eachdraidh | (second lemon cake) video ✧ locked to seelie

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(second lemon cake) video ✧ locked to seelie

Dear fellows and members of the Seelie court -- [ the voice which addresses the locket is composed and clear and perfectly conscientious. but the girl whose image accompanies the voice looks a little less than all those things. her dark-dyed hair is fastened in an uncommonly simple braid...and if one looks very closely, she can be seen to have a haggard look about her. she's somewhere outside and all her caution is bent at hiding a panic she doesn't want to share with strangers. nor with those few genuinely waiting on her return. ]

I don't want to alarm any of you. Indeed, I speak to the very opposite of that effect. It's -- [ her gaze flickers 'off-screen' for a moment ] -- it's Alayne Stone. Those of you who are acquaintances [ not friends ] ought to know that I've found myself...left behind. I'm sorry. It should not have happened. But I suspect I won't make Caer Glaem again for some time. [ the fault of the matter is a little trickier than that, but she knows better than to play with implications. so after a steadying breath, she presses onwards. ] Or we won’t -- because I'm not alone. [ i have nymeria, she thinks but doesn’t dare to say. just like how sansa wants to speak directly to those who know her for who she really is -- but instead: ] I have a knight with me.

Don't I, Ser Gendry? [ and she twists her locket, letting it capture the surly blacksmith who stands a few paces away from her with an irritated expression. his armour is dented and blooded and the man sags with an obvious exhaustion. ser gendry is a man who looks and feels beaten, but it does not stop him from standing tall. he is a talisman of sorts: a warning, to any sansa fears might prey upon what would otherwise be a journey fraught with vulnerability. ser gendry is here; she is protected, albeit not happily so. he at last looks towards her and her locket and grumbles an unhappy agreement to her statement, which is accompanied by a nod. ]

A lady needn’t despair when she’s so well accompanied. Instead, my thoughts are with the returned; I pray the High Queen’s desired prize was taken without steep costs or losses. [ following this, there is no formal farewell. no official sign-off. her attention lingers, perhaps waiting for one or two responses in particular. ]

( ooc; sansa and gendry are now officially stranded and making their long way back to caer glaem -- and it’ll take them at least two months, though they’ll be reachable by locket at their respective ic inboxes. but for now, responses to this post will receive replies from one or the other or both!)

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[So what does he even open with? After hearing of Sansa's predicament, and then finding week old evidence of it on the strange locket, Jon has been turning it over in his hands trying to figure out what ought to be said. Watching it over and over, seeing his half-sister for the first time in three years, long enough to feel like three lifetimes. She looks different, but so does he, he suspects.

And her knight, too. Ser Gendry is a stranger to Jon's eyes, and she offers him no family name, which is just as well because there's nothing to be done about it with both of them so far away. Jon has known bad men from good families, and good men from no families at all, not that it helps.

He is alone in a quiet place (the unnervingly lavish rooms they'd offered him) when he finally speaks her name and the knight's to reply. His words come halting and polite, though he spends them sparingly like each were a golden dragon. He wants to say, the gods were good and you're still alive, no one could tell me for sure. He wants to say, we're all that's left of our father, just you and Arya and I, and none of us Starks in name. He wants to say a thousand things, but all of them are too familiar or too terrible and she has always been the most distant of his siblings, so all that he manages without preamble is an awkward:]

How fare you both now?

[It had been a rough several days since they'd first left their message. Gendry checked his locket infrequently, but largely rested in the knowledge they were alone. As his horse plodded beneath him, he checked it again. He scowled at the face of this unfamiliar man.]

Who the hell are you supposed to be? [The locket angled up at his face, showing only the bottom half of his chin and cheeks, which were twisted into a scowl.]

[Well, that's not the best sign right off the bat, but at least he's clearly still alive, which Jon is hoping means that Sansa is as well. Still, at the sign of Gendry's obvious displeasure, his own expression hardens into something flat and impassive - it's always better to try and avoid provoking a further reaction, at that point.] Jon Snow. I know the Lady you travel with. [That's probably more vague than it needs to be, but Jon has always been slow to say anything he doesn't absolutely need to to perfect strangers.] Has something happened?

[A Snow? A bastard from the North, perhaps. If, indeed, he's even from Westeros. He's learned not to assume that anymore. He considers his answer in silence for a moment.]

You know Lady Stone, do you? [He ironically supposes there must be some network of noble bastards he is otherwise unaware of.]

[Jon's mouth twists in confusion briefly. Lady Stone almost makes him shake his head: the only Stone he knew was Mya, the girl at the Vale, when he and the rest of his family had been taken for a visit many years ago.

But then the message comes back --it's Alayne Stone, and the part he'd almost ignored earlier for the sense it did not make to him seems to click into place now. He nods, jerkily, almost hesitantly.] I do. I would sooner speak with her, if you have no answer to my question. Ser.

