To You, Your Father Should Be as a God

A young boy in the village looked upon the empty bed in an empty room where his mother used to sleep. His young face, no older than eleven or twelve years, was stoic as he took in the full bareness of the room that no longer held his mother's warm presence. He stood like a marble sculpture like those made by his father whose immense strength carved often for the village and even for nobility at Courtside.

"She's gone, boy," the intimidating and almost frightening voice of his father spat from behind him. His father often had the ability to make people cower when he was in this mood, but the boy was unflinching in his vigil. He knew his father was a passionate man. "Selfish pig," his father added as he went back to his work outside the home.

The father was a man of intensity that was often feared by others. The boy followed him often even as an infant and saw his many deeds. His father's strength was never questioned, and he never feared for safety because no one dared cross the man that towered like a mountain all his life. And the boy knew his father was a passionate man.

The boy still stood there in thought through the passing of the day still in the empty room without his mother. He remembered her last embrace and kiss goodnight amidst his studies of spells. She was the one to embrace his early signs of aptitude in the art of Magic and nurture it like a young flame. And the next morning, she was gone.

But she had not departed in death, but ran into the night without warning leaving all her life behind. The boy kept thinking he would rather she had died. Leaving him behind with conscious purpose broke him far greater.

"My baby boy," the boy heard his mother's voice behind him. He hadn't even noticed the passage of day into night, but there he was in the light of the moon seeing his mother's face. She held him tightly and desperately as tears poured through her blackened eyes. "I found a place for us. So come with me now, but be very quiet."

The boy came back to himself from the far away he had been since she left. He saw her broken face and the mix of old scars among new cuts over her exposed arms. His father was a passionate man, the boy always knew that, and he registered then that his mother had come back to him and what she had done.

But he was not relieved. He was burned deeply by the betrayal he felt deep in his spirit knowing how easily she left him, how easily she took her love away from him. Instead his face hardened further in his pain against this woman he trusted, loved so entirely, and who wounded him so easily.

"You left me, mom. You just…left me behind. Didn't even say a word."

"Shhh, baby. I am so sorry, but you know I had to. I was just finding a place to hide, a place that would take us in safety. And I found it now. I knew he wouldn't…not to you." She grabbed her precious son's hand and pulled for him to follow. "Please, baby, we don't have a lot of time. I don't know where he is."

The boy was unmoving against her please. His body stood rooted in place and paid no mind to the hurt and panic that spread across his mother's face. "You know I love you, and you still left. Do you even really love me at all, or are you taking me away to hurt him?"

Sweat poured down his mother's face as she was filled with panic over so much time wasted and the pangs of her child's words. "You know I love you!" she whispered quietly but fiercely. "With all my heart I love you."

"I don't believe you. You certainly aren't acting like you do, like you ever did. You want to take me away from my books, my things, my security, and my father who loves me! And he loves you too." The boy could see all the color leave from his mother's face.

He knew his father was a passionate man.

"Your father…"

"My father, who is part of me, loves me, and he loves you so very much. He loves you even when you speak to other men in the village, he loves you even when you're late with dinner, and he loves you even when you don't understand him. He loves you because you are a part of me, too. If you don't love him," tears pushed from the boys eyes if not from his heart, "do you even really love me?"

The woman fell to her knees before her son who she could see was suffering. Her child's every word cutting like death into her heart.

"You ran away from us, and you didn't even try to be better for father and me who love you so much."

The woman was broken completely then, and she felt such shame and guilt over hearing what she had done to her baby boy. "I'm so sorry, my baby boy. I was so wrong. Please believe I didn't want to make you feel this way."

"Then you'll stay here with me?"

"I will stay," the woman said through painful sobs. To ease her son's doubting face, she kissed him and went into her bed as proof. She watched in torment as her hardened boy accepted her gesture and walked out of the room into the darkened hall.

The boy sensed his father's imposing aura even before he spoke from the darkness outside the door. "I'm impressed, boy." He said quietly but with genuine pride. "You did with words what I haven't been able to do with all I've done." His father stepped from the darkness towards his boy with his usual intense expression. "You really are something, far smarter than I gave you credit for."

His son just looked up at his father. He knew his father was a passionate man. "Just try not to screw it up." He had never been much afraid of his father, but now he had no trace of it. And his father knew it. He looked at his boy proud of the man in strength his had sculpted, and knew that this was his greatest creation.

"You know, I think you're going to be far more powerful than we thought, Durai."