It wasn't an elaborate thought, nor a strategy, nor a carefully prepared life lesson. It was a flash. An idea that crossed his mind like a bolt of lightning in a dark room.
"Just so you see I'm not lying," the grandfather murmured, and his voice dropped a tone, becoming conspiratorial.
The wind, which until that moment had been moving the tops of the pines with a constant murmur, seemed to stop. As if it knew that what he was about to say was important. As if it didn't want to carry the words away before the child heard them.
"How about we go looking for a treasure?"
The words traveled at the speed of light to the child's ears.
A… a treasure!
Samael blinked. Once. Twice. Three times.
His arms, which had been crossed over his chest with the solemnity of a wise old man, fell to his sides as if someone had cut the strings holding them. His mouth, which had been pursed in a serious line, slowly opened. First a little, then more, until it formed a perfect O of astonishment.
And his eyes…
His eyes lit up.
It wasn't the light of magic, the one that sometimes shone in them when he trained with his grandfather, when spiritual energy flowed through his small body like a swollen river. It was something else. It was the light of a child who has just been told yes. That finally, after so many questions and so much waiting, something wonderful was about to happen.
"A… a treasure?" he repeated, his voice barely a whisper, as if the concept were too big to be said aloud.
The grandfather smiled. That wide smile, made of wrinkles and years, that seemed to illuminate his entire face.
"A treasure," he confirmed, letting the axe fall against the stump with a dry thud that sent up some splinters. "But not just any treasure, little one. A hidden treasure. A treasure that no one has found in a very, very long time."
Samael took a step forward. Then another. His bare feet barely felt the cold earth beneath them, the morning dampness, the small stones digging into his soles.
"Where?" he asked, the word shooting from his mouth like an arrow. "Where is it, Grandfather?"
The old man crouched down slowly—not because of his age, no, but to get to the child's eye level, so they could look at each other face to face. His hands, large and calloused, rested on Samael's tiny shoulders. He felt how small they were under his fingers, fragile despite the strength they held inside.
"That," he said, and in his voice was a secret about to be shared, "you will have to discover for yourself."
The child looked at him with an intensity that would have made anyone smile. His eyes, those dark eyes that could be so serene and so dangerous, now shone with an emotion that had nothing to do with battle or magic.
"Me?" he asked, the index finger of his right hand rising, pointing at himself with the gravity of someone who has just received an impossible mission.
"You," the grandfather replied, his voice a verdict and a blessing at the same time. "Because real treasures, Samael, are not found by following anyone. They are found when you are ready to search for them yourself."
The wind, which had stopped to listen, began to blow again. The tops of the pines moved with a whisper that seemed to applaud. The sun, which had already risen high enough to peek over the highest mountain, bathed the clearing in front of the cabin in golden, liquid light.
And Samael, who had completely forgotten the dream he didn't want to tell, who had forgotten the heat on his face and the sneeze and the cold floor, who had even forgotten the hunt of the tigers with steel fangs, jumped.
He jumped forward and latched onto his grandfather's leg with the strength of a little monkey who doesn't want to let go of its tree.
"Then let's go!" he exclaimed, his voice muffled against the fabric of the old man's trousers. "Let's go right now, Grandfather! We can't wait!"
The grandfather laughed. The laughter boomed in the clearing, shaking the leaves of the nearest pines, causing the birds that had perched on the branches to take flight in a cloud of feathers and chirps.
"Right now?" he asked, pretending to consider the idea seriously. "Without breakfast? Without preparing anything? Without even putting on your shoes?"
Samael looked down.
His bare feet, still with dirt from the previous night stuck to his toes, stuck out from under the hem of his tunic.
His toes wiggled. Curled. Stretched. As if they too were impatient.
"The shoes…" he said, the word coming out as a painful concession. "We can put them on. Fast."
"Fast?"
"Fast."
The grandfather looked at him.
He looked at him with those eyes that had seen so much, that had lived so much, that had lost so much. And in that moment, in that small instant suspended in time, he didn't see the prodigy. He didn't see the mage with the immense spiritual energy. He didn't see the child who had faced tigers with steel fangs without shedding a tear.
He saw his grandson.
Just his grandson.
And he felt that, for the first time in a long while, his old, tired heart was filled with something that wasn't worry, nor fear, nor the constant certainty that he had to prepare him for a world that would devour him if he wasn't ready.
Just joy.
"Alright," he said, and the word was a key that opened a door. "Let's go find that treasure."
The child released his leg with a squeal of excitement and ran toward the cabin, his bare feet pounding the earth with an energy that seemed to spring from some inexhaustible well.
"I'll put on my shoes!" he shouted as he disappeared inside. "You get everything else ready, Grandfather!"
The old man was left alone in the clearing.
The axe stuck in the stump.
The split wood on either side.
The sun still rising.
And a smile on his face. A smile that hadn't been there a few minutes ago, and that would remain long after the child returned.
"A treasure," he murmured to himself, heading to the back of the cabin, where they kept the things for expeditions. "My word. It seems today I'm really going to have to invent something good."
He stopped for a moment. He looked at the sky, at the mountains, at the forest that stretched as far as the eye could see.
And then, quietly, as if speaking to someone who wasn't there:
"I hope he doesn't ask for a map. Because that's something I really don't know how to draw."
Inside the cabin, the sound of a chair falling over was heard, followed by an "I'm almost ready, Grandfather!" that made the old man laugh again.
The sun kept rising. The wind kept blowing. And somewhere, in some corner of the forest that Samael didn't yet know, a treasure waited to be found.
Or, at least, something that resembled one.
°°°
In the tavern, in the present.
The bubble of silence remained intact. The magical bulbs flickered softly, casting dancing shadows on the dark wood walls. The piano, in the distance, continued playing that melancholy melody that seemed never to end.
Ed Tonor had his chin propped on the palm of his hand, his elbows on the table, his eyes fixed on Samael with an intensity he hadn't shown all night.
"A treasure," he repeated, and the word had in his mouth a taste of childhood, of anticipation, of things you believed when you were a child and that the world later took care of disproving. "And… did you find it?"
Samael didn't answer immediately. He took a grape from the plate, held it between his fingers, looked at it as if it were a small jewel.
"That," he said, with a slowness that made each word weigh more than it seemed, "you will have to discover for yourself."
Ed opened his mouth to protest, to complain, to say that wasn't fair, that they'd been at the story all night and he couldn't leave it like that.
But then he saw Samael's expression. That slight curve at the corner of his lips. That gleam in his eyes that wasn't the light of magic, nor the red flash of danger, nor the opacity of pain.
It was something else.
It was the gleam of a child who had just been told yes.
And Ed Tonor, who had been drowning in his own misery for months, who thought he had forgotten how that light felt, recognized it instantly.
He closed his mouth.
And smiled.