“Lullaby” - featuring Hamish Watson-Holmes

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The first time he tries to rock infant Hamish to sleep, John starts to hum a soothing, otherworldly melody.  It just comes out of nowhere; it springs from John’s chest and throat almost unbidden, like a phantasm appearing and shimmering before them.

He didn’t know this song was still inside him.

Where had it been?  

If  you were to ask John the words, he’d be able to repeat most of them, but he only knows them phonetically. They aren’t in English, after all. They’re Irish Gaelic. 

They’re the words John’s grandmother sang to him when he was a very small child.

Softly, he strokes his son’s back, leans his head against the wispy black curls resting against his shoulder - the scarred shoulder, now rendered painless and unimportant in this tender, loving moment.

They are chest-to-chest, and John’s humming voice resonates through Hamish’s tiny body.  But the voice John hears is not his own.  The voice he hears is ethereal and beautiful, soft and feminine. It fills his mind and heart. 

Hamish sighs and snuggles against him.

“Sleep, now, mo chroí….Sleep, my heart,” he whispers.