[Well, the Ser at least shows the man has some sense about him. Gendry answers, no less stubborn than before.]

M'lady ain't yet available for talk. But she fares well. You're a bit late to be showing concern, though.

[He doesn't speak like a knight, that much is plain. It's likely that he's been upjumped, and recently, Jon guesses. With all the wars on, it's not surprising.]

Aye, I am. [He sounds a bit grudging, there, like he doesn't want to let go of the topic of his sister, but he's fairly sure that pushing it might just make the prickly knight leave. Jon wants to know far more before that happens.] But I have only just... arrived this day. I could not say how.

You've got those bloody fairies to thank for that. Did they ask you along in their dream? Some folk don't seem to recall that happening.

[But Gendry did. And he had taken it seriously, until those very same fairies got him stranded. Now he doesn't give a damn about them.]

[He remembers it, but only vaguely. He recalls going to sleep, cold and miserable and alone, as the 998th Lord Commander of the Night's Watch: Lord Snow, who would forever be the one that opened up the gates and let the enemy march through. Helping the fairies had seemed so simple, so uncomplicated and appealing at the time.]

They might have, now I think on it. [He frowns, like that bothers him, before pushing on.] Are they how you have found yourselves so far afield, then?

Aye. We was sent to do battle with their enemies. At least, I was. The Lady Stone was with the wounded to tend our camp. [A quick correction there, lest it be thought that she was actually in the action.] But we were too late saying the words to return us.

You were the only ones? [No one else seems to be walking back with them, so he assumes.] How many were with you in the fight? Did they only bring the foot? Surely a castle of this size can afford some mounted force.

There were plenty more. But we were more a rabble than anything else. We were the ones not so lucky to make it back. If you want a reason for that, you can ask Lady Stone.

[There's a pause, and he gives a blatantly displeased look at the clear move to lay blame on his little sister's shoulders, but he knows better than to pick a fight.] As you say, ser.

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[ days later and -- additionally -- some time after gendry first accosts the speaker, sansa has managed to compose enough of herself. she's asked for them to stop their horses so she might take a break beneath a tree and navigate this conversation without also having to navigate a horse through the road. riding had never been one of her strongest suits -- arya had always been better at it.

she hates how her fingers tremble when she catches at the locket's face and opens it up. sansa sighs. drags breath into her lungs, and has to behave coolly. as if she doesn't know him half as well as she wants to. as if she doesn't care half as much as she's learned to care.

we are a like, now, brother is all she can think: ] We manage, my lord. [ how strange. ] Lord Commander, is it not? Ser Gendry said your name was Jon Snow and I heard a Jon Snow commands the Watch. Is it true? Tell me it's true.

[ she wants that much for him, she thinks. she wants to be proud. ]

--It is. [The relief at finally seeing her response is muddled by the contents of it. They play some game, that much is obvious - she disguises her mother's auburn hair, and goes by a bastard's name... though for whose benefit, Jon is unclear. You know nothing, Jon Snow. He doesn't like it, but he won't be the one to scatter the pieces and ruin the farce if he can help it. He understands better than most the power that's in a name, and the danger of it as well. Might be she needs to fool the knight she's with, that thought makes him uneasy, as far away as she claims to be.

It's no farther than she was before, but with these lockets, it seems almost unbearable. After three years, after all the death and the uncertainty - the destruction of his lord father's great house - he finds her close enough to see, but much too far to reach, and now he can't even call her by name. When he speaks it sounds strained, like he's treading on rotten ice. Is mouthing pleasantries all they can do? What would he even say if he could say anything?] Though there is no Watch here, that I have seen.

None at all -- [ she confirms, and the locket registers a brief tilt of her head. there is so much she wants to say but sansa understands that -- even were she standing before him now, her words stripped down to only the honest bits -- she cold not tell him everything. much was painful and much was self-indulgent. and she rather thinks she'd prefer it is jon was proud of her, instead. so i will be strong. ]

Very little remains of the familiar pieces of...our land. Except for people. There are countrymen amongst the courts. [ her tone is even. carefully manicured. constructed. in a moment she can break this farce and ask the locket to make their conversation private, but the paranoia rooting through her guts wants her to play-act for a bit longer. for both their sakes. if anyone had been watching, even now, she doesn't want them to question why the conversation suddenly sank into confidentiality. ]

That is... fine news. [It's not. There are days now when Jon trusts certain of the free folk much farther than he would trust any Westerosi. His father had been abandoned by the whole of the kingdom and called a traitor in their stead, his brother left afield by scores of his own bannermen after they'd placed the damned crown on his head, and his smallest and most defenseless kin had been slain brutally by the ironborn boy who had shared meat and mead and hearth with them all their lives.

