This is the first thing I've written in...lets just say a while, so please excuse me as I am a little rusty.
The night grows quiet as a father silently wraps his daughter in a thick blanket of safety and sweet dreams.
He carefully bushes a golden lock from her content face. She smiles at his touch.
One of those smiles that only a child can give you in all their unconditional love.
A smile that warms like the sun on a Sunday morning and gives you the strength to make it through one more day.
To protect your daughter, one more day.
As she lies there so innocent and pure he prays that she will stay like that forever.
He prays that she will never know the desperate silence that fills you when a bullet rushes though the air.
That she will never feel how the the world freezes as you watch yet another innocent victim take his last breath.
He prays that she will never know her fathers pain and sorrow.
That her life will always be filled with ponies and faeries and ice cream and everything that makes her eyes grow wide with joy.
As he closes the door he hears a happy sigh from pink bedsheets and he knows that today his prayer was heard.