The wind of change (2)

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[1 year later, 267]

[William's POV]

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If Lysa's birth had at least one virtue, it was that Minisa finally gave up her crazy plan of making Catelyn and me best friends in the world...

I swear, she wanted to sell me as a great idea the fact of sympathizing with a kid whose only 'remarkable' characteristic was her ability to continually produce snot in industrial quantities and because I refused (knowing full well that it was a scam) I somehow became the villain of the story...

It made me wonder if my aunt and I had the same notion of what justice was.

Sometimes I was telling myself that I was maybe overreacting a bit, after all, the portraits I was making of Catelyn had allowed me to considerably reduce the frequency of my little clashes with Minisa...

But this kind of thoughts were always temporary because although doing this allowed me to raise Catelyn's morale and Minisa's at the same time, the price to pay was too high for me to think of any other word than 'sacrifice' to qualify the time I was spending drawing Catelyn.

The incessant and stupid questions such as 'can you count from 0 to 1 without using your fingers?' that she was asking me while I was trying to concentrate as well as her crying and screaming for no logical reason made me want to stab her repeatedly with my lead pencils rather than use them to draw her...

Of course, I was aware that she was just a kid and that I shouldn't use myself as a standard to judge her actions because what I just described was no different than the behavior of the majority of other kids, however, despite all the excuses one can make for them this truth remains; kids are a pain in the ass.

Getting back to my drawings...

I was quite pleased with myself about this because my only goal in the short term was to improve and in the end it was only one of the many beneficial effects I obtained...

Not only did I was becoming better and better at drawing, but my work also allowed me to gain the appreciation of many people and the good reputation that goes with it.

Recently, a merchant even offered to provide me with a large quantity of parchments and lead pencils in exchange for being able to take advantage of my talents whenever he passed through Riverrun, which got me thinking about the monetary possibilities that drawing in itself could bring me...

I mean, if I can earn a few silver stags by portraying a Lord for example, then why not?

To start making my ambitions a reality I lack countless things but mostly 2, gold and credibility, so if developing and monetizing my art can solve my problem of lack of gold then I must seize the opportunity...

As far as my credibility is concerned, however, the problem is likely to be much more complex to solve. But not impossible.

I'm not even 4 name days old yet and that alone should be enough to explain why credibility is my biggest issue, but well, in my case there's plenty to talk about on that subject so that's what I'll do...

So, as I said, on the one hand there is what works against me; my age. And on the other hand, in what works in my favor, there is the maturity, the intelligence and the talent that I have shown so far as well as my birthmark.

To answer your next question which is undoubtedly 'how is a birthmark supposed to help me?' I will reply that when it's a birthmark corresponding to the symbol of the dominant religion of Westeros one can say that it can help in many things...

[The birthmark under his armpit that Minisa mentioned in chapter 6 is therefore a seven-pointed star surrounded by a circle, which is the symbol of the religion of the seven-faced god (I have put the symbol in the comments).]

I'm not sure what to think about this mark since it could possibly bite me in the ass if the Faith of the Seven ever found out about it (and also because it's something that wasn't part of my 'reincarnation contract') but what I am sure of is that the Valkyrie is behind it and her purpose in doing so was certainly to dissuade my family from killing me at birth and perhaps also to give me the opportunity to use this mark to pass on my ideas as something the seven-faced god would have whispered in my ear.

Considering the fact that the first supposed purpose of my birthmark wasn't fulfilled since my family unanimously decided not to kill me before discovering it (cute), I might as well try to fulfill its second supposed purpose so that it will be useful for at least something, however, I don't intend to try that thing with Hoster or my father...

Regarding my father, his unpredictability scares me so I prefer not to try anything with him, as for Hoster, even if he accepts and it's my (future) gold that is invested I don't see him letting me do what I want given the kind of control freak he became after having earned the title of Lord of the Riverlands...

Fortunately, there is someone in this castle who has the power to help me and the fact that since the moment of my birth he kept telling me that I was destined for great things and that I had been blessed by the seven-faced god tells me that he's unlikely to be skeptical of what I'm about to tell him (at least, I hope so).