Their countrymen are so often false that it's all Jon can do not to turn his head and spit - he knows that much for all he knows nothing, because he sees and arms and teaches some of the very worst of them up on the Wall every day. But his face betrays none of the lie, stony of expression in his uncertainty:] Many, I hope. Who would fight a war half so eagerly as men of the seven kingdoms? [Alright, that came out more honestly than he had meant to allow himself. He shakes his head stiffly, like it might erase the previous sentence and let him to start over.] I am glad of your continued safety, my lady.

[ but of all the sentences spoken, sansa keenly feels the one he would have erased. perhaps she's fought no battles, nor witnessed one directly -- and she hopes and prays she'll never be called upon to do either -- but she's seen enough of the machinations behind them to understand that jon is right. westeros seems to crave violence; it drinks it again and again in its thirst.

and it leaves little broken birds at their most disenfranchised in the wake of all this violence. ]

Ser Gendry has been good to accompany me. And Lord Commander! You have made me...[ what is the right wording for this? she pauses. ] You have touched me with your concern.

[ i am glad you are here for me, she tries to say between her careful words. but they're all the harder to communicate because she's never said them to her before in their lives. ]

I am glad. [The smile he manages is strained, because he thinks it must be done here. He wants to do more than show concern, he has always been a man of few words and much action, though he dares not abandon Arya so soon after finding her again, and he is loathe to drag her out into the wilderness when he has no godly idea where her sister even is. He presses his lips together and forgets all pretense of a smile, then.] I should like to see you again when you return, if it please you. [He should like to be able to call her by her own name and see for himself that she still lives and breathes as one of the last of his family, is what he means.]

That can be arranged. Certainly. I'll speak to you again, my lord--

[ and then sansa shut the locket. quickly. coldly. and after shutting it she counted to five. five whole seconds. ]

-- Jon.

[ she returns -- her voice now flush with clearer and truer feeling. but this time... ] I've asked the locket to let our talking be evident to only you and only me. Before, anyone could see it. And I didn't -- I don't want them wondering why someone like the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch would talk to a stupid bas-- [ bastard girl ] --to Alayne, only to have their conversation end so abruptly and so suspiciously. We had to make it look...real.

[ a rush of words -- and all of them now betraying a mind for minor subterfuge. as trickery went, this was small and simple indeed. but it's well beyond what sansa ever knew when she had last known her half-brother. ]

[Jon was only just starting to lower the locket when her face comes back, and he blinks down at it. Oh. That's better-

Except a stupid bastard is what he hears, regardless of the way she'd tried to salvage it, and both his eyebrows inch upwards. Time on the Wall has given him considerably thicker skin, at least, though it still smarts somewhere deep down that he doesn't acknowledge. She's hardly Alliser Thorne about it, though.

Dryly:] Because the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch is a stupid bastard, I would think.

...Alayne is stupid. Not -- not you. I didn't mean to say -- Gods, I'm sorry. I swear it.

[ and sansa is stupider still. her tone pitches high and everything spills out like babbling. terrified apologies and promises. she had only wanted to communicate that alayne is dull and uninteresting and perhaps brave at times but sansa isn't brave at all and now she tucks her chin.

she dares not look at the locket to look at him. ]

[Gods, what a reaction. Jon almost puts his hands up to try and stop it, but he doesn't think that would be a good idea. Did he scare her? He hadn't meant to do that, he just wanted--

Sansa saw it, Arya said. The Lannisters made her watch them behead her lord father in a holy sept. They called him a traitor and made him say things, they'd promised he could come to the Wall and then they cut off his head. And this is what happened to the little girl with a head full of sweet songs.]

Sansa, it's alright, I'm not-- upset. [The longer he looks at it, the worst it twists in his gut: Sansa Stark of Winterfell, unable to even look him in the eye. He almost pleads:] Look at me.

[ she trembles. and she tells herself it's due to the lingering chill on a spring breeze, but she knows it's because she feels fear. here she is: the stark who survived, who was held in a gilded cage, and who'd been married off to the enemy. how fitting that jon might now be the one who wanted little to do with her. some rational part urges her to remember that he'd been the one trying to contact her...and yet--

and yet. ]

Alayne is nothing like you. [ she says at last, sounding desperate. but in her mind she knows that alayne is everything like jon. alayne's years counted as many as jon's had when they'd last split apart. and like jon, alayne didn't care for dancing. like jon, alayne is meant to be bastard-brave. that blood-deep identity had been cobbled together out of pieces of the one bastard she'd known better than all others. ]

-- I was so pleased to hear you made Lord Commander. So proud. [ although these words are sincere, she still speaks them a little too quickly. she wants them to be her tokens. the ways in which she secures his love before she loses it. ]

(second lemon cake) video ✧ locked to seelie

video; forward dated to after the new arrivals start to show up

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