The wind of change (1)

***

[7 months later, 264]

[William's POV]

***

Night had fallen for a while now but I couldn't get a wink of sleep. There I was, in my crib, staring at the ceiling with apprehension even though I knew that everything was going to be okay in theory...

But well, if someone was hearing what I was hearing, he or she couldn't help but worry too (assuming that person had some sense of empathy).

"AAAAAHHHHHH!!!" That shrill cry which was resonating throughout the castle was coming from Minisa and the reason she was screaming was the same for which my father wasn't in his bed right now; she was giving birth.

I had mixed feelings about what was happening, on the one hand I knew how much Minisa wanted to become a mother and I was in a certain measure happy that her wish was granted, and on the other hand I wanted to make a detailed power point explaining to her from A to Z why according to the future events it would be better for her that from now on she and Hoster refrain from copulating...

The power point option was the one I had originally favored but I soon remembered that pack office was out of my reach, that I couldn't speak let alone formulate a constructed argumentation and that although in front of me Minisa seemed to be a sweet and well-behaved woman the things we were hearing sometimes in the night my father and I from the bedroom of Hoster and her were the proof that she had a nymphomaniac side that I couldn't see her getting rid of...

Anyway, let's talk about the new addition to our House; Catelyn. I mean, it's got to be her unless I fucked up the timeline.

So, basically, I don't like Catelyn (very surprising, I know. I'm being sarcastic here just in case), whether it's her decisions, the way she raised her children, the way she treated Jon Snow, I think she did more things wrong than right...

However, and this is a big 'however', I can understand to a certain extent why she was like she was.

The thing is that the majority of the education of Catelyn was made by 3 people from what I know of the original story and none of them are her parents who, by the way, had an influence in her life that was significantly less important than it should have been.

The three people I was referring to were my father, a Septon and a Maester if I remember correctly...

Considering that the Maester in question is surely Maester Kym and that the Septon in question must have something to do with Catelyn's bigotry, this could explain some of her bad sides.

In the case of my father, I'm not biased enough to say that all he passed on to her was his good sides...

After living with someone in promiscuity for 8 months it's impossible not to see his flaws and I can say with almost certainty that he must have transmitted his obstinacy to her...

Perhaps in itself stubbornness isn't necessarily a bad thing, but for Catelyn it didn't work out well.

"YYYYYAAAAHHHH!" By dint of hearing Minisa's cries I had come to know how to differentiate the emotions they carried between pain and intense pain but in this one there was something else...

I was hoping it was relief and the fact that a few minutes later I heard other kinds of shouts proved me right, "OUAH! OUAH!"

Something was telling me that life at Riverrun was going to get a lot more irritating from now on.

***

[2 years later, 266]

[Brynden's POV]

***

The more time went by, the more I felt that for Hoster, my son's and his daughter's existence represented nothing more than that futile competition he thought they had and whose purpose was apparently to determine who was the best between the two.

That idiot...

It wasn't my paternal pride that was speaking here but if competition there was, Catelyn was losing by a very wide margin, not that she wasn't a bright kid for a 2 name days little girl (if not eating her own boogers too often can be considered a mark of superior intelligence at this age) but it was just a fact that William was incomparably more mature and gifted than not only her but also every other noble brats that I have ever seen in my life.

Every time Hoster was bragging that his daughter made her first steps at 1 name days and said her first word not even 1 moon after that, I could remind him that at the same age William was almost able to run and make more or less constructed sentences, but I was above it, it would be quite pitiful to boast about that kind of achievements, especially when it comes to my son.

In my place, I suppose most parents would be concerned that their child was growing up so unnaturally fast but for me it was the contrary. I shed blood for the first time when I was 13 name days and I wanted William to be better prepared than I was if he had to do it at an age as precocious as mine...

Of course, for the moment he was far from having what it took to wield a sword, whether it was made of steel or wood, but I could see in his eyes when he was observing me train attentively for hours that he had the soul of a warrior in him...

However, I knew that his life wouldn't be limited to that, he had the soul of a warrior for sure, but above all he had the soul of a scholar.

Two moons ago, he had set himself the goal that he was going to learn how to read and not even a few days after Maester Corwyn taught him how to do it and explained to him some terms he couldn't understand (with at first some skepticism on his ability to succeed I must add), he was devouring the books in the castle's library one after the other at a frightening speed, almost inhuman actually...

