"Toy Everlasting"

Through the bars I see his face.

Innocence. Beauty. Though it changes every day, it seems. His jaw a little stronger than before, his hair darkening and his eyes sharper. All the while his lips move in every direction as they ceaselessly explore new and unusual sounds.


Yesterday he was crawling. Today is he running. Tomorrow he will be talking and finally welcomed into the world beyond.

"Friends... for a time"

I have seen that world. It holds everything and nothing, with such colour and temptation to occupy even the most focussed of minds. One day, soon, there will be no space in his life for me. He will stand tall and make decisions that will shape those around him. There will be love, but not always easy, and never again so innocent.

As he grows so will the light and laughter he holds in one hand, while the other hides darkness and pain. He will come to know all things, though he will struggle with uncertainty. And that will prove both the best and worst of all he has to come.

My future seems more certain. Friends, for a time. Then locked away. A dusty old vault with my kin, if I am lucky. Vaporised with the waste, if I am not.

Yet as he screams for me now, and I am plucked from my place in his cot to be held in those arms, I realise something I did not before.

That I will live on, regardless.

For as his face stares into mine, for the first time I see a spark. Today’s change is important. Perhaps the most important. The flame of memory, an ignited light of recognition that will burn as long as he lives, even if he will not always choose to remember.

There will be others like me. But my clockwork chest strains with pride that I am the first. If I had a heart, it is now that it would begin beating.

Perhaps I will only linger as a ghost of what once was. Perhaps simply a clung-to feeling of security in those most desperate of times.

It does not matter now. His tiny hand clutches mine and leads me into a new adventure. And though I am but steel and sentiment, a gift from a distant land, I feel him. We bond. He knows.

In that moment, I am his forever.