"Don't worry. It's normal to give your opinion," he said, and his tone was strangely serene, like that of an adult speaking with infinite patience to a small child. Or like someone who had learned, through hard knocks, that patience was the only way to deal with others. "If it weren't, why would I be telling you this story?"
Ed's eyes, clouded by alcohol but also by something else, fixed on the young man.
For the first time since Samael had sat down at his table, Ed didn't just see a tough or mysterious young man. He didn't see the boy with eyes that turned red and terrorized thugs. He didn't see the prodigy who, at three years old, fought against his grandfather.
He felt something else.
An unfathomable distance. A maturity that didn't match his years. It wasn't just the difference in physical age, which was already notable—he, a man in his twenties; Samael, a fifteen-year-old. It was a gap in experience, in understanding of the world, that made him, Ed, suddenly feel childish. Frivolous. Trivial.
An instinctive admiration, tinged with a bit of reverent fear, began to grow in his chest. Like a small but tenacious plant.
---
Back to the heat of the mountain. Twelve years ago.
The master looked at his exhausted disciple. And gently withdrew his hand from his head.
Samael, who had been floating on that cloud of well-being, came back to himself. He opened his eyes, and for an instant, there was a flash of loss in them, as if something precious had been snatched away.
"So, tell me," asked his grandfather, a smile playing on his lips beneath his thick white beard. "Are you going to stay here contemplating your masterpiece, or are we leaving?"
Samael looked around. The battlefield: the smoking rock, the trench opened by his grandfather's cut, the remains of his own walls scattered like breadcrumbs. His work. His relative failure. His partial victory.
"No, we're leaving," little Samael replied, looking up at his grandfather's imposing figure.
Despite his pride, his immense talent, that spiritual energy that churned inside him like a dormant volcano, at that moment he was just a tired child.
A child who had fought beyond his limits and now, with the adrenaline extinguished, felt every muscle, every bone, every scratch.
The old man nodded. Without further ceremony, without asking, without teasing, he approached.
He crouched down.
And he lifted the child, sitting him on his shoulders with the ease of someone holding something precious. Something fragile. Something to protect.
"Waa!" exclaimed Samael, surprised at first by the height, by the sudden elevation.
But a wide, genuine smile lit up his bloody, dirty face. A smile that erased, if only for a moment, all the harshness of his training, all the spilled blood, all the effort.
"Incredible! Amazing!" he repeated, his voice brimming with happiness.
If anyone had seen that child at that moment, with that radiant smile, with that expression of pure childhood wonder, they would never have imagined that minutes earlier he was throwing fireballs and dodging deadly strikes. You wouldn't believe it even if you were paid to.
"I feel so… so tall. The earth can't even touch me anymore."
He opened his arms as if wanting to embrace, or grab for himself alone, all the air, all the wind, all the sky.
The mountain breeze made his white tunic dance, now gray with dust and stained with blood. His loose, disheveled hair moved with the wind. His smile was so wide it seemed it would split his face.
And for a moment, Samael felt like he wasn't in this world.
"Grandpa, you should carry me like this every day," he said, tilting his head down, his chest pressed against his grandfather's white hair, feeling the warmth of that old but still strong body. "Being in heaven like this is too good. Very, very good."
His grandfather smiled. But said nothing.
"You trying to kill me, huh?" he finally replied, as he began to move, starting the journey back through the forest. "I'm not public or private transportation, you know?"
"Transportation? Public? Private?" repeated Samael, frowning. They were strange, unknown words. Perhaps annoying to him, because he didn't understand them. "What are those, Grandpa? What are those things?"
"Transportation," the grandfather began, slightly adjusting the child's weight on his shoulders, "is something like moving from one place to another. Carts, horses, boats… all of that is transportation. But we humans have taken it to other levels. You'll find out very soon, when you see more of the world."
"I see," Samael nodded, processing the information with the seriousness of a scholar. "So then, what is 'public'? Is it the same as that thing called transportation, or is it different?"
"That's something like…" the grandfather paused, searching for the right words, the kind a three-year-old could understand. "It's like the place where we were just training. That valley belongs to everyone. Anyone can go if they want. That's public."
It wasn't the most academic explanation, not entirely. But Samael understood a bit of the context.
"I understand," he said, nodding again. His world, until a moment ago limited to the cabin and the valley, had become larger. "But there was one missing, Grandpa. What does the last one mean? 'Private.'"
"The word 'private,'" the old man began, with that infinite patience only grandparents have to endure their grandchildren's inexhaustible curiosity. "Imagine it like those places in the forest where you can't enter. Where there's a fence, or a mark, or someone who tells you: 'this is mine, not yours.'"
"Hmm," the child brought his right hand to his chin, a universal gesture of deep thought, as he tried to remember. "When you say that, do you mean those places we saw once? The ones that had…"
He searched for the word. Frowned. Moved his lips silently.
"Ah, I remember. Forbidden. Forbidden places."
"You hit the nail on the head," said the grandfather, proudly.
"So, are they all dangerous?" asked Samael. They were already entering the forest, and the shade of the pines enveloped them, cool and aromatic. "The scary ones?"
"Some are, but not all," the grandfather continued, ducking under a low branch with the practice of someone who knew the path by heart. "Many such places exist to maintain order. So people can respect each other. So they know what belongs to whom."
"I see," Samael nodded, absorbing every word like a sponge. "And thank you very much for telling me all this, Grandpa. Thanks to you, I got to learn new things."
"You're welcome, son," the old man replied, and there was a smile in his voice. "That's why I'm here. To teach you what you don't know."
And so they began their return journey.
The old man walked with a firm, steady step, despite his years and the weight of the child on his shoulders. The child rode high up, swaying gently with each step.
The cool touch of the mountain breeze caressed his wounded face. The constant movement tousled his already messy hair.
The privileged view from his grandfather's shoulders showed him the world from a new perspective, wider, more beautiful.
And above all, the feeling of safety. Of family warmth. Of knowing that, up there, nothing could reach him.
The fatigue and pain vanished for a moment.
Happiness, simple and pure, enveloped him like a blanket.