#death implication tw

In a way, he had never needed magic to know he wouldn’t see as much of the world as he wished to. Wilden had always carried the feeling, deep down in dark places in his otherwise bright soul, that his time would pale in comparison to what it should have been. Before Laurel, before their little boy, before the thought had ever crossed his mind that one day he would see the world in terms of family, his own, he still knew that feeling, how it sank into the core of a person. And he was at peace with it.

“This world is unkind,” his mother had warned, her words the sage advice of one whose own gifts wove the future before her eyes and lay the secrets of it in her steady hands. Enola did not like the path her youngest was on, and her heartbreak came in knowing she would not sway him from it. Nor did she have any right to do so.

Because young minds are wild, hearts are as well, and the boy had both to spare.

All the more reason for a mother’s grief long before loss, seeing the glossimer strings of fate toy so cruelly with her own, feeling the strands untwist so slowly with too few years. Watching a child full of life and wonder grow into a man to be proud of in his kindness and determination is, of course, a mother’s joy. But knowing there would be a day when he would ask what she warned, and nearly begged, each of her children never to request of her; it was crushing.

He would ask because that was her Wilden; brave and bold to a fault, ready to face his stars and see what lay ahead even if, she thought perhaps, he may have had a hint of knowing already.

“The world is wonderful,” he countered every time, with a smile upon his lips and faith in his eyes, wanting to believe past the things his father feared and his mother grew cold towards. Eager to feel magic slip through his fingers and heat his blood, the euphoria of just being in the perfect sense of the word; to connect with magic was simply what he, and others like himself, were made to do.

Wilden had never held fear of it, embraced so willingly that his life was laced with the trappings of mystical and amazing things even as he traveled the path under far more simple visage.

“Be normal, be content with that,” his father had cautioned with a stern set to his jaw that dared to be defied, to be dismissed in the fierceness of protection of his own. It was a trait, through and through, of their line. And the man had no magic to speak of, but his beloved and his children? They were something different, something that the world beyond their simple home had begun to hate with a passion that frightened him. Stern words make for safe places, desperate efforts of desperate men to guard what they hold dearest. But Wilden would not listen, Jakob needed no spells nor powers to see that his son could accept nothing but finding his own way in that wide, dangerous world. The burden of a father is, sometimes, knowing their child will prove them wrong in ways that will bring the worst pains.

“There’s nothing in living only waiting for the next day,” the cry of a caged bird, the pace of a restless animal in small spaces; for all his father’s good intentions there would be no safety that ever felt satisfying. Not until he’d found more than himself, found something to safeguard of his own; the stars in his eyes whispered of things ahead and Wilden’s breath was always held in anticipation.

“Just be careful,” his brother Linden reasoned, his sister Aiyana softly spoke, “Please be safe.”

He barely ever managed to do either, some regret in that, in troubling them with worries. He made small promises, kept them, but the bigger ones were almost too easy to break; safe was the hardest life to live. Magic was a wicked sort of thing, hungry, and it could make the world better; how could he justify holding it only for himself?

A sorcerer lives many lives, puts away a tiny bit of himself into every spell and with that weaves a type of promise as well into the world. It will be good, or it will be bad, but always it will be change. He was proud of the changes, of the beautiful and chaotic things he accomplished from teen to man, in years when home was only a spot in the back of his mind and the road before him stretched endless.

But the world Wilden had such faith in had begun to lose faith in him; a sorcerer who had to hide? It was a terrible thing, something to resist, something he was determined to fight.

Until he met her and the great wide world shrank to the space occupied by only two people and the love they found.

“Will she always love me?” His voice for once was shaken as he asked, as he looked to home and his mother for her guidance. In the unassuming kitchen that had welcomed him in with warmth in chilly winters and noise during family gatherings, he asked and broke her heart. It was unfair to do so, but some truths he had to know, had to take on more than only faith.

“More than you will know, more than years and a lifetime.” What else could a mother require of the one who had stolen her child’s heart? If only the trickles of fate had not felt dark, flinging their own icy murmurs that she had no choice but to speak, because a good mother first always protects her own. “It’s love that will unmake you, I’m afraid.” And what a bitter truth; made of her own blood, love, and unmade by his own offered up to another. She could have been angry, the temptation was strong, but his eyes were gleaming and she could not stand to see that light shatter.

Your children,” the words had barely left her mouth before the awe of it lit his face, she had to look away. “I have seen them in visions and dreams, heard their voices and seen their paths. But never will I see them before me, the world will not allow it, nor will I.” A tired heart could only break so many times, after all. “One you will know, all his life, he will be bold. He will make his mother proud and he will tire you with his joyous passions, a blessing to the both of you. He will not know our gifts but will have no need of them, he’ll have plenty enough in his father’s lust for life.”

