the age of man is over;

[wingborne]

He felt warm and comfortable. Tipping the empty glass at the tallow candle, he wondered, briefly, shortly, if he was drunk. He couldn’t be drunk, not yet, but he never did know when it was enough. The men on the creaking ship told him that he would grow violent after downing enough pints of ale, but the men on his ship would say anything he told them. One of their stronger points, he thought.

The living room should have been cold. Snow crept across the window’s glass, soft flurries turning rapidly into the deadening sleets that iced the roads and thickened the world with whiteness. He, though, felt all the better for it, though he reached over to drape a woven yellow shawl over America’s shoulders. His charge wouldn’t be feeling the benefits of the warming alcohol, and it wouldn’t do to catch a cold.

America stirred briefly, tickled by the fringes of the shawl, but continued his restful slumber. It couldn’t have been a comfortable position. His knees were sharp and bony, even through the coarse breeches. But America seemed content, his little hair bobbing up and down every time he turned this way and that.

He knew he wasn’t drunk, but his fingers felt far away. Still, with his free hand, he brushed against America’s downy felt hair, which spun yellow like a clean duckling. Had he grown? The boy had grown. Papers were strewn all about the room, bad coloring, bad inking, bad letters, all gorgeous and beautiful, to be kept and pressed into a chest in his empty castle.

So young and strong! America grew up so quickly. He was barely up to his knees the last time he had seen him, and he had sprouted into a dapper young lad with rosy cheeks and a robust smile. His fingers always caked in mud, the back of his neck perpetually dirty. His quiet governess in her stiff green dress had apologized gravely, but it was impossible, he felt, to restrain a boy like America.

And Christmas. The holiday was fast approaching, and the presents he had brought all seemed like trifling kindling against America’s presents for him. He knew what America would give him, hand-made crafts that he wouldn’t have sold for any amount of farthings. But soon after the new year passed, he would need to leave again. His sword was too clean of blood, and distant, exotic parts of the world called for him. Flax and timber, sugar and fish, and rum, to quench the never-ending thirst.

He continued to stroke America’s hair, but he seemed to be humming. He must have been at least tipsy, because he had already plunged into the second refrain when he first noticed the vibrations in his throat. What was it? A song? Hopefully not an obscene one, he didn’t want America to run around town singing a song about wenches.

His idle fingers tapped along the side of the chair as he watched the Adam’s apple on America’s slender throat bob up and down. He had grown so strong and so quickly. His arms and legs seemed too long and gangly for him, and there was a height and pitch to his young voice that wasn’t present before. It was beautiful, but it was unlike the childishness when he was still a babe, to be carried in his arms in his soft nightdress.

Ah, he was humming a lullaby. Would America remember this? Would he remember a cold, long season, filled with dampness? Of ships passing darkly on the horizon, of the barrels that trundled up and down the harbor? Why was he thinking of such things? Such thoughts of sentiment did not befit a violent country like him. But only a few centuries ago, thoughts of kindness at all did not befit him, either.

Was he kind? Or was he cruel? Ah, America was the far crueler. For every time his ship tossed down their thick ropes to the port, his memories of a small young boy shattered as the young adult grew and grew.

America wouldn’t remember this at all. And the thought grew sadly over his heart, slowly, but surely, and he felt suddenly unhappy. But the room was cold and he was drunk, so he finished humming his disoriented lullaby, and let the moment wash away with time.