Chapter Text
your son. your son.
it has been days now only; not even a week, it has been four days, ten hours, thirty-six minutes, you cannot stop counting; to lose track of a single moment of him is insanity to you. to miss even a single flutter of his eyelashes, to be absent for a beat of his heart, once you would have laughed at this, once you would have scoffed at it, at this devotion you saw in only the weak-minded, only in the faithful, but here you are, and it has been four days, ten hours, thirty-seven minutes and you think as you hold him close, hold him tight, breathe as he does, you think that were anyone to wrest any of his time from you in this moment, were anyone to try, you would be stronger than you had ever been, and you have never felt more faith than you do now, here, with him nestled into the crook of your heart.
he is quiet now - a rare time, you note, and it is this rare time that allows you to think for so long, and it's strange yet not that you can't even muster the thought to be even mildly irritated at the loss of quiet. silence and solace raised you, they kept you safe and taught you patience, they built you to be strong, you thought - you know - , and before you thought, strength is in your solitude, strength is your boon and your burden alone, and before, you thought to have it stolen from you would be a curse, but now it is different, and not the same at all. he cries, and it is brash, it is headsplitting and earwracking and sends birds soaring disgruntled from the trees, and yet you do not hear weakness and you do not hear any of the things that you were taught condemned you, you hear none of that in his vulnerability - no, you hear strength in it, and you hear trust , you hear him cry and you hear him saying , i need you, and i know you will hear me, and i know you will help me.
hah. not even a week old, and he knows you better than anyone ever will, and he knows what will make you weak, and oh does that terrify you at first - or it did, when you thought about it too much, when you thought about being tethered, being known, being able to be seen and used, but perhaps your son is the abomination that some would call him, because he has had you enthralled since he first cried, since he was placed in your arms by a faceless old god for the first time, since he looked up at you with eyes like yours, since he looked at you with unconditionality.
you don't remember when you stopped crying as a child, exactly; it must not have been long after the incident of the mirror (a sister of which you keep close now, a golden mirror that you keep close, one of the only things you allowed yourself to keep close after you left, to remind you of love in moments of weakness, to remind you of hair nearly as golden and eyes twice as bright, of vicious strength and clever mind and callused hands and gentle touches). one too many times did it not matter your wound, one too many times had your sadness be met with scorn, and you had learned what the solace taught you then, you had learned that there would be no open arms, there would be no comfort, there was nothing that came unattached and nothing that came without tangles of strings. the witch, the wilds, the world had taught you that the love you received - if you can call it love, calling it as such gives it more credit than it is due, truly more of a mockery of the concept you have never seen -, you were taught that love and to be cared for was conditional and you had listened, because you did not know how to be heard -
but he knows how to be heard, and you laugh to yourself thinking about it; your thumb traces his sleeping cheek - your son has no trouble at all making himself heard, and your son does not know what you were made to learn, your son does not know that so much of this world will be held out of reach, but you have had the world held out of reach, and you have learned to claw it back, and you will teach him, you will give the world to him and… he will never know your world, you decide, he will never know what it is like to hold himself together the way you have, he will never be raised by silence, he will never know isolation from the goodness hidden in the wicked roots of the world, your son knows how to be heard and you have learned to listen through sunny days and stormy weather, he is your son and you are his mother and he will know what it is like to be looked at with love. he is your son and he will grow up free, he will grow up in the world you tear down and rebuild to be better -
oh , and he opens his eyes, as you think this, he looks up at you with those eyes you know, with your eyes, and he looks up at you, still sleepy, he looks at you with unwavering trust, with expectancy, with unconditionality, and he is four days, ten hours, thirty-nine minutes old and you are already full up with pride, with more than pride, with this feeling of sunlight through rushing water swirling through your chest and your heart and rising up in your throat so you cannot even speak his name, you can only lean down and kiss his cheek, and then the other, and he looks at you and you realize that you have never seen your eyes so bright, and they shine because they are his, and it is because he knows he is loved, and oh, you will never let him forget that he is loved.