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[Third person's POV]

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A small boy dressed in breeches, leather boots and a white tunic was standing motionless in front of a wooden door, his frozen gaze seemed to indicate that he wasn't waiting but hesitating to knock to attract the attention of the person behind the said door...

He took a deep breath, then finally raised his left hand and formed it into a fist.

*TOC*

*TOC*

"*Cough* *cough*" The boy's youthful face tensed as he heard the coughing sound coming from behind the door...

But he regained some of his cheerfulness when he heard that the illness hadn't taken away all the vigor in his grandfather's voice, "Just by the way you knock I know it's you William, you can come in."

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[William's POV]

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In the past 3 years my grandfather's health had slowly but surely deteriorated to the point where he rarely left his bed, so as soon as I entered my eyes went straight to it and without fail William senior was lying in it...

His complexion was bleak and whether it was his long hair or his thick beard, they no longer had the same auburn glow of a few years ago…

My only consolation was that I could still see a vivid glimmer of life in his light blue eyes.

The sickness that was consuming him was the same as the one that would consume Hoster in the future according to the symptoms, however, instead of lasting more than fifteen years before passing away like his son, I knew that he wouldn't survive even half of that, which was amounting to saying that he had barely 4 years left to live in the best case scenario...

The most logical conclusion that could be made was that it was a stomach disease that was slowly killing my grandfather given how much he complained about the pain he felt there, but neither Maester Corwin nor even I with all the modern medical knowledge I had in my head could determine exactly what he was suffering from...

The best we could do for him was to ease his pain with milk of the poppy and be there to keep him company.

As soon as we understood that my grandfather's days were numbered, our behavior towards him changed and unfortunately for him, not necessarily in a good way…

In my case, I was already aware that he was going to die in the next few years and having been in his place at the end of my former life I tried to treat him as normally as possible…

As for Hoster, Minisa and my father, it can't be said that they reacted in an appropriate way.

In terms of actions, it translated by 'don't do this, don't do that', 'don't eat this, don't eat that', 'wait, I'll help you cut your steak', in short, they started treating him as if he was made of porcelain and it was in a sense kind of strange since they are doing it now that he's handicapped and dying but they weren't doing it before when he was only handicapped.

My grandfather raised his right arm, which was nowhere near as muscular as it used to be, but also not thin enough to be called scrawny, then he motioned for me to approach, "Come on boy, I won't eat you." He said with a creepy smile that was making me doubt a little bit the sincerity of his words...

I returned his smile, trying to make mine look as disturbing as his, then I taunted him, "Do you even still have the strength to chew me, Grandfather?"

My grandfather grunted, looks like once again he didn't totally appreciated my sense of humor, "So this is how you are talking to me now?! You dirty little..." He said while raising his fist frantically at me before stopping dead mid-sentence to avoid saying a swear word.

I chuckled, knowing that even though he was going to insult me, he liked the fact that I wasn't afraid to talk to him freely about his illness, then I ran to him to give him a hug...

As I was opening my arms to grasp him I felt a hand on top of my head, the next moment my grandfather began to tousle my brown hair as hard as he could, "How are you, young William?" He asked me with a large grin of satisfaction after he had finished ruining what Minisa had taken great care to put in order.

I didn't bother trying to fix my hair and let go of the smile, "To tell you the truth, I'm not very comfortable right now." I answered my grandfather, and it was sincere. I wasn't comfortable with the prospect of lying to him and if I could avoid it, I was going to.

My grandfather furrowed his bushy eyebrows and I saw through his facial hair a worried expression, "What's wrong?" He asked me, putting his hand on my shoulder and looking me straight in the eyes...

The atmosphere had become too tense for my taste and I hurried to lighten it to spare my grandfather from heart problems in addition to his stomach pains, "No, no, no! It's not a bad thing, you can ease up." I reassured him while waving my hands in front of me.

"Oh..." He merely said before removing his hand from my shoulder, "... then what is this about?"

I had a feeling this was going to be weird but it would be a shame to back out now so I stared at my grandfather with a determined look on my face (or at least, I was hoping that's what it looked like) and I said with a voice which wasn't as confident as I would have liked, "I need to talk to you about something."