The December snow fell softly outside the sea lion's small home. The dying fire kept him warm as he worked meticulously on his current badge. His work was known throughout many a village, yet no one knew it was his. They only saw a badge. They assumed he got them from some warehouse full of 'em. No one saw each brush stroke carefully placed by his careful flippers. At present, he was working on the Fish Maniac badge. This particular badge required an excessive amount of brown, which he supposed some of the strange, non-animal creatures he gave the badges to would find boring, but it didn't matter to him. It had always been her favorite color.

He adjusted his glasses. The memory never left him, but he tried to push it away as best he could so that he could work. Alice Lee. His oldest, and only, daughter. He never spoke of her, though he wanted to. The villagers came to him for badges, not to hear his stories. He turned to the picture on the mantle. There she was. She was standing next to him, holding a Napoleon fish in both flippers and smiling so wide that the crescent moon that was due to rise that night would be jealous. That was the last picture he had of her before she. . .

He heard a small tink and then a slow, steady drip. Drip. Drip. Lost in thought, he hadn't noticed how close he was to his pot of paint and had managed to knock it over onto the badge.

"No. No, no, no!"

The paint consumed the design of a fish and left the small, wooden disk one big shade of chocolate brown. He sighed, walking quickly to the kitchen area for a paper towel to salvage what he could. He took pride in his work. Mistakes like these made him wonder if he was losing his edge. He hoped not. He did this for her. She had always loved diving and bug catching and that sort of thing. She had adored balloons and bunny rabbits and pinwheels to no end. She had truly had a child's heart, which he supposed was a growing rarity for an eleven-year-old, what with all of the new things that faced them. He didn't know for sure. He just remembered her as being different from the others. So full of life.

Come fishing with me, dad!
Dad, look! I caught a saw stag!
Dad, can I keep it?
He couldn't help but laugh, though his eyes were beginning to sting. He counted himself

fortunate to have been the type of father that spend as much time with his child as possible. He had cherished their little outings to the sea to catch who-knew-what. He had been there to carry her home when the jellyfish had stung her. He had been there to chase down that darned beetle that had begun to fly away the second she came close to it. Though no memory was as clear as the one time he hadn't been there. The one time he had let her go to the sea alone, thinking that she was smart enough, old enough, strong enough to play by herself without him hovering over her every second, an issue which she had started to bring up more and more frequently.

He dipped his brush into the lighter brown paint and began re-painting the fish. He moved the brown paint away as to avoid another accident. I miss you. He ran the brush carefully over the tail, making sure that the strokes were smooth. I miss you so much. How was he supposed to know that she would swim out too far? How was he to have guessed that she couldn't out-swim the pull of the current? She had always been a strong swimmer. She had always been smart enough to know how the ocean worked. Why, then, was he informed by the local authorities that his daughter's body had washed up on the shore that night? Why had he lost her forever the first time he had let her go out on her own? I should have been there. He still blamed himself. He figured that he would always do that, unable to escape the guilt and only able to distract himself with his ongoing memorial to her—these badges. She had been a girl scout in her younger years. She had gotten badges not too different from these that he made. She worked for each and every one, and yet she never managed to collect them all. He painted these with the things she loved, plus a few extra. He felt that, so long as he did this, she would never be completely gone.

It was night by the time he finished painting his batch for the next day. He yawned and stretched , his eyes barely able to stay open. The fire had died completely hours ago, but he hadn't bothered to rekindle it. He ran a flipper over the frame, wishing that he could go back in time and relive those memories with her. He felt so empty with no one but himself to care for. He looked over at the open window, where the moon was clearly visible. It was like looking at her smile far, far, away from him in the sky. He sighed heavily, knowing he should rest for his rounds. He walked back to the table and covered his paints so that they wouldn't dry out, then slowly climbed the ancient, creeky stairs of his house to his bedroom. There was work to be done tomorrow. There were villages to be visited. There were badges to give.