“It was,” Lou answered. “Lilly drew it. A month before… before she was gone. She loved this house. Loved the garden. Loved Cole.”
“And you,” Bonzle added.
Lou didn’t answer. He just ran his fingers along the edge of the drawing — so gently, as if afraid of erasing the past.
“Come on,” he said finally. “I promised you dinner. And I believe someone mentioned sweets?”
Fritz and Spitz yelled with joy and ran for the exit. Bonzle lingered for a moment, looking at the drawing.
“You miss her,” she said, just like before.
“Always,” Lou replied. “But now… now, it seems, it’s become a little easier.”
After dinner (Lou made soup — the same one Lilly used to cook on rainy Sundays), the children settled in the living room.
Fritz tried to learn how to juggle an apple. Bonzle sat in an armchair with a book, though she hadn’t turned a page in twenty minutes — she was listening to the sounds of the house, to the breathing, to Lou moving through the rooms, checking that everything was all right.
And Spitz…
Spitz sat at a small table by the window with a pencil in his hand.
Lou didn’t notice at first. He came out with a cup of tea, planning to check if the children had fallen asleep, and stopped in the doorway.
The boy sat hunched over a sheet of paper. Tongue sticking out in concentration. The pencil clutched in his hand awkwardly, but with some desperate determination, as if his life depended on it.
Spitz was drawing.
Not just scribbles, no. He was trying to depict something — and Lou, squinting, recognized the outlines of… a little horse. The very one Cole had once carved. Only drawn. Crooked, with wrong proportions, with one eye bigger than the other, but alive. Sincere.
“What are you drawing?” Lou asked, approaching.
Spitz flinched, covered the sheet with his hand, then, thinking better of it, moved his palm away.
“It’s Dad,” he said. “When he was little. I want to give it to him. As a keepsake.”
Lou sat down beside him — slowly, with a quiet sigh, leaning on his cane. He looked at the drawing.
“You’re very good at it,” he said. “Really.”
Spitz looked up at him with disbelief.
“Really? Dad says I take after him — how much he loves to draw.”
Lou froze.
“What?” he asked. “Cole… still draws?”
“Yeah,” Spitz nodded, not taking his eyes off the paper. “He has a sketchbook. A thick one. He draws us. And Geo. And the house. And… he drew you.”
Lou felt the cup in his hand grow heavier.
“Me?”
“Yeah. You’re asleep in an armchair. You have this face… peaceful. He drew it for a long time, I saw. And he asked Geo, ‘Does it look like him?’ And Geo said, ‘It looks like him. Only alive.’”
Lou couldn’t breathe. He looked at his little grandson, who didn’t even understand what he had just said. Who was just drawing — just as his grandmother once had. Just as his father did.
“Your dad,” Lou began, and his voice broke. “Your dad got that from his mother. From Lilly. She used to draw, too. Always. Everywhere. On napkins, on newspapers, in the margins of her books. And when Cole was born… she drew him. Every day. How he grew. How he smiled. How he slept.”
Spitz put down his pencil.
“Where are those drawings now?” he asked.
“Gone,” Lou exhaled. “After the Merge. Like so many other things. But Cole… he remembers. He absorbed it. Her gift lives on in him. And in you, it seems.”
He reached out a hand and gently, afraid of scaring the boy away, ran it through his grandson’s fair hair.
“Do you know what that gift is? To see the world not as it is, but as it could be. And to be able to show it to others. That’s a rare gift, Spitz. Treasure it.”
The boy was silent for a few seconds. Then he suddenly pushed a sheet of paper toward Lou and held out the pencil.
“Draw something,” he asked. “You can, right? Dad said you… well, you can’t. But Lilly taught you a little?”
Lou smiled — bitterly and tenderly at once.
“A little,” he admitted. “She tried. She said a musician needs to feel form. That lines are like notes. I was a bad student.”
“Please.”
Lou took the pencil. Held it in his hand — unfamiliar, his fingers uncooperative, old, calloused, unsuited for such delicate work.
He drew a flower. Simple, with five petals, a crooked stem, and leaves that were too big. Spitz looked at the drawing, then at Lou.
“Beautiful,” he said, and there was not a trace of flattery in his voice. Only childlike sincerity.
“You’re kind,” Lou replied. “Like your father.”
And suddenly — like a punch to the gut — he remembered. Lilly sits at a table, paints spread out. Little Cole, about four years old, is on her lap. He holds a brush clumsily, but so focused, as if that single stroke determined the fate of the world.
“Mom, look! I drew something!”
“Oh, what is it?”
“It’s a Lilly!”
Lilly looks at the brownish-pink blob with crooked lines and nods seriously.
“Very lifelike. Especially the petals.”
Cole laughs — brightly, wholeheartedly. Then grows serious.
“Mom, teach me to draw for real. Like you.”
“Why do you need that?”
“So that… well, so I can show it. How I love. Dad. And you. And… everyone.”
Lilly hugs him, hides her face in his hair.
“Alright, my little artist. I’ll teach you.”
Lou blinked, clearing the moisture.
“Grandfather?” Spitz looked at him with concern. “Are you crying?”
“No,” Lou answered. “Just… something in my eye.”
He smiled — wide, bright, a smile he hadn’t worn in years.
“Come on,” he said, pulling a fresh sheet toward himself. “I’ll show you something. Lilly taught me to draw dogs. I was terrible at it, but she said the main thing isn’t resemblance, it’s the soul. Look.”
