The Night Watch (WIP)
It felt as if somehow she had already forever lost everything.
Days? Weeks? had passed since they'd begun this long trek into the unfamiliar moon. Longer still since she'd heard Cecil's voice speaking to her in kindness. Here they sat within a hastily erected tent to rest for what they presumed to be night. There was no telling the passage of time in these dark depths, with no light save that of the artificial creation surrounding them. Light which now seemed so far away they might never see it again.
She sat upright on her pallet, Cecil on her right and Ceodore on her left, both soundly asleep. The sight of them both caused her heart to ache in ways she had not thought possible.
There lay her son, sound asleep the moment his head touched his bundled up scarf. Her once innocent delight. The same eager boy with a bright smile and easy happiness. In his babyhood, he had been a snuggler and she had been delighted to accommodate. As a child, he'd been full of energy and anxious to please. But in his slumber, with his maturing features slack from their wakeful seriousness, she could no longer turn blind eye to the changes wrought in him. There was a hardness to him now, like tempered steel. His hands were rough, not the soft chubby things that had once held her cheeks while proclaiming her 'the best mommy ever.' No, those hard callouses, the broken skin, those hands belonged to a soldier.
No longer was he even the jovial and naive young squire leaving to prove himself. No, the young man that returned to the nightmare which was their home was more serious, somber. Rosa had seen a haunted look on his face he would not explain. In those moments, she saw more of his father in him than she had when she first laid eyes on his tiny face. The dawning realization that he was in truth Cecil's son caused her to swell with pride in him, and yet smothered her in dismay. He should not have suffered the half of this atrocity they found themselves thrust in.
Her hand reached out to stroke his hair and yet she held without doing. It would irritate him to be babied. And so, she replaced it in her lap, clenched against her own desires to reclaim that tiny bit of the past, when she had done so as she'd sang him to sleep by the fire.
Days? Weeks? had passed since they'd begun this long trek into the unfamiliar moon. Longer still since she'd heard Cecil's voice speaking to her in kindness. Here they sat within a hastily erected tent to rest for what they presumed to be night. There was no telling the passage of time in these dark depths, with no light save that of the artificial creation surrounding them. Light which now seemed so far away they might never see it again.
She sat upright on her pallet, Cecil on her right and Ceodore on her left, both soundly asleep. The sight of them both caused her heart to ache in ways she had not thought possible.
There lay her son, sound asleep the moment his head touched his bundled up scarf. Her once innocent delight. The same eager boy with a bright smile and easy happiness. In his babyhood, he had been a snuggler and she had been delighted to accommodate. As a child, he'd been full of energy and anxious to please. But in his slumber, with his maturing features slack from their wakeful seriousness, she could no longer turn blind eye to the changes wrought in him. There was a hardness to him now, like tempered steel. His hands were rough, not the soft chubby things that had once held her cheeks while proclaiming her 'the best mommy ever.' No, those hard callouses, the broken skin, those hands belonged to a soldier.
No longer was he even the jovial and naive young squire leaving to prove himself. No, the young man that returned to the nightmare which was their home was more serious, somber. Rosa had seen a haunted look on his face he would not explain. In those moments, she saw more of his father in him than she had when she first laid eyes on his tiny face. The dawning realization that he was in truth Cecil's son caused her to swell with pride in him, and yet smothered her in dismay. He should not have suffered the half of this atrocity they found themselves thrust in.
Her hand reached out to stroke his hair and yet she held without doing. It would irritate him to be babied. And so, she replaced it in her lap, clenched against her own desires to reclaim that tiny bit of the past, when she had done so as she'd sang him to sleep by the fire.