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. ]

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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.

Not enough of us. [ she sounds tired. if only because the argument is not her own. ] Or so Arya says. She is not a girl made happy by blessings done in halves. I think she would have every distant third-cousin conjured here if she could.

Arya... I suppose she remembers things being different for your lot. Fuller, still.

[Certainly he knew Jon and Sansa were more pragmatic at making do with what they had here. But they had both known most of their family was lost.

As for Gendry, any family was more than he'd ever had before.]

And I remember it more empty. Yet both of us have been proven wrong. How strange is that?

Strange enough. But if she had been the Arya I knew before all this, she'd be glad enough to have what she does now.

[The Arya here... well, he was fond of her. Fonder than he'd ever been. But she was not the same as the girl he'd known on the road. That Arya had suffered and seen the world for what it was.]

[ she had asked him. once. but they had not been friends, then. there had been no trust and no affection. and although now she knew better than to expect a lie from his lips, she also knew that back then he had no reason to treat her investigation with any due sincerity.

so today -- moved by the way he'd worded it -- she asks again. ] How -- how is she? Was she? How will she be?

[ she doesn't like the words. the right ones seem to escape her. ]

Do you want to know it, Sansa? Truly? You'll not be glad to hear it. She lives, aye. That's true enough. But just barely and it's as much luck as it is cunning what keeps her alive.

[It's something that he's not even really described to Arya in detail. Oh, she knows its hard. But he hasn't told her that she kills or gets men killed. He hasn't told her how often he saw her with a split lip or bruises from Weese's abuses. And he's still not told her how Arya Stark became the wife of Ramsay Snow.]

[ she is not bold enough to refuse him. if ser gendry thinks she will not want to hear it, she trusts him to know best. oh! she remains strapped for knowledge. curious. hollow and concerned. but she thinks perhaps she can survive upon a single question: ] -- But does she remain brave?

[ because the sansa who stands in the drabwurld today has been humbled watching a sister who has shown so much bravery. stupidity as well, certainly.

but bravery by the bushel. ]

[He is quiet for a long time. There were times, he knew, when being brave was deadly. Other times, it made matters worse. Would she be glad if she knew it was Arya who released Roose Bolton? Or Biter? Or Rorge?

But was she always brave?]

... aye. But, smarter I think. Brave enough when she needed to be.

[ she speaks at such distance! eager, it seems, to divorce herself from the deep sentiment lurking beneath the consonants and vowels. ] It grieves me to think her ever...frightened. And so I thank the Gods her fear is a difficult thing to imagine.

[ little and headstrong though she is, sansa cannot see fear in arya. she imagines it's there somewhere -- cobwebbing some dark corner. but to see it? oh, her heart would break again. ]

[He didn't have to imagine it. Or his own fear.]

Best not to think of it. Her future's here, not there.

As is yours, I imagine.

[ as is mine. ]

And yours. [He says it for her.] When you've managed to find your way back.

[ she speaks at cross-purposes: ] When well you find your way back to the city?

[ as though perhaps it matters to her. ]

When it's time for bed, I think. I don't fancy sleeping in those prince's rooms they set out for me.

[He'd much rather have his smaller and dirtier room in the Cothromach.]

For bed. I see. [ hmm. ] But in which city do you take your meals? Your moments of leisure?

Whichever's more convenient. [... for the meals. Sleeping and eating was presently all the leisure time he took. Or so it felt.]

And which shall be more convenient in seven days' time?

[ look. ser gendry. just agree to sup with her. ]

I... [He frowned.] I've no notion what I'll be doing in two days, much less seven.

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