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It's a fine day for sunshine. I find myself pitying those who choose to live beneath stones and only play at seeing sunlight. The real thing is not so easy to replicate. It seems to be getting warmer as well. Summer Is Coming, as they might say in my own Westerlands. If there is anything to love about this world, it is the peculiarly short seasons. It is a strange thing to have them all wrapped up in one year. I find myself wondering how it is you're able to keep track of them when they each go by so swiftly. It is near spring, but I'm told it will only be a few months long with more certainty than even the wisest maesters can manage - and this from an ill-bred soldier with scant few hairs on his lip.

I will say this for the south, however. It is blessed with very few imps.

[Locked to the Unseelie]

I've spent an uncomfortably long time in Seelie lands these past few weeks, though I am to understand a fairy ring is not so far off ahead of me. Would that we had such things in my own seven kingdoms, I might have done a fair bit more traveling. Though I confess I find it terribly disappoint how utterly small this world is made out to be. Is it truly a void beyond the oceans? I would imagine that it could not have always been that way. Certainly there had to be something far off out there, beyond where ships are able to reach.

In any case, I do have a point beyond the tedium of long riding. My name is Tyrion Lannister, which may not merit much weight here, but I was known as the King's Hand and the Master of Coin where I was from. I excelled in both duties and while I have no mind to butcher my features in further battles, I would see my skills put to proper use still. There is a certain spire that I feel might benefit from my talents and so it is there I mean to go. But I am given to understand there are a number of spires in all and would be only too glad to find other similar minded individuals to begin making certain investments. I do not yet have all my wealth at my disposal, but I promise you I always pay my due. A Lannister always pays his debts.

There is one other matter. Briefly for a time there were two of my kin here. My brother Jaime Lannister and my bastard nephew, Joffrey. Did anyone perchance to meet either of them? I know they are long gone from this world, but I would be interested to know if there was anything they might have left behind.

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You do, huh? [ she pauses. not half-so-seriously composed as him. buffy smiles. ] Banks and cable companies must love you.

[ the slayer will keep a promise, but she'll be damned if buffy summers can ever manage to wipe out a debt. she's no rich lannister. ]

Edited 2015-03-11 11:12 (UTC)

Like old friends, certainly. [Not that his experience with the Iron Bank was vast, but he had been at least paying the interest during his tenure as the Master of Coin. He wondered if his replacement would be smart enough to do the same.]

As it happens, I've been spared a small portion of my wealth at Casterly Rock. Only a pittance of gold to be true, but a fine start all the same. I have a mind to put it to good use at this fort.

Anyone who talks about any amount of gold as a pittance probably comes from money. [ because it's been this long and she still can't quite wrap her mind around gold being a legit currency of any sort. ]

The richest family in Westeros. Yet still a pittance. I asked for my entire fortune, not a small advance of it.

[He had seen others with their strength in arms and magic and other wonders. Well, gold and wit were all Tyrion ever had. So why should he be made to have only one and not the other?]

[ well forgive her if she didn't realize she'd been speaking with one of the westerosi rockafellers. ]

You should be grateful. [ she had to make her fortune monster-hunting for months. ] A pittance is more than nothing, right?

More, yes. But only scarcely so. The difference between no dinner and being given a few pieces of rice instead. It's only enough to rouse my hunger, but not sufficient to bed it back down again.

You just compared being sorta rich instead of filthy rich to...starvation. Wow. [ she is doomed to be the only sane one at the spire, isn't she? and that was, uh, unanticipated. ]

What else can I say? I am a small man well used to a highborn's entitlements. I'm not made to live any other way.

[But perhaps only because he feared a world that would have no use for a dwarf without gold. If he had been born common, he'd have been drowned in the nearest body of water the moment he was born. If Tywin had been common, he'd have smiled while he did it.]

You get used to it. [ ... ] Not that my people were the richest anything. Maybe maybe the richest two-kid family on that particular block. But...

[ shit happened. ] Money doesn't last. In fact, I'm pretty sure blood and money are the only two things you can accurately use the word haemorrhage when talking about them. And at least with blood you can slap a bandage on that mess.

[He only needed to think about the state of the Iron Throne to know how right she was. Even so.]

That is only true in the hands of a wastrel. Is that what your family was?

