By the time Arthur turned seven, most of the children in his year had something. Not all of them had abilities as visible or dramatic as Felix's lightning, but nearly everyone had at least a flicker of something by now, some small proof that whatever lived inside them had begun to stir. Tomas could skip stones further than the laws of the world seemed to allow. Pria's shadow had grown bolder, detaching itself for whole seconds at a time now instead of just one or two. A quiet boy named Denner, who rarely spoke to anyone, had revealed without any fanfare that he could make small plants grow slightly faster if he concentrated, a gift he mostly used to win minor bets involving turnip seeds.
Arthur had none of it.
He had grown used to the particular ache of standing at the edge of schoolyard games where ability mattered, not excluded exactly, the other children were not cruel enough for that, not yet, but quietly other, the way a single mismatched stone stood out in an otherwise even wall.
He watched it happen again on an ordinary afternoon in early spring.
A cluster of children had gathered near the fence at the yard's edge, taking turns showing off small tricks, the particular casual performance children engaged in when they had something worth performing and an audience willing to watch. Pria let her shadow peel away from her feet and creep along the fence rail. Tomas skipped a stone across the muddy puddle left from the morning's rain, sending it bouncing an impossible six times before it finally sank.
ART: Do it again.
TOM: Watch this one, it's even further.
Arthur watched, genuinely delighted despite the quiet ache underneath the delight, the particular complicated feeling of being glad for his friends and lonely on his own behalf at exactly the same time. Elsie, beside him, sent a small curl of wind spinning through the gathered leaves at their feet, catching a few and lifting them into a lazy spiral before letting them drift back down.
ELS: Your turn, Arthur.
She said it without thinking, the particular automatic invitation of a game where everyone was expected to have a turn, and the moment the words left her mouth Arthur watched her realize her mistake, her expression shifting quickly, the particular scramble of someone trying to walk back something that couldn't quite be walked back.
ELS: I mean. You don't have to. If you don't want to.
ART: It's fine.
ELS: I wasn't thinking.
ART: It's really fine, Elsie.
It was not entirely fine, but it was fine enough to say out loud without his voice cracking, and Arthur offered her a small smile to prove it, the particular practiced performance of reassurance he had gotten better at over the past several months, better at making his face say something calmer than what sat underneath it.
The other children had already moved on to something else, the moment passing the way most small moments passed among children, quickly and without lasting weight to anyone except the person left standing at its center. That evening, at dinner, Arthur set down his spoon with more deliberation than the gesture required.
ART: Mama. Papa. Why hasn't mine come yet?
The question landed in the particular quiet that followed a thing finally being asked directly after circling unasked for a long while, and Wren and Calder exchanged a glance across the table, the particular quick wordless conversation parents sometimes held in the space of a single look.
WRN: Abilities come in their own time, love. You know that.
ART: But everyone else has theirs. Even Denner, and he's quiet as anything, he barely talks and even he's got something.
CLD: Some come later than others. That's simply how it works sometimes.
ART: How much later?
Calder set his own fork down, meeting his son's eyes directly, the particular steady attention he gave to things he wanted Arthur to understand fully rather than simply hear.
CLD: I don't know, Arthur. I won't lie to you and pretend I do. Some children don't show anything till they're ten, eleven, even older. It happens. Rarely, but it happens.
ART: And if it doesn't come at all?
The question arrived plainly, without drama, the particular blunt honesty children were sometimes capable of precisely because they hadn't yet learned to soften the things that frightened them, and the silence that followed it sat heavier than the one before.
WRN: Then we'll figure that out together, if it comes to that. But it's not something you need to carry right now. You're seven. You have time yet.
ART: Everyone keeps saying yet.
WRN: Because it's true.
ART: What if it stops being true?
Wren reached across the table and took his hand, her grip warm and certain in a way that asked him to believe her even if belief required more effort than usual tonight.
WRN: Then you'll still be exactly who you are right now. My son. Kind, and stubborn, and entirely too clever for his own good sometimes. An ability wouldn't change any of that. Its absence doesn't either.
Arthur looked at her for a long moment, wanting badly to accept the comfort at full value, and finding that some smaller, quieter part of him could only accept it partway.
ART: Okay.
He said it because saying anything else felt unfair to how hard she was trying, not because the word carried its full usual weight, and Wren seemed to understand this, offering him a small sad smile that acknowledged the gap without commenting on it directly.
Later, after Arthur had gone up to bed, Wren and Calder sat together by the dying fire, the particular quiet of a house settling into its evening stillness.
WRN: He's starting to really feel it now.
CLD: I know.
WRN: What if it really doesn't come, Calder?
Calder was quiet for a long moment, staring into the embers with the particular weight of a father turning over a fear he'd been holding privately for longer than he'd admitted aloud.
CLD: Then we'll help him build a life that doesn't need it. Same as we'd do for anything else life handed him that he didn't ask for.
WRN: He wants to be a hero. He said as much to a room full of children who laughed at him for it.
CLD: I heard.
WRN: And you're not worried?
CLD: I'm terrified, if I'm honest. But I watched that boy stand up in front of a room that laughed at him and hold his ground anyway. Whatever else he does or doesn't end up with, he's got something most children twice his age don't.
WRN: And what's that?
CLD: He doesn't quit. Not even when quitting would be easier.
Wren looked at the fire, the last of its light flickering low and orange across her tired face, and said nothing further, the particular silence of someone who wanted badly to share her husband's confidence and wasn't quite there yet.
Upstairs, in his small dark room, Arthur lay awake longer than usual, staring at the ceiling, turning his own hands over in the dark the way he'd started doing lately, watching them for some sign, any sign, that never came. He got up eventually, quietly, careful not to wake anyone, and stood at his window looking out at the moonlit yard below.
He raised his hand toward the sky, the way he'd seen Elsie raise hers when she called the wind, the way he imagined the old stories' heroes must have raised theirs before something extraordinary answered.
Nothing happened.
He stood there a while longer anyway, his arm growing tired, refusing to lower it, the particular stubborn insistence of a boy who had not yet learned that some things could not be willed into existence through sheer wanting alone. Eventually he lowered his arm and went back to bed. But he did not stop wanting it.