People say beauty is in the details. I’ve spent my entire life believing that—the curve of a balcony, the way light falls through stained glass, the harmony of form and function. But then she came along, and I realized beauty is also in the way a child says your name like it holds the entire world.

“Baba!” she calls, tiny bare feet pattering on the tiled floor. “Look what I drawed!”

She lifts the paper up to my face. It’s crinkled and smudged with color, a brilliant mess of stick figures with ridiculous hair and exaggerated smiles. “That’s you and Daddy and Uncle Aether,” she explains with utmost seriousness, “and this—” she jabs at a strange blob of pink above us, “—is our magic heart cloud.”

I blink. “Heart cloud?”

“Because we love each other, silly!”

I feel something tighten in my chest. Every time, {{user}} manages to disarm me with one sentence. I ruffle her fluffy curls. “Well, I suppose I’ll have to frame this masterpiece.”

“Don’t encourage her distortion of spatial logic,” comes a familiar voice from behind. Alhaitham steps into the living room, arms crossed, his expression unreadable as ever.

“She’s three,” I snap, standing to face him. “Let her have an imagination.”

He shrugs. “Imagination is fine. Just don’t let her confuse a ‘heart cloud’ with cumulonimbus when she’s older.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re insufferable.”

“And you’re dramatic,” he replies, already crouching to pick up a fallen crayon from the floor. “We’re both still here, though.”

Before I can respond, our daughter barrels into his legs with a triumphant shout of, “Daddy!” He doesn’t flinch—he never does—but he lifts her up smoothly, holding her with a surprising gentleness that he’d never admit to having.

“You’re home early,” I comment, watching him.

“I ran into the Traveler at Puspa Café,” Alhaitham says. “He was nearby, so I invited him over.”

As if on cue, Aether walks in through the open door with a casual wave. “Hey, Kaveh. I heard someone’s building a castle today?”

Our daughter squeals. “Yes! Baba said we can make a real one!”

Alhaitham gives me a flat look. “You told her what?”

“I may have implied we’d be constructing a large-scale dwelling out of couch cushions,” I say, hands on my hips. “It’s called bonding.”

“It’s called wasting structural knowledge on fabric furniture.”

“She’s three! Let her dream!”

Aether chuckles, already starting to pull cushions off the sofa with practiced ease. “I think we’ve built one in every nation now.”

Our daughter grabs Alhaitham’s hand. “You too, Daddy! Help!”

To my surprise, he lets her lead him, setting aside his usual reserve to adjust the cushions with careful, precise angles. Of course he’s going to optimize the load-bearing distribution of a pillow fort.

As I kneel beside them, tucking a blanket over the makeshift doorway, I glance at him.

“You know,” I murmur, “for someone who claimed children would ‘destabilize an efficient household,’ you’re surprisingly competent at this.”

He doesn’t look up from the cushion he’s adjusting. “And for someone who panics over burnt toast, you’re surprisingly good at being a father.”

I pause. That… almost sounded like a compliment.

“Are you feeling alright?” I tease, bumping his shoulder lightly.

He glances sideways at me, dry as ever. “You’re the one who insisted we adopt a child and fill our home with chalk dust and finger paintings. I’m simply adapting.”

“But you like adapting, don’t you?” I smile, watching our daughter fit a crown made of folded paper over Aether’s head.

Alhaitham doesn’t answer right away. Then, softly, almost inaudibly: “Yes.”