Wilden felt the words like a calming balm over him, as pleasant as the lingering scent of clove within the small space. A family, a son who would carry his name even if he wouldn’t his magic; it was all he could see then, thinking about the things that might come next.

“Children, you said,” he ventured with a glance to her tired face, reading the lines with the affection of a child himself, as all children look first to mother as a prayer answered long before they know of such things and feel acceptance some place deep inside.

“The other you will not know for long, he will have your gifts, but it will come too soon. He will not grow to see his days as a man.” She mourned the grandchild she would lose without ever knowing, but not nearly as much as she felt the pain of how stricken her son’s face grew. And some selfish voice hoped he would not ask what she could not lie to him over, what she did not want to answer. Even as she felt he would, because that was the burden of those who know the roads ahead.

“What can I do?” Was it such an odd thought, to want for a child that did not yet exist? Wilden had never been one to live only in the moment before him, and to know such a thing; he had to change it.

She only took his hands in her own, recalling years when his were not the larger of the two and she could grasp both in only one. When he was small and his voice raised in a single cry of mama was enough to make her feel she could fight the fiercest monsters for him. His siblings before had left those marks as well, there was no way to weigh one against the other, but in that quiet breath she could only think of him. It would be the same for him with his own, his first, but never his second child.

And the ache in that cut deeply.

“Nothing, you must do nothing at all. Sometimes magic is just too much, too large, sometimes it’s the way of things.” To save him could she say anything less? No. But the tip of his head downward and the thin line of his lips were nothing a mother could ignore, try as she wished to. “You will not be well yourself, you’ll have your own battle to fight and you will win, but you cannot have everything. None of us can.”

“But there’s magic to change it, isn’t there? There’s always magic; it’s just a spell, as simple as locking away the power for a few more years and that should be enough.”

He was sharp like his father, brilliant in his swift thoughts, and few puzzles evaded him. Enola wished that were one that had, selfishly and fully she did. Her hands tightened her grip on his one and her pain lay bare in the words she spoke, “If you do that you may burn yourself too thin, your magic may not be enough to carry you through the sickness ahead. You will never meet the child you’ll save, and he will never know of it. There is a balance to the world Wilden, even if it feels anything but fair sometimes.”

“You’ve seen him though, so it must be possible.” Of course, he knew that his mother had a rare and powerful talent. But she had always told him that the future was always in motion, could always change, if the right steps were taken out of place. “What would he have been like?”

A child he would have for only a few years, one who would be robbed of possibilities by magic he would pass on to him. Wilden had to know who this almost-ghost might become.

“He will falter a great deal, and happiness will be a struggle for a long time. The circumstances of life will always weigh heavy on him because he, like his father, will never be satisfied with only taking things at face value.” A troubled soul was not one without hope though, she had seen such in the depths of her dreams. “Heavy thoughts might weigh a heart down but they also teach it compassion, that is one thing the boy will always offer to the world. Loss causes the warmest sort of light to flourish, because the absence of it otherwise makes people want so much to spread it.”

Wilden could not reach with his mind’s eye the way his mother could, the visions he saw were made of his own notions of a wide-eyed little boy with a warm smile and gentle nature. He took comfort in her words, in the picture she painted, and felt all the more troubled by it. “And what would he have done?”

“Change things, the same as any life does, in small ways and much larger ones. Without him there will be those who suffer, those who fall short and those who will never know the warmth they might have otherwise. But that’s what people do, you cannot blame yourself for every ripple that might have been,” she reminded him softly and saw his hand had gone lax, his eyes foggy with thought and questions he didn’t need to ask. “He would be happy too, in time. Find his own path, perhaps a bit outside what his father might have done and his mother may have wanted, but children do as they please I suppose. Find himself eventually, the same as you did, find wonderful moments and faith in people, even fall in love one day with the same headstrong intensity as his foolhardy father. Seems to be an inherited trait, that.”

She chuckled with the words, if only to cover the want of her voice to crack at what she knew her son would ask next of her.

“Then I don’t have a choice.” Wilden squeezed her hand and lifted his eyes to those of the woman who had raised him, the one who had watched him grow through his own awkward days and doubts. “Can you forgive me for that? I just can’t do nothing, not when there’s a chance I may not be there regardless. You always say the road is never a set one, if I ignore this and I still can’t survive the illness? I’ll give up the chance to see him, if I can give him more than that.”

She shut her eyes for a brief instant, not to look into the yet to be but to stare down the darkness behind those lids; a few years time and that would be all. They would both know it, and playing her part in it was the most agonizing task her gifts had ever handed to her. If only just that once she might have lied, might have done anything else. But somehow, maybe, he would have sensed it; not by magic but just from the film of secrets in her words when she had never withheld honesty from any of her own children.

“Will he be anything like me?”

Enola felt the words like a brush over her mind, a quiet yearning plea for a truth she could grant very easily. For her youngest, her dearest, that much at least brought a bittersweet smile to her lips.