eachdraidh | (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!)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

[Jon Snow... Jon Snow. Gendry rights the locket now, giving now a clear image of his own face. He can see Jon Snow as well and he reckons he can see a resemblance there to Arya, as well as a fainter memory of Eddard Stark. Was that why he asked about Sansa so late? He ventured a guess.]

You're Ned Stark's bastard, aren't you?

[Jon goes stiff at the words, but his eyes search the other's face as soon as it becomes more focused than it had been before, trying to pick out a motive for the question and finding something more there instead.

There's a sudden punch of understanding in his gut, for how men that he's never laid eyes on before can look on him and utter that one sentence: You must be Ned Stark's bastard. There's so much of Renly in Gendry's face, though he recalls the (dead) man slipping easily into a seat at the feast table, all kindly words and smiles, and speaking of his bastard nephew. He only hadn't put it together until now.] --Aye, I am. [His lips thin for a moment. It's no wonder Sansa hadn't given him a family name in her introduction.] And you're King Robert's.

Am I? [He laughs, bitter and mockingly.] Gods, but every bloody person in seven kingdoms can see it, can't they? Your father saw it, but he didn't see fit to tell me about it. [There's a tone of so piss on him that goes unsaid. Not for Jon's sake, but for Sansa's.]

Aye, King Robert was my father. Not that I ever knew him, aside from being a drunken sot that near ran me over once. My name is Gendry. Gendry Waters now that my uncle has seen fit to acknowledge me, but I ain't a proper noble bastard like you are.

I wouldn't have, if I hadn't met Lord Renly an hour ago. [The fat, drunkard king had been too bloated and ruddy-faced and greyed out up top to bear any real resemblance to Gendry when Jon met him. And he might have Stannis' coloring just the same, but none of his look either. It was Lord Renly that he could see in Gendry's chin, and his jaw, and his blue eyes and dark hair.

He shrugs one shoulder, though: he's not going to apologize for his lord father, but he doesn't find pleasure in what he hadn't said either. He'd like to imagine that Eddard Stark had a good reason for it, but what reason did he have for never telling Jon who his mother had been? If she was even still alive?

Jon prefers not to think about it either way.] There are plenty of nobles scant worth their weight in shit, bastard or otherwise. [Plenty of them deserved to be up on the Wall with Jon more than a good fistful of the smallfolk they had actually stranded there. Pyp and Grenn and Iron Emmett, a dozen others who never raped or killed or thieved anything but food for their bellies.] But you've helped the Lady Stone. [He doesn't know if Gendry knows who she really is, but he keeps going anyway:] Thank you.

[He hesitates. He expected Jon to be angry at him. To swear and curse. He almost welcomed it, so he could do the same back. But the response is calm and measured and it leaves Gendry's anger and resentment with no outlet. He stews silently, considering the gratitude, and noticing that he was not being charged to do it. Jon Snow seemed to already understand what it was he was doing.

Gendry did not need reminded.]

Aye. I have. I promised her sister I would. [He would not reveal the identity of that sister. But he reckoned it as well enough that it be known that he knew who Sansa was, why Jon asked for her, and why he would bother doing it for a family that meant little and less to him.] I'll see her back to Caer Glaem safely.

[Jon gives him a thin smile that disappears back into the sullen lines of his face quickly enough, but it's more than he manages for most people. He hopes that Gendry is as fearsome on the field as Ned claims that his father once was, or that they'll not find enough trouble along the way that he needs to be.]

Could you ask her if she would speak with me? When she is... available.

[Sansa is not far from him and he could have her attention in moments. He wondered just how overjoyed she'll be to have a brother and how much she'll despair to have him only in voice. Gendry could not guess at what that would be like, but he wondered which feeling was the more powerful of the two.]

I'll let her know you're asking for her.

(second lemon cake) video ✧ locked to seelie

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