Writing Workshop #4
Love. Within the field of Watchers, one of the first things that is learned is to turn emotions from malleable and subjective things into a concrete definition; an unmoving truth. If you set the boundaries of love, it can’t govern you and overrule your decisions as so many Watchers of the past have learned. Wesley knows this. Then, Wesley knows every last rule the Watchers Council has handed down from the beginning of time until then. But when it comes to love, he is all too painfully aware of what it means. He had spent so much of his childhood being taught this lesson firsthand by his father, a man who hadn’t loved in too many years of his life, as far as Wesley had been concerned. Sometimes, as a child, he wondered if his father’s heart had shrivelled up and iced over some time after the wedding.
No one in Wesley’s life, not a soul has he ever loved more than his mother, dear Blythe Wyndam-Pryce. Every day he would find new things to show her, just to prove how much he was learning and to earn those lovely smiles she had, the way her wrinkles about her eyes crinkled up when she smiled at him, was so proud of him and Wesley (all of five years old and already needing glasses) knew how much she loved him and it only made him want to show his love for her more outwardly.
Roger Wyndam-Pryce had stopped that quite effectively.
“Love,” his father had insisted, under the dark stairs, in that tiny room, “is something you have to forget, Wesley. Good watchers aren’t governed by their emotions. They control them.” His father had been particularly bitter, having lost the latest Watcher to an American. He had shown his disappointment through discipline of his son.
He hadn’t learned that day. He’d feared the dark, the nightmares lurking in the corners. He hadn’t learned anything except to fear his father and love his mother in a more quiet way. So he would show his love through smaller means; a rare flower left on her cross-stitching projects, a verse transcribed from English to Latin tucked away in her Burberry coat, a quiet word of assent in her corner when she and his father got into a row. Little things. His mother seemed to understand, because she would still smile that longed-for smile at him and she would still ruffle his hair and make him tea just the way he preferred it. Though his father always sent glares, she would continue.
His mother always did seem oblivious to the ways of the Watchers, what an ancient council of old men had decreed. Their traditions and their rituals were set in stone, hesitant to be changed and one day, (one day, far from then, when Wesley and Giles were the remnants of a rubbled group) maybe it would change, but it wouldn’t then.
But slowly, very slowly, his father’s ways began to win out with more and more visits to the dark cupboard under the stairs and slowly over time, Wesley no longer showed his love so outwardly. All he did was think to himself: She already knows.
And perhaps, to this day, that is what he regrets most.
No one in Wesley’s life, not a soul has he ever loved more than his mother, dear Blythe Wyndam-Pryce. Every day he would find new things to show her, just to prove how much he was learning and to earn those lovely smiles she had, the way her wrinkles about her eyes crinkled up when she smiled at him, was so proud of him and Wesley (all of five years old and already needing glasses) knew how much she loved him and it only made him want to show his love for her more outwardly.
Roger Wyndam-Pryce had stopped that quite effectively.
“Love,” his father had insisted, under the dark stairs, in that tiny room, “is something you have to forget, Wesley. Good watchers aren’t governed by their emotions. They control them.” His father had been particularly bitter, having lost the latest Watcher to an American. He had shown his disappointment through discipline of his son.
He hadn’t learned that day. He’d feared the dark, the nightmares lurking in the corners. He hadn’t learned anything except to fear his father and love his mother in a more quiet way. So he would show his love through smaller means; a rare flower left on her cross-stitching projects, a verse transcribed from English to Latin tucked away in her Burberry coat, a quiet word of assent in her corner when she and his father got into a row. Little things. His mother seemed to understand, because she would still smile that longed-for smile at him and she would still ruffle his hair and make him tea just the way he preferred it. Though his father always sent glares, she would continue.
His mother always did seem oblivious to the ways of the Watchers, what an ancient council of old men had decreed. Their traditions and their rituals were set in stone, hesitant to be changed and one day, (one day, far from then, when Wesley and Giles were the remnants of a rubbled group) maybe it would change, but it wouldn’t then.
But slowly, very slowly, his father’s ways began to win out with more and more visits to the dark cupboard under the stairs and slowly over time, Wesley no longer showed his love so outwardly. All he did was think to himself: She already knows.
And perhaps, to this day, that is what he regrets most.