In fact, he wasn't reading properly speaking, he was scrolling through the pages, not lingering more than 3 seconds on each one. And of course he was memorizing everything he was 'reading' otherwise it wouldn't be impressive; every word, every punctuation mark, everything that was passing before his eyes wasn't leaving his head, it was almost scary...

And that was far from all there was to say about the curious and talented boy that William was.

As soon as he knew how to walk more or less normally, he started wandering around the castle by himself and that to the point that he knew Riverrun like the back of his hand. Whether it was the stables, the armory, the kitchens, in short, he knew every corner of this place...

And his interest didn't stop at what was inanimate; whether it was the blacksmiths, the soldiers, the servants or the merchants who occasionally came here, he had spoken to everyone of them individually more than once and it seemed that the general consensus among them was that they liked this boy who was certainly odd sometimes but never looked down on them despite the fact that unlike them he wasn't of low birth...

He had the ability to find the right words to make people love him, and lately his new hobby had exacerbated that love even more.

Just after he had learned to read he had asked me to provide him with lead pencils and parchment, a request I gladly granted since they weren't extremely expensive things, because before that he hadn't asked me anything and also because I was curious to know what he intended to do precisely with them knowing if he wanted both of these things it was because he was planning to use them to draw...

At first, I wasn't really impressed with what he was drawing because it was... well... ugly, but with a lot of practice he became good enough that his drawings could be considered quite realistic, and from then on he began to draw people and offer them the drawings he had made of them...

It wasn't much and yet it was enough to win the hearts of many including Catelyn.

William's relationship with children of his age was complicated in general, he wasn't interested in the same things as them and didn't enjoy their company very much either, personally I didn't mind but it was particularly irritating to Minisa who was worried about her daughter's growing loneliness...

She thought they would become playmates and inseparable as they grew up, but William was definitely not of that opinion and kept his distance from Catelyn. Before he started drawing, he had never spent time with her without being required to do so and now that he had discovered this passion, she was in apparence one of his favorite models...

Seeing that Catelyn and William were finally getting along, Minisa stopped worrying about this point for her daughter, but unlike her, I didn't fail to notice that contrary to when my son was chatting with people in the castle, when he was interacting with Catelyn he wasn't enjoying it at all.

It was kind of funny to think that Minisa, who kept criticizing Hoster for his lack of attention, wasn't able to notice that William was friendly with her daughter just to make her happy...

Perhaps her second pregnancy made her less sharp.

"You seem to be lost in thoughts, Father." My son asked me without taking his dark blue eyes off the parchment on which he was drawing my portrait.

"And what makes you say that?" I replied, looking at him with a slightly amused expression.

"Well..." William began to say as he adjusted his position on the tree stump he was sitting on, "...I don't see you sharpening your sword anymore."

I looked down and the whetstone in my left hand as well as the longsword in my right hand confirmed that this was what I was doing before I lost my train of thought, "You are mistaken, I was just standing still so my movements wouldn't interfere with your drawing of me." I retorted with a smile.

"Ok, then now you can get back to what you were doing." He answered me while handing me the parchment he had in his tiny right hand.

I dropped the whetstone and picked up his drawing to examine it and I must say that once again I was so impressed that words failed me; he wasn't doing something only linear with simplistic strokes like these so called artists, he was adding perspectives, shadows, which was making me feel like I was seeing myself in grey and white right now...

There was still plenty of room for improvement, but I also had to remember the age of the person I was talking about.

I was far from being the most demonstrative man but I must admit that William's talent was so moving that the only thing that kept me from hugging him was that I could see he wasn't as enthusiastic as I was about the drawing...

This was nothing new, the fact is that he was never showing any personal satisfaction for his drawings as such, just a bit of pride when someone would tell him that he liked them.

Remembering this made me suddenly ask myself a question; William enjoyed reading, he enjoyed talking to the adults and seniors in the castle but his face was constantly shut when he was drawing as if he didn't like to do it, why?

I folded the drawing into 4 and put it in one of the pockets of my breeches before looking at my son with a more serious but still not totally stern look, "Why are you doing something you don't want to do William?"

For a split second my son's eyes widened in astonishment, then he smiled, "Because it's a necessity."