Rion prompted “I is for Icarus fallen,” and ri has a character in Addergoole named Icarus. stryck prompted “Infamous,” and thus it had to be THAT Icarus, too. Thus… this.

Icarus goes to school in Year 44. See the other Luke/Myst stories for his parents’ romance

Why Akakios had chosen to name his son Icarus, Luke had never known, and probably would never try to ask. Talking to the alpaca-boy made Luke irritable on a good day; talking to him about his son made everything… so very Mara.

Icarus. The name was infamous, the story known even now, even twenty-five years after the world had ended. “Icarus?” a stranger would say, and then ask, every time, “has he fallen?”

Ha, ha.

Luke had considered Icarus his own since he’d built the boy’s mother Mystral a house, his in parenting if not in blood. And, as with every other son he’d raised he felt it in his bones when the boy fell. Tripped and fell when he was running. Slipped out of a tree and broke his arm. Playing Superman, fell from the barn roof.

He was a boy. Boys fell. Luke reminded himself of this every time the boy came home with a new scrape, cut, bruise. Doug had fallen. Aleron had fallen all the time. Sons fell, grandsons fell; centuries ago, Luke had done his own share of falling.

None of them had been named for that tragic, fucking infamous fall.

It made Luke hover, and he hating hovering. Every time Chavva came running, “Dad! Icarus fell again!” his heart stopped. Every time he ran out to check the boy over, to pat him and Idu Tlacatl him and reassure him that it was all right, branches broke sometimes, every time, he worried it would be the last time.

It wasn’t until the boy was ready to go to Addergoole that Luke wondered if Akakios, the fluff-for-brains, had been being metaphorical.

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