Wastrels? Hardly.

We were very happy. [ once. never. in her hazy bad recollections. ] But then it's infidelity and divorce and moving to a new town and single-parent households and dad never finds the time to call from Spain and --

[ and she's rambling. buffy breathes deep. ] It's a long story. I call it The Fall of the House of Summers.

[ because who doesn't love a little poe humour, huh? ]

Edited 2015-03-13 11:09 (UTC)

[It did strike him as humorous, if only because she tried to make herself out to belong to some great house. He knew better than that.]

Father issues, I take it. Was he cruel or merely neglectful?

What? You don't think they're one and the same?

[ father issues, indeed. but she'll not come out a-warbling about each and every sin committed by hank summers. not breathe a word about his insistence to have his own daughter committed to an institution. cruel. his lapse of attention to the point of not so much as calling when his ex-wife died. neglectful.

she (almost compulsively) fashions herself as wholly normal: ] We were an upper-middle-class family in Los Angeles. Parents splitting up was practically written into the stars. It's not just my story; it's everyone's story.

It's a peculiar world where husbands and wives can part so easily. In the Seven Kingdoms, a marriage vow is for life. Only a High Septon can set it apart. That or a little bit of murder.

[He thinks on his own divorce and how strange that is. He supposes it's a fortunate thing he did not leave a child with Sansa. Tyrion did not imagine he could ever be a good father, but he would not wish to be an absent one either.]

Nothing about it was easy.

[ so spake the child of divorce. ]

Perhaps not. I could scarcely claim to understand it. As I said, men and women are made to live the remainders of their lives miserable with one another. I cannot say which one would be worse.

[Though that would not have been the case for his family. He had heard it said that the best part of his father died with his mother. Tyrion rather had the suspicion that the Lannisters might have made for a very happy family if he hadn't come and bungled it all up.]

[ a pattern emerges. one where (it seems) buffy is simply a contrary kinda gal. eager to argue with every damn point. ]

Some of us. Maybe. But it's not all pain and suffering. Not for everyone.

[ because if it was, why would she bother saving anyone at all? ]

Not everyone, no. But again, I claim ignorance on the matter.

[He was so very, very recently divorced himself.]

[ even she can feel the coiling no-good-awful-bad-bad-feelings vibe from the conversation as a whole.

so! carefully (and presuming she might find herself with a less incendiary topic: ] Tell me. Being filthy rich in Medieval-land comes with, like, oodles of servants. Right?

Many oodles. [Though he did not know that as any measurement he was familiar with.] Even our servants have servants. Those servants might have some as well, though I confess I never see the servants that serve the servants, so I've not thought to inquire.

[ many oodles. she laughs -- it's an easy and trifling kinda laugh. as embittered as she could at times be, buffy seems to find delight just as simple. ]

Lucky servants. Y'know -- the first set. The ones with the...yeah, you know what I mean. It just kills the joke to try and explain it.

Seven forbid your jape be ruined. I was nearly in stitches already.

[Evidenced by how much he didn't laugh at her. Though her laugh had in turn at least made him smile. That was comforting, as he hadn't smiled much of late.]

Fortunately, I'm perfectly okay with everyone else not laughing at my jokes. My -- uh, japes are for me.

[ it's her turn to say a word that she wasn't super familiar with. whatever. in any case, her feelings aren't hurt and she's clearly not out to sting his. laughter is laughter: it's not something that needs to be hard won or sorely lost. ]

I never was the class clown.

You would make for a sad fool, I think. You are made for better things than clowning.

[It might be high praise, but in truth he's never known of a female fool. Lackwit women like Lollys were not made to be used as entertainment, but to be given to some lesser son for marriage alliances. Or upjumped knights, he recalled bitterly.

Though in truth, the best fools were the clever ones, not the stupid ones.]

[ intended or not, buffy sops up all the praise she can get. it might be heavily salted and met with a mild guffaw, but it keeps her in a sweetened mood all the same. ]

And red noses just look awful on me. [ hm! ] Look. I can't promise you the world. And I'm not gonna lie to you and say Archer's already got this place sorted out. He hasn't. We haven't. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't stop by and go window shopping. Y'know?

[ and so the conversation winds down. ]

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