eachdraidh | (seventh lemon cake) video ✧ (sorta) open to both courts

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(seventh lemon cake) video ✧ (sorta) open to both courts

( SEELIE ONLY )

I -- [ hmm. sansa presses her lips together and wonders (briefly) whether it is a foolish request in the face of war. and yet she pursues it for an honourable cause. she wishes to gather certain tales for certain purposes. ] I want to hear stories. Stories of grand adventures undertaken by brave Seelie heroes. I cannot be the only one who's struck by such curiousity. Please -- share what you've learned.

[ and for every legend well-told and well-lauded she will make a point to include it within a very...pointed celebration in treun. perhaps encouraging even the shardless to think upon the bright bold tales of the seelie court will further endear that court to their hearts. it's a little like letting the right song be played at the right moment, falling upon the right ears. she wants to inspire treun -- or else certain parts of it -- to think more kindly on caer glaem. and she needs fellow shardbearers to help her. ] Tell me of the Seelie court's fabled champions and its well-mourned martyrs. What have you heard recounted by the hearth-side? Whispered on the road? Stories even the natives have told for centuries, mayhaps.

( BOTH COURTS )

[ some hours later in the day an 'accidental' feed broadcasts. it consists of the locket falling open and catching sight of a pile of books. sounds of rustling. a cleared throat. and at long last a mild: ] Seven have mercy. What a troublesome thing you are and how -- [ sansa addresses the locket she had flipped open on purpose, pretending to be clumsy. this is a quiet way in which to invite conversation with those she might not otherwise feel brave enough to seek out -- unseelie friends, soon separated from her by a roiling oncoming war. ] -- How stupid of me.

[ a novice ruse! however, she has such an earnest and gentle face it might just be worth believing by most, if not by all. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

No. Not yet, at least. It won't surprise me if they do.

[And if they do? Well, he wonders. Kings don't ask soldiers to fight or merely shrug if the soldier refuses. If Gendry is commanded to war, he knows what it means to refuse.]

There will come a time when they will ask. [ he is broad and able-bodied. why wouldn't they ask him? she would ask him, if she were so invested. often she does call upon him to wear his muscle like an offensive, and not just a force of creation. ]

Already, they ask me. Oh -- not to fight. None are so stupid. But they ask me to send men to fight. They tell me it is wise to strip my walls of its soldiers and march them elsewhere.

[ and between her words her meaning is evident: she's done no such thing. ]

Do they? And what do you tell them in turn?

[He had heard Jon already proclaim the city as being neutral. Would she break that at the monarch's command?]

I offer steel. I offer lumber. [ ... ] I do not offer blood only to be spilt and so further impoverish the city.

Will that be enough for them? Won't they want more? [He would be more than glad if that was all that was expected.]

More? [ her heart beats. ] I keep careful guard of Caer Glaem's eastern front. I keep my eyes on Mair. I keep my hand outstretched to Treun.

[ safety and self-protection wrapped up in the words of other dutiful services. ]

Aye, that you do. But if this battle goes poorly... [Then what? He can't say. This business of war is something he'll never truly understand.] I don't even know why we're attacking them.

[ because the seelie court is losing. perhaps in person she would never have shirked such a statement. not with him, at least. not any longer. but this is a strange feeling! one where she finds herself suddenly less inclined to tell him something because of the distance and the detachment. once, it had made it easier. and for some things she imagines it still is. ]

None have pinned it with any particular reason in the halls of Caer Glaem? [ hmm. ]

Oh, they've got reasons enough. All of it because of what they did to us or nonsense about the world ending. There ain't no proper reason for why they hate one another. As I hear it, the two queens are even sisters.

[Not that blood stopped his uncles from warring. But that itself was madness. This was even more madness because so many were drawn into a war for a land that did not even birth them.]

[ and who better poised to hurt a woman than her sister? ]

-- You think it's nonsense? [ the world. ending. ]

If a world is going to end or not, I don't see how us doing anything is like to affect it. That's the sort of thing for gods to work out, not men.

[ are there any gods here? she doesn't want to say it -- not really -- but she fears that their shards mark them as something nearly upon that level for those in these lands. not with love. certainly not. but enough people have inflated the importance of a shard in conversation with her that it's difficult not to think... ]

And what of men with such extraordinary abilities as we see here so often?

[That... is hard to say. It's not hard to recall how Stiles went from a fool trying to beat a dummy with a stick to begin practicing magic that Gendry would have scarce thought possible. Even Gendry had become inhumanly strong and learned magics for his weapons that made even the secrets of Old Valyria look like apprentice work. It was discomforting to think in those terms.]

... our land had dragons once. Large dragons they said big enough to eat cattle whole. But our world didn't end even when they came.

Edited 2015-01-19 13:45 (UTC)

It did. Once. The first time the dragons came. It ended a little.

[ go on. ask her how anything could end by halves. ]

Oh, a bit to be sure. Wars were fought. Men died. But those that bent the knee lived. Even I know how that went. [You didn't need a highborn education to know about Aegon's conquest.]

In one simple bend of a knee, kings were uncrowned. [ perhaps a stark feels the difference more deeply -- not for any natural reason but because it is bred into their history and their understanding of their own family. ]

Aye. He was. But he lived, didn't he?

[That's the only take away that really matters.]

He lived.

[ she agrees. she must. after all -- if sansa argues with ser gendry on this matter, she argues with the same forces that have kept her alive thus far. her knees; her humility; her submission. but elsewise damning torrhen stark is a comfortable way in which she damns herself. ]

Aye. And the world kept on. Likely the smallfolk never even noticed it changed.

[A king or a lord paramount hardly matters to a miller who is only concerned at his stock of food for winter, after all.]

You cannot say so. Please -- don't. I can only think the whole North felt the change. Surely.

[ if rational thought did not demand such belief, than her own rediscovered faith in her lands needed it. ]

[Why should it matter? he wants to say. It was hundred of years ago! But somehow she was invested in that story. If she did not want it taken from her, so be it.]

Might be they did. Might be they didn't. There's none living now to say.

None. [ she agrees on that front, at the very least. however: ] But it mattered enough to the Northmen of our time to--

[ it's awful, perhaps. but she has a better handle on this land's politics than that of westeros. ] They raised their banners to be a proper kingdom once again.

[ and all for what? robb almost made it sound as though it was for her and arya's sakes. to rescue them.

however unsuccessfully. ]

[Your lords did. But this he does not say.]

They did. I'm sorry it went as it did. [He did not aspire to the ideals that these northmen did. But if they had won and succeeded, then things might have been different. Certainly he would still have had Lord Dondarrion.]

Me, as well. The North is far away, Gendry. But it makes me shiver to imagine someone else sitting where I should sit at Winterfell's table. [ and what has happened to her rooms? her bed? ]

You have your own tables now, m'lady. [A momentary use of her title, but sometimes it could be just as affectionate as her name was.] You and your family sit those now.

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