Cades was sitting on the ground, looking at his mom who was currently sitting on top of her bed, a bed that also functioned as the family's couch because they had already readied themselves for a new arrival to their family, a baby whose name they hadn't decided on, and was just listening to what she was saying, fidgeting around with some stuff he had taken with him from his room on the upper floor and with the blanket that laid atop the bed.
She was reading him a story right now.
The story was interesting and fun in his own opinion, right now it was ad a comedic segment involving a troll, a student and a poem that was seemingly inscribed by a teacher the main character, the student, really didn't like because he was pretentious, haughty and far too well-looking from what Cades had been able to tell back then, causing the bag of the student to be ripped open and spill all across the stone floor, making him subsequently scramble to quickly pull them up while the troll was still singing the love-poem, resulting in the student, an artificer, to fly away out of shame, or at least wish that he would do that.
She had been reading this story, one that she herself as quite a fan of, to him for a long time, maybe expecting for him to become a fan as well, which he had indeed become, though later on he didn't really have any chances to express it, but in some ways she also seemed exhausted from reading a story she already knew to him all of the time.
He had once tried to read it himself, but perhaps because he had never really read that much before, being only four years old, he preferred to listen, barely having read a few sentences yet, something that had perhaps only come from him already having heard the sentences he had been trying to read anyways.
Cades tried to sit up on the bed, next to his mom who was now describing the shame the artificer student felt, a quite well-written feeling f sinking into the ground and being permanently devoured by it, while also wishing to be able to turn invisible or fly away into the air, never to be seen enough, something that in the last ones case he was actually capable of doing but simply not.. allowed to do, partially also because there was a ceiling above him, partially because he still had to pick up all of the things that had landed on the ground.
Sitting next to his mom, leaning his own head against her he looked at the letters that seemed senseless to him, almost like an entire mass of nothing that only a magician could understand, like his mom, she had been able to do magical things for a long time after all.
When he was sick she managed to heal him.
When he was hungry she fed him, she created beautiful, wondrous food, something that he later wished to repay her in whatever way he might be able to.
When he suffered she was with him, trying to calm him down, trying to help in whatever way she could.
When he was sad she cheered him up.
When he was happy, even if she wasn't, she was there, and she was happy for him as well.
When he was hurt she did the first things she could, she added a layer to stop the bleeding, she took him to a healer when it was especially bad.
Once, back when he was only a few months old Cades was sick, really sick, so sick in fact, that he was about to die had they waited even just a week more, and they were in such a bad place because the doctors and healers they had taken him to, those that they had trusted and believed, had been wrong, diagnosing him with a simple fever, while he had been sick with meningitis in truth, a deadly disease, especially for children, babies and the elderly.
And he had been a baby back then, one that was searing hot to the touch, almost at least.
During the night, not caring for anything else, his parents, both of them, had driven him to another doctor, one that he had never met again as far as he knew, one that worked in a more professional and important environment, and had him diagnosed once again because they felt that his body was just too hot to the touch to be considered normal, and see and behold, he was diagnosed with encephalitis, a deadly sickness, and taken in to be treated.
They hadn't told the Cades back then about this, but they had been terrified, fearing for his life, who wouldn't have done so after all..
In the end Cades recovered, having his bone marrow taking from his back in a relatively painful procedure that did give him a fear of needles and having a side-effect of the sickness that made him bad at sports related to depth-perception, or to be more specific, in relation to balls, on the other hand this could've just been an excuse that Cades uttered whenever he failed or a false diagnosis, but either way, he survived the disease.
Perhaps he wouldn't have survived if his parents, both of them, hadn't stopped whatever they had been doing at that moment and taken him to the doctor, but Cades didn't know that yet, he was only four after all, it was a wonder he could even remember what the book his mom was reading to him entailed, a book that also had a theatre that he would be allowed to see when she had finished reading him the corresponding book in the series, the second of which she was currently reading.
Right now, it was late, and she was tired, but she was still there for Cades, she still did whatever she could for him, she still helped him, and she even read a little bit extra when he asked, even singing the poem when he was so insistent on that, and despite him not realizing it back then, or even in the years after that, she was sacrificing her sleep just like back then.
She was sacrificing herself for Cades, be it only a little bit.
It might not be that important, but to Cades, it was one of the memories that he would always remember, even after all that had happened, and all that was destined to happen.