Her Fourth || Aleethia || Headcanon
She's small within his arms - too small and too wiggly and giggling like the adorable fiend that she is. It's the first time in months that he has had the chance to spend a day with her, others have been spent working, slogging away at papers and classes and guard. Empirical duty is not a thing to be taken lightly and Balthier now finds that his life revolves around it rather than the things that matter most.
"Papa," She coos, a laugh to her voice as she squirms in his hold and he huffs, trying his level best not to drop the mass of four year old trying to escape him. "Papa I want it!"
He turns, as every father must, to look in the direction the rascal has pointed. It's nothing he expects a child to point out - it is neither cake, nor toy. Rather her chubby little finger extends towards the vague outline of a glider.
It's a small thing - the newest prototype from Draklor, and nothing that a child should ever own or be given the reigns of. She'd kill herself (and him) within two seconds flat, but he cannot stop the small swell of kinship that rises in him.
Flying is in her blood.
"Why?" He murmurs, hoisting the girl higher upon his hip. She's so much bigger than she was before and Balthier cannot shake the feeling that time is passing him by with every waking moment spent away from her.
"It's wings." She hums, happily in broken Archadian. "I can fly with you."
It's such a simple statement, so innocent in it's delivery that he is floored. Blinking down at the child so happy in his arms, his brows draw and his heart is pained. She has never flown with him, nor, had he though once, would she ever. She was too precious a thing to be gambled so. But here he gave that idea new though - a sigh drawing from his lungs thick and fast.
He takes her out that night in the Strahl - tethers them high above the city and sings with her as her mother once had, watching the stars come out. And as she falls asleep upon his lap, he pets her hair and strokes her cheek and say's within her mother's tongue 'Happy Birthday, little one'.
