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!)

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-- 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. ]

[Jon has no idea what to make of that. He blurts out:] Why not? [before he can think twice about it. He doesn't understand the depth of the assumed name, how far down it goes. But lies can do that to anybody, if told enough. He'd pretended at being an oathbreaker, and then he broke his oath under Ygritte's furs. He might not have changed his name, but he'd been changed in the end, when he flew back to Castle Black half a wolf and half a wildling.

He scarcely knows if it's an insult or not. That Alayne is nothing like him. But who would want to be like him, he wonders? His only friend is a crow who will eat his eyes out of his head when he dies.

He's the Lord Commander who opened up the gates and let the enemy march through.] It's nothing to be proud of. My brothers were fools. [The words come out clumsy and half-mumbled, he's just so profoundly uncomfortable with the terror in her voice. He wants to chase it out, but he doesn't know how.]

Fools now fortunate in their leader. [ because absence has puffed up jon snow in her memory. now he might as well be a full-blooded stark, for how she now so desired his company and his protection. she thinks of him like robb: a surrogate for her father's steady honour and calming presence. it doesn't matter that these opinions are built on trembling nostalgia alone; all that matters is that in this moment she misses him. once, she'd thought it nice to see him again.

now she craves to hold his hand and look into his eyes and make certain for herself that he is real. existent. and here to help her.

softly, sadly: ] I do think I've missed you rather a lot, Jon. [ just jon. no snow tacked hurtfully onto the end. ]

[Her words are so sweet that Jon has to press his lips together and let his eyes duck down away from the locket for a moment or color might spot his cheeks. He feels a swift and sharp surge of guilt for the fact that missing her had been lumped in with missing his siblings as a whole, never quite as hard as missing Robb and Arya had been. He loved her, for he loved all of them more than anything else in the world, but they had never been like to seek each other out in their lord father's house.

That should change, he decides. When she returns, he will find a way to make up for the lost time. He never liked dancing or singing, or any of the things that he remembers she did, but it might have been that he'd never given them a fair chance. He would try again, for her, if she wanted.] I hope the remainder of your journey is swift and easy. [This whole conversation has been like a wild stream, filled with sharp turns everywhere, and he wants more than anything for a way to put back together all the pieces of her that it seems the Lannisters have ripped apart. He feels utterly helpless with a locket in his hand, and nothing more.] I would like to see you again.

[ sansa's smile is brief and faint. but for one gleaming moment, it's without artifice. it contains only genuine pleasure that he should want to see her even half as much (perhaps just as much!) as she wants to see him. knowing he's there waiting for her--

it makes the road both less and more endurable. ] You will talk to me, won't you? When you can? When my road gets dull I would very much like someone to...talk with.

[ soft and hesitant and gentle. but she would pin his commitment to her here and now before she loses it again. ]

[Quickly:] Aye, I would do that. At least for a time each night, if I am able. [And he doesn't see why he wouldn't be, with communication made so easy by this sorcery.]

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