Post by StoryGirl83 on Dec 11, 2008 23:39:04 GMT -5
Chapter Forty-One - A Son's Magical World
In an act of defiance, Wyatt threw the pen hard against the dining room wall. He glared down at the paper in front of him. “I hate this!”
Leo looked up at his teenage son. “What’s the matter, Wyatt?”
“I can’t make this work,” Wyatt complained. “I’ve been at it for an hour and I can’t come up with anything near what Aunt Phoebe or even Chris could write.”
Leo tossed aside the newspaper and pushed his seat back. He stood up and retrieved Wyatt’s discarded pen. “To start with, you aren’t Phoebe or Chris, so don’t try to be them,” Leo told him as he sat down next to his older son.
Wyatt sighed, “But Chris is so much better at everything that I am. Spells, potions, magic. He’s better.”
“Perhaps if you tried harder when you studied,” Leo chided.
“I do try, Dad,” Wyatt protested, rolling his eyes at his father using the same tired lines he heard repeated year after year from every single one his teaches for as far back as he could remember. “I try hard, but what’s the point when I can’t use my powers and there’s no one to use them on anyway?”
“I think that may be your problem, son,” Leo commented gently. “You think it is about power.”
“Isn’t it?” Wyatt asked curiously.
Leo shook his head. “No. And when you get into thinking it is, you are entering dangerous territory,” Leo warned his son. “ Don’t make this into a completion with your brother. You simply have different strengths that him.”
“I guess,” Wyatt grumbled, “but I wish I could use my powers. I want to be strong.”
“You don’t need magic to have strength, Wyatt,” Leo told his son softly.
The tone of his father’s voice caught Wyatt’s attention. He felt a little ashamed as he remembered exactly what his father gave up for them. Immortality. For all the power he had once had and hopefully would again, for all the whitelighter powers he still had, and hopefully would not lose, Wyatt was still mortal with a normal life span. His father had once been immortal, susceptible only to a darklighter arrow, and maybe a few other things Wyatt didn’t know of, and now, though Wyatt didn’t know the story behind it, he was mortal, susceptible to almost everything, even aging.
“Magic can be used for evil just as easily, if not more so, as good.”
“Anything can,” Wyatt argued.
“True strength,” Leo told him, “is choosing right when evil is easier and choosing to face your fears even when the danger is real. All the power in the world is not enough to defeat that.”
“But you could die.” The words were just above a whisper.
Leo inclined his head in a nod. “You could.” Leo put Wyatt’s pen down on the paper. “How about I help you write this?”
Wyatt looked at him astounded. “You can write a spell?”
Leo smiled. “I am a man of many talents. You get that way when you have lived as long as I have.”
“But you never help Mom or her sisters,” he commented confused.
“No,” Leo admitted a little regret in his voice. “They have chosen to believe that without my powers I am of no magical use. It’s not true, but sometimes when someone get’s set in their ways they refused to consider that they might be wrong.”
“Why don’t you at least tell them?” his son asked.
Leo was quiet for a long moment before he turned to look at his son. His expressing was peaceful as he said, “I choose not to fight that battle. If I ever feel I need to, I will, but for now I choose not to.”
“Don’t you ever want to be back in the magical world?” Wyatt asked.
“I’m not out of the magical world,” Leo admitted. “I’m out of their magical world.”
“And you accept that?”
“So long as I am in your world, and your brother’s world, and your mother’s world, I am quite content with that.” Leo paused and smiled at his son. “If however you want me in your magical world, I am more than willing.”
It had been near a decade since that day. Wyatt had gained a great deal of respect for his father that day, something he sometimes wondered if his mother had ever learned, especially now when faced with how everyone treated his father. It seemed to him that when magic had been removed from his family’s lives it had eliminated a barrier between his parents, allowing his father to be integrated more fully into his wife’s life. While he wondered what magic’s return would do to that bond, Wyatt suspected he didn’t need to worry. The bond was strong after all these years. A smile spread across Wyatt’s lips as he gave silent thanks for what he had so long considered a curse. There were, after all, more important things then magical powers. His father had taught him that.