And they sat together — the old musician and the little boy — bent over the paper, drawing. Badly, crookedly, clumsily, but with soul. Bonzle watched from the armchair, not turning a page. Fritz, forgetting about his apple, stared at them with his mouth slightly open. The living room was quiet. Only the scratch of a pencil on paper. Silence in which the past and present fused into one.
Later, when Fritz and Spitz were already asleep on mattresses in the living room (Lou had flatly refused to let them go home so late), Bonzle sat by the window and looked at the stars.
Lou came up quietly, leaning on his cane.
“Can’t sleep?”
“I don’t sleep at all,” she reminded him.
“Oh, right. I keep forgetting.”
She paused, then said:
“Dad has a portrait of you.”
Lou flinched.
“What?”
“In his sketchbook. I saw it. He drew you from memory. With your cane. With that look… when you stare into the distance and see nothing around you. Geo said it’s called ‘melancholy.’ Cole answered, ‘No, that’s just my father.’”
Lou was silent for a long time. Then he sat down beside her — on the edge of the windowsill, uncomfortable, but he had no strength left to stand.
“You know,” he said, “for many years I thought he’d forgotten me. That it was easier for him that way. Without a father who was always on the road, who yelled at concerts, who… who never knew how to say how much he loved him.”
“He didn’t forget,” Bonzle said. “He was just scared.”
“I know. Now I know.”
They paused.
“He draws you, Grandfather,” she added. “Because you’re his family. And you don’t erase family. Even when it hurts.”
Lou didn’t answer. He looked at his sleeping grandsons — Fritz sprawled out like a starfish, Spitz curled up in a ball, clutching in his hand that drawing of the flower they had made together.
“You know,” Lou said quietly, “I wanted Cole to become a musician. I thought it would be our connection. Our common language. But it turned out… we have a different language. Lilly gave him the ability to see. And I… I was just there. Or not. More often, not.”
Bonzle turned her head toward him — empty eye sockets, but her gaze heavy, attentive.
“He talks about you differently,” she said. “He says: ‘My father taught me to be strong. Not because he taught me — because I saw how he held on when everything fell apart.’ That’s you. That’s yours.”
Lou closed his eyes. Something in his chest was breaking apart and coming back together — too many years of pent-up pain, too many unspoken words.
“Thank you,” he said hoarsely. “Thank you for telling me.”
Bonzle nodded and stared back out the window.
“You’re a good grandfather,” she added after a pause. “For a first try.”
Lou laughed — quietly, so as not to wake the children. The laugh came out raspy, damp, but real.
“I’ll try not to mess it up,” he replied.
When Cole and Geo returned (tired but happy, with a light flush on their cheeks and a couple of souvenirs from the city they hadn’t visited in a hundred years), Lou met them at the door.
“Quiet,” he said. “They’re asleep.”
Cole peeked into the living room. Fritz and Spitz — on the mattresses. Bonzle — in the armchair, pretending to read, but actually also dozed off, as much as a skeleton could manage.
“How were they?” Cole asked.
“Good,” Lou answered. “Spitz… he was drawing. All evening.”
Cole raised an eyebrow.
“Drawing?”
“Yes. He has talent, Cole. Real talent. He looks and sees what others don’t notice. Just like…”
He faltered. Words stuck in his throat.
“Like Mom,” Cole finished quietly.
Lou nodded. Tears stood in his eyes — clear, not shameful.
“He said he wants to give you a drawing,” Lou continued. “About you. As a child.”
He handed Cole a folded piece of paper. Cole unfolded it with trembling fingers. The drawing showed a little boy with disheveled hair, sitting behind drums — far too big for him, sticks clutched awkwardly. And an inscription in a child’s handwriting, crooked, with mistakes: “Dad wen he was little. And was hapy. I love you.” Cole couldn’t hold back. Tears streamed down his cheeks — silent, heavy, relieving.
“I…” he couldn’t speak.
Geo came up, hugged him from behind, rested his chin on his shoulder.
“Your son,” he said.
“Our son,” Cole corrected.
Lou watched them — his son, his son’s husband, the grandchildren sleeping in his living room, the drawing that had taken him twenty years back — and felt something heavy, something that had lain on his chest for years, finally release its grip.
“Stay,” he said. “For good. Not today. But… someday. This house is too big for one.”
Cole looked up at him with tearful eyes.
“Dad…”
“I’m not forcing you. Just… know. The door is open. Always.”
Cole stepped forward and hugged his father — tightly, like an adult, the way he hadn’t hugged him in many years.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “For them. For today. For… everything.”
Lou stroked his back, feeling his son tremble in his arms — not from cold, but from an excess of everything.
“Go,” he said finally. “Get some rest. Tomorrow is a new day.”
He went to his bedroom, leaving the door slightly ajar. The house smelled of children — sweets, soap, sleep. Lou lay down, covered himself with an old blanket, and stared at the ceiling for a long time. Then he took from the nightstand the little horse — the very one Cole had carved long ago. The one Bonzle had fixed. The one he kept next to his bed, so it was the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes.
“Do you hear me, Lilly?” he whispered into the darkness. “We made it. You would be proud. Of them. Of everyone.”
In response — only silence. But Lou imagined that somewhere very far away, or very close, or right inside his heart — laughter sounded. Lilly’s laugh. Light. Warm. And so familiar. He smiled — for the first time in many years — and closed his eyes.
Tomorrow he had to get up early. The children loved pancakes. Lilly’s pancakes.
He would bake them. Learn how. For them.