The evening air in Rhenford always smelled faintly of metal and rain. The town's factory sat at the edge of the river, and when the wind came from the south, it carried the sharp tang of iron across the rooftops. It was a scent that clung to Dion's father the way dust clings to old books—stubborn and permanent.
That night, the sound of the front door opening meant another shift had ended. The clock above the kitchen table read 7:43. Dion sat there already, his schoolwork pushed aside, a notebook open in front of him. Steam rose from a pot of stew on the stove; his mother moved quietly between counter and sink, her hands busy, her face tired but calm.
Then came the heavy footsteps, the rustle of a jacket, the clink of tools in a pocket. His father entered, rubbing his neck with a stained handkerchief. His hair was damp, his shirt darkened with grease around the collar.
"Evening," he said, his voice low and rough, like gravel.
"Evening," Clara answered.
Dion looked up. He wanted to say something—wanted to share what he'd written that afternoon—but he waited. He'd learned that timing mattered with his father.
His father sat down at the table, sighing as if the chair itself carried the weight of the day. He reached for the glass of water waiting for him. "Long day," he muttered. "Transmission gave out on a truck halfway to the ridge. Took three men and two hours to fix it."
Clara smiled faintly. "At least it's fixed."
He grunted in reply. Then, after a moment, he noticed Dion's notebook. "Homework?"
Dion hesitated. "Kind of."
His father's brow furrowed. "Kind of?"
"It's something I'm writing," Dion said. "A story."
There was a pause—thin, fragile, like the silence before thunder. His father leaned back in his chair. "A story," he repeated, as if testing the word for weight. "What kind of story?"
Dion brightened a little. "It's about a boy who hears things other people don't—like voices from old places. But they're not ghosts, they're—"
He stopped when he saw the expression on his father's face.
Not anger. Not mockery. Just a kind of stillness, a cold disinterest that sank deeper than either. His father took another drink of water before speaking.
"You're still doing that, huh? Writing?"
Dion nodded, his voice shrinking. "I like it."
His father's gaze shifted toward Clara. "And you're letting him fill his head with that nonsense?"
Clara's back stiffened, but she didn't look up from the counter. "It's harmless," she said quietly. "He's just a boy."
"Yeah, a boy who should be learning something useful," he said. "You think writing's gonna get him anywhere? You think words are gonna fix a broken engine or put food on this table?"
Dion's stomach tightened. His fingers curled around the edge of the notebook. "I don't want to fix engines," he said before he could stop himself.
The words hung in the air like smoke. His father turned toward him slowly, eyes narrowing—not out of rage, but disbelief.
"What did you say?"
"I just mean… I like stories," Dion murmured. "I like writing them. Maybe… maybe that's something I could do."
His father's laugh came out short and bitter. "You want to eat from paper, then? You want to make a living out of scribbling?" He leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Listen, son. Stories are fine for people who don't have to work. But you? You'll need your hands, not your head. The world doesn't care what you write. It cares what you can fix."
Clara turned then, her voice soft but firm. "Let him dream a little, Tom."
"Dreams don't pay bills, Clara."
The silence that followed was sharp enough to draw blood. The only sound was the ticking of the clock above the stove, steady and indifferent. Dion stared at his notebook, the pages suddenly too white, too loud. He wanted to close it, to hide it before it could be judged again.
But his father wasn't finished. "You know what stories did for me?" he asked. "Nothing. When I was your age, I wanted to be a pilot. Thought I'd fly planes, see the world. But my father said the same thing I'm telling you now—dreams are for people who can afford to fail. We couldn't. You can't either."
He stood up, pushing his chair back. The sound scraped across the floor like a mark of finality. He walked to the sink, washed his hands, then left the kitchen without another word.
Dion didn't move. He sat there, staring at the faint pencil marks on his paper, at the story that had seemed so full of life just minutes ago. It felt smaller now. Fragile. A secret that had been exposed to the wrong kind of light.
Clara came over, drying her hands on a towel. She crouched beside him, touching his shoulder.
"He doesn't mean it the way it sounds," she whispered.
"Yes, he does."
She sighed. "He's just… tired. The world's been hard on him. He wants to protect you from disappointment."
Dion didn't answer. He looked at the notebook again. The words there seemed distant, belonging to someone braver.
Clara reached for the book, hesitating. "You shouldn't stop writing," she said. "Not because of him. Not because of anyone."
He closed it gently. "Maybe I'll just keep it to myself."
Her hand lingered on his shoulder, but she didn't argue. There was a certain sadness in her silence, as if she knew that some battles could only be fought alone.
---
Later that night, the house was dark except for the faint blue glow of the television in the living room. His father had fallen asleep in his chair, his head tilted back, his mouth slightly open. The empty beer bottle on the floor caught the light like glass rain.
Dion stood at the doorway, watching him. He wanted to feel anger, but what he felt instead was something heavier—a strange pity he didn't yet know how to name.
He turned away and went to his room. The moonlight spilled across his desk, illuminating the notebook he had tried to hide earlier. He opened it carefully, running his fingers over the last page he'd written. The words looked the same, but they felt changed, distant, like a melody he could no longer hum.
He picked up his pencil. For a long time, he didn't write anything. Then, quietly, he added a single line beneath the unfinished paragraph:
"Sometimes silence is louder than shouting."
He stared at it, reading it over and over, the truth of it sinking into his chest.
From that night on, Dion learned to keep his dreams quieter. He still wrote—but only when no one was watching. In the quiet hours of morning, when the world still slept, he would open his notebook and let his words spill out like whispers to himself.
At school, he stopped showing his teachers his stories. At dinner, he kept his eyes on his plate. When his father asked about his grades, he answered with short, careful words.
He learned how to live between lines—how to move quietly, think quietly, dream quietly.
But even silence, he discovered, could be a kind of rebellion. Because inside it, stories still grew. Slowly, secretly, like roots beneath the soil.
And though Dion no longer spoke of his dream, it didn't die. It only went deeper underground, waiting.