It had been a fun day, a wondrous one actually, one that he would remember forever, no matter what happened, a memory he would treasure, and not only because of the drawing hanging on his wall.
Cades and his mom had just watched the new movie, a prequel to all the other movies about the books she had read to him when he was much, much younger, and now they were walking home, passing by people and more people while walking underground for a bit, a place mostly inhabited by immigrant species that didn't exactly like the sun, such as vampires, though they only really became like that because of their grave sickness and were constantly contributing to finding a cure, at least most of them, but they were quite famous for their so-called 'cinemas', a place seen in some rare worlds working with electricity converted from mana-stones, rare, and expensive, but fun and relatively cheaper when everyone watched it at once, enjoying a story, whatever it may be.
They were having fun, talking about the twists and turns of the story, Cades sometimes walking atop some of the stairs on the side of the road that lead to the houses far away into the dark, not that Cades could see them, and he laughed, and his mom laughed, both simply talking away, both interested in the new aspects of the story about a magical zookeeper, a professor of zoology that had been introduced in this story, and as the main character no less.
After some time they got to a busy place, one full of shops, businesses, and many, many people, but in the midst of all of that they found something else, something that made his mom suddenly have an interesting idea, one that they would continue on with all the way to the next parts of the new series that they had just been introduced to, the series they were anticipating quite a bit because of all the potential it had held, something that it had later more or less ruined with faulty actors , bad story-writing and many other things that made even fans like Cades stop thinking about it, though he was always more of a fan of being an artificer and obsessed with studying about it, perhaps also a reason as to why he had been such a fan of the story where the main character was an artificer.
The two of them went up to an artist by the side of the busy road, one that was advertising himself as being able to paint almost instantly, without magic at that, and only for ten tallars, not so much, and got ready to be painted, the artist counting down from ten, in a way Cades still hadn't figured out how he had done it.
He didn't remember much, she had done it so fast and he had been looking at the old man that was drawing the picture, telling the two of them to look at him so he could pain them more easily and smiling as Cades looked at him with a wide smile that still remained from the movie and really was just inherent in all children of that age.
However, he mom knew of a small weakness Cades had back then, one that he grew out of and one that he was quite happy to have left behind, for the most part at least, at least as far as he knew.
While he was unprepared, smiling stupidly and looking at the old man who had now started drawing something with weird jokes while still counting down, being at a single second, she started her attack from the sides.
And as he was not thinking about anything she had suddenly started tickling him, and he broke out in laughter, with the old man just smiling warmly and painting at a seemingly inconceivable speed, one that Cades could for some reason not forget even after years, but that's not really what was important right now, it was that he had laughed real loud and that his mom did the same behind him, laughing after she had tricked the innocent, little, child, something that the child was however pretty happy with.
Just a moment later the old man handed them the painting.
The simple but beautiful caricature made with a pencil still hung in his room when ehetria was destroyed, along with two other paintings and a wooden sword that his dad had gifted him when he had become good enough to defend himself if hard comes to hard according to the dad.
His mom had put them in a frame together with the tickets for the 'movie' that they had watched, and a few extras and small paintings she had made herself, hanging it up so that Cades looked at it whenever he slept later on, by his own asking, right to his right side from his bed.
Later on there were other movies that came out about that series, and they watched them all, the second one in the 'cinema', the same one, once more, having the same tradition but this time going to another artist, one that was sadly not fast enough, resulting in them not being able to repeat that unique painting, but also resulting in Cades, eleven years old at the time, starting to smile a bit less, something to do with school that had been stressing him at that time, just as everyone else, or perhaps just because the teenage years were slowly starting to begin and he had grown out of that age, or perhaps because he didn't want to smile as much.
On the third part of the series, one that came out much later than the rest, with Cades watching it at eleven, he went without his mom, something he regretted just a bit later when they did watch it together once more, this time after he had already seen it.
Cades wished that he had smiled in the third picture that he had lost a bit later after it had fallen down from the wall and he had put it somewhere when he couldn't put the frame back together, in the end having forgotten where exactly he had put of to keep it safe, but he couldn't repeat that anymore.
And now, he couldn't return to those days, he missed them.
He didn't even really remember the movies anymore, with them already having been quite a bit ago when he watched the next ones each time, but he remembered that moment, and an attack he wouldn't be able to return as his mom had never been ticklish.
It might not seem that important, but to Cades, it was one of the most important memories, one that he would always remember, even after all that had happened, and all that was destined to happen.