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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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.

[ sansa knows what she'll be doing. she will be back in her keep and sinking down into the responsibilities she'd fobbed off so temporarily upon lady meera and jon. lush meals will once again be held in the keep's hall. and he... ]

No matter. Of course. You're quite busy. [ she answers like one spurned. ]

[Gendry is left to be baffled and uncomprehending. What happened? All he had said was that he never planned past tomorrow. It left his future very flexible.]

Aye. At times. What do you mean to do in seven days?

Why -- come home, of course.

[ sansa (speaking never to the subject but always to the periphery) had mistaken it for an obvious fact. ]

Oh. [That added up a bit more neatly though. Not that he understood why she had sounded so slighted before.] Might be I ought to return then as well. I'll have done enough to please the king and queen by then.

And yet they always want more--

[ a complaint she ought not to make over the lockets. but...he isn't here to pull aside and talk to in measured tones. ]

They do. But they'll have all I mean to give them for now.

[Likewise perhaps more than he ought to say. But he doesn't mean to fight. In his mind, this should be enough to make up the difference for his absence on the battlefield.]

So. In seven days--?

[ he will be in the cothromach. when she returns. and not upon the field -- where the brave and the foolish go to die. ]

Seven, aye. I'll be ready for a lesson, if you are.

[This is what he assumes she's hinting at.]

A -- a lesson. Yes. [ of course. ] I will rest after my long and difficult journey and you might read me my favourite stories.

[ the playful lines covers her disappointment. a lesson, she realized, hadn't been what she was after. ]

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

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