Braveheart!

The monsters of the dark were already creeping out of the shades. Chains were clinging, dogs - barking from behind the fences. The full moon enchanted the entire landscape with its smothered, dim luster. Night was enfolding the valley and of the sunlit, warm day just the memory reminisced. Cold, cold air penetrated the clothes and lungs of the unfortunate souls that were too late with finding the right path home.

In the deepest of the night, sometime around 6:15pm, a father and son were bravely walking through their mid-class, mid-range, mid-western, pedestrian-friendly, pet-friendly, sport-friendly, gay-friendly, race-friendly, senior-friendly, happy-smile-friendly, bamboo-fence-NON-friendly neighborhood.

The kid - a boy - appeared to be 14.5 months old and from the way he was hugging his daddy, he was either scared of his first official walk in the dark, or he really loved his "old man". Just in favor of the story we'll assume the second option. The kid had a huge hat on his head, obviously his dad's, which read "Poison the Well" (must be a punk-band name or something), which tells us that he probably couldn't stand tight hats, and preferred something loose, that could fit over the hood, so he wouldn't notice it so much.

And through the dark park they walked, in their economy-friendly community, until at once the lights of the city gave a whole new meaning to the picture! One could just tell the enormous weight that was lifted off the shoulders of the kid as they reached the street with all its traffic lights, and the cars passing by! From the tiny little mouth an endless flow of word-like, sentence-like compositions of excitement poured with no rest!

The grocery store was but 4 more minutes away and the loving little boy wanted to walk by himself now. He started struggling with the dad (who must have known that once let on the ground, there's no picking up, which would have meant hours till they reach the dark again!) and the dad fought back, trying to buy himself some time. Alas, the dad gave up and thus started the ten-minute attempts to walk the last 10 meters [ 30 feet ;) ] to the store. There was shuffling, changing in directions, refusals of hand-holding and tantrums, following every attempt of the dad to guide the kid into the store. Only through the means of brute force did the father manage to do his movie-renting and rapidly left the store, to make sure they reached the dark soon enough, before he would have lost his hearing.

And there they were - a father and a son - walking through the darkness, hugging like there's no tomorrow in the pure silence of the night, quickly approaching home…

The End