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fic_promptly's Any, Any, they say I just try to impress my dad/ but that man isn't my father/ God is. Featuring Lavinia and Wilbur Whateley. Also, some Alternative Character Interpretation is in order.
The night of his third birthday and after Grandpa's ritual on Sentinel Hill, Mama took Wilbur up to her room, the room next door to the one she would never let him into, not on his own. She set him on the tattered red wing chair there, sitting on a fraying ottoman at his feet, opening one of Grandpa's big books on her lap, holding it so he could see the pages. He could make out the letters, though his Latin had yet to get fluent enough for him to read the words and know what they meant. Once she'd made sure he had washed his hands, she let him turn the pages over, looking at the text and the pictures there, naming the beings in the plates there: Hastur in his tattered yellow robes, the mask revealing his face, Nyarlathotep, the tall, dark Pharoah with a shadow that stretched and writhed vast behind him; Shub-Niggurath, the black goat with her thousand young; Azathoth, enthroned in the center of Chaos.
Then she paused on the plate depicting -- or attempting, at the least -- Yog-Sothoth, the Guardian of the Gate.
"And there's y' daddy, Wilbur," she said, touching the plate reverently, stroking the image of the strange globes entangled with tentacles or twisted beams of light, as any other woman would stroke the image of her lover. "He is the Gate. He knows the Gate. He is the gua'ahdian of the Gate. One day, he will return, Willy, and take you and y' brothah t' be with his kin an' bring them across t' change this ol' worl', make it more hospt'ble f' you an' he. No mo'ah people starin' at us. No mo'ah whisp'rin' 'bout you an y' twin."
"Will you come with us?" Wilbur asked, looking down into his mama's pale face.
She gave him a funny look as if her eyes might leak or as if she might chuckle, he could not tell. "Maybe. If he lets me look on him again. If he comes in a fo'm that's easy on m' mind. You an' y' broth'ah: y' not made f' this wo'hld, an' it's not made f' you. But you two c'n change all that."
Maybe, he thought. As long as Mama could come with them. It didn't matter to him if his father was a god, as long as his father let her come with them. What kind of father didn't let his children's mother go with them, wherever they went? He might be a god, he might turn the wheels of time and space like the tumblers inside a lock, but that meant nothing if did not tend to his kin. He had seen other fathers with their offspring in the village of Dunwich, the few times Mama or Grandpa had taken him there. Mostly he saw them look at him strange, but he saw them reach to protect their young, as if he threatened them just by being there. That meant something, that they would preserve their young. Why did his father not come down here to their world to do the same? Grandpa talked proudly about Wilbur's father when he went among the townsfolk, but to hear him say it, Mama had married a captain of industry or a politician from Arkham in secret. Perhaps this deception served a purpose. The people of Dunwich could never imagine something like his father, could never imagine a god wedded to a woman, not even the followers of the pallid Christ and their claims of the Virgin Birth. He knew he could never please an earthly father, but he hoped when the Gate opened -- if the Gate opened -- that his father would find him as favorable as his twin, the one he barely ever saw, the one Mama and Grandpa hid away in the room so close nearby...
fic_promptly's Any, Any, they say I just try to impress my dad/ but that man isn't my father/ God is. Featuring Lavinia and Wilbur Whateley. Also, some Alternative Character Interpretation is in order.The night of his third birthday and after Grandpa's ritual on Sentinel Hill, Mama took Wilbur up to her room, the room next door to the one she would never let him into, not on his own. She set him on the tattered red wing chair there, sitting on a fraying ottoman at his feet, opening one of Grandpa's big books on her lap, holding it so he could see the pages. He could make out the letters, though his Latin had yet to get fluent enough for him to read the words and know what they meant. Once she'd made sure he had washed his hands, she let him turn the pages over, looking at the text and the pictures there, naming the beings in the plates there: Hastur in his tattered yellow robes, the mask revealing his face, Nyarlathotep, the tall, dark Pharoah with a shadow that stretched and writhed vast behind him; Shub-Niggurath, the black goat with her thousand young; Azathoth, enthroned in the center of Chaos.
Then she paused on the plate depicting -- or attempting, at the least -- Yog-Sothoth, the Guardian of the Gate.
"And there's y' daddy, Wilbur," she said, touching the plate reverently, stroking the image of the strange globes entangled with tentacles or twisted beams of light, as any other woman would stroke the image of her lover. "He is the Gate. He knows the Gate. He is the gua'ahdian of the Gate. One day, he will return, Willy, and take you and y' brothah t' be with his kin an' bring them across t' change this ol' worl', make it more hospt'ble f' you an' he. No mo'ah people starin' at us. No mo'ah whisp'rin' 'bout you an y' twin."
"Will you come with us?" Wilbur asked, looking down into his mama's pale face.
She gave him a funny look as if her eyes might leak or as if she might chuckle, he could not tell. "Maybe. If he lets me look on him again. If he comes in a fo'm that's easy on m' mind. You an' y' broth'ah: y' not made f' this wo'hld, an' it's not made f' you. But you two c'n change all that."
Maybe, he thought. As long as Mama could come with them. It didn't matter to him if his father was a god, as long as his father let her come with them. What kind of father didn't let his children's mother go with them, wherever they went? He might be a god, he might turn the wheels of time and space like the tumblers inside a lock, but that meant nothing if did not tend to his kin. He had seen other fathers with their offspring in the village of Dunwich, the few times Mama or Grandpa had taken him there. Mostly he saw them look at him strange, but he saw them reach to protect their young, as if he threatened them just by being there. That meant something, that they would preserve their young. Why did his father not come down here to their world to do the same? Grandpa talked proudly about Wilbur's father when he went among the townsfolk, but to hear him say it, Mama had married a captain of industry or a politician from Arkham in secret. Perhaps this deception served a purpose. The people of Dunwich could never imagine something like his father, could never imagine a god wedded to a woman, not even the followers of the pallid Christ and their claims of the Virgin Birth. He knew he could never please an earthly father, but he hoped when the Gate opened -- if the Gate opened -- that his father would find him as favorable as his twin, the one he barely ever saw, the one Mama and Grandpa hid away in the room so close nearby...
