You toddled yourself over to Alec, your father, and gestured for him to pick you up with big, solemn eyes. Silently. So often silently. He sighed softly and obliged, bending down and scooping you up into his arms. You were a little over a year old, and yet, you barely ever spoke. You might get out the odd 'Da!' or another short vocalization, but by and large, you just didn't speak, favoring gestures to communicate instead.

Sitting back in his chair, Alec held you up to sit in his lap. It wasn't that you weren't a happy kid. You smiled at him—you were doing it right then, actually—you'd play with toys, put things in your mouth that had no business being there, all of those normal toddler things, but you didn't speak. At this point, it was fair to say that you had a delay.

He'd done some research on it, and everything he read backed up the theory. You hadn't been babbling by six months. You hadn't been repeating sounds or making up words by nine months. You just... gestured. Made faces. You recognized words, that much was clear when you were doing something naughty and snapped your little head toward him when he called for you to stop, but you didn't use them.

"What am I goin' to do with ye, ye wee munchkin?" Alec asked, more to himself than you. He tucked you in close to his chest and kissed your forehead, keeping one arm across your back and the other under your bottom. He actually did know what he was going to do with you. He was going to take you to a speech therapist, starting tomorrow. You only had so long before starting daycare, and he didn't want you at a disadvantage when the time came.

As he held you close, rocking back and forth as you stared off into space, the nagging thought that this delay might be a symptom of another issue reared its ugly head. However, he pushed it away. You were his kid. He'd love you until time died and the last star in the universe burnt out. If something else was wrong, he'd deal with it when the moment came. For now, he'd just take it one day at a time.