[ RF ] A father and daughter talk as he prepares to walk her down the aisle .

He had n't cried when she was born, like the wife thought he would. There was just a delicate moment of clarity, where a few small things he'd been told time and time again since they'd known she would be she began to make sense. Epics had been told about father's and their daughters. Epics. 
 
 And while she grew she was strong. My, she was strong. He despised using that word to describe women. It felt too simple when there were so many incredible words he could've used for her, for his wife, his own mother. If only his mind was a thesaurus, as sharp as hers, but that was all he had. She was, his girl, she was strength, and an adventure, and he'd needed to be strong just to raise the precious, perfect thing as his own, because Lord knows his inky hands never deserved such a gift. He was n't sure he believed anyone did. 
 
 Her brother would be on her other side, lending his own strength. She wanted it that way, and what she wanted, she got. No questions asked. He could n't quite bring himself to look at her, but he could see the wry smile, and the stars that were her eyes, and the never ending'I told you so' brow raise that seemed to hop into over drive whenever he was in the room - he could see all these things, clearer than daylight, hear them sharper than a bell. The lad was a mess already, sending off his baby sister as though it would be forever, but his own face was dry as the day she were born, the shift in reality almost as unacceptable to him as becoming her father had been. 
 
 `` I never thought this day would come,'' he mumbled at her. He'd been doing that a lot today. Yesterday, too. Mumbling, in his tone she said reminded her of his truck tyres on their driveway gravel. The signal he was home. It was n't completely the truth, of course. Every father - mother, parent - thought this day might, could come. Wondered at it. Stewed at it. Refused, or accepted it. 
 
 He stepped forward, when the music queued, his feet were numb as his heart, but his hands were aflame, and he slipped one into the handle of her casket. It was n't only him who had brought her into this world, and it was n't only him who held her now. His son, the boyfriend he'd been surprised he liked so much, a friend he'd always been skeptical of, a cousin she'd laughed with, her uncle, his wife - they walked her, together, towards what he hoped would be something of her happily ever after.
