Apr 28, 2015 16:37
There are wooden gods on the Quiet Isle
and Northern ghosts in the Eyrie...
all the same, the lilacs bloom
(
Sandor/Brother Once a week, the day is his. For five days, they gather. On the sixth, they cook, bake, clean the women’s cottages (though no women ever come), and make their own ale and wine. On the seventh, they are left alone with themselves. “Rest,” the Elder brother says. “Heal.” That brother is a fool, he thinks. He has had his share of physical rest, his body a lame, weak creature, useless and vulnerable the way it was when it was a child’s body. There could be no rest for his mind. Knows damn well I cannot rest… Heal… He laughs. It is bitter. It is cold. It is weakening. He resents the Elder brother more than he can say. Sandor Clegane kept trying his hand at peace, but in great, crashing waves he remembers waking here, delirious, dying, and the way the Elder brother shushed him like a child, then tricked him with milk of the poppy, tricked him into weeping like a babe about the girl… The girl. That red wolfling. Little bird… he thinks. Sansa… A Lannister now. It twists his stomach and accompanies the nausea he already feels from straining to use his leg as he walks upon the creaking wooden steps on the slope. He closes his eyes to escape the pain. He imagines her auburn hair, draping down her back, ending artfully where her skirts begin, pretty as a painting, remembers her tiny, panicked breaths, the ones that made him keep close when she thought she was alone. Even alone, the girl never rested, never stopped performing, pacing, panicking, pleading… He opens his eyes. He prefers the pain in his leg to this. The salt in the air has healing properties, if he is to believe these peace-laden brothers and the things they spit. The only thing Sandor could say for sure about it is that it burned. It burned his eyes and his nose and especially the still healing wound of his upper thigh. And when the salt tickles it with its particular flame, he sometimes wishes he were dead. And he remembers the little sister, her anger, her rage, the way he thinks he might’ve looked a lot like her when he first came to King’s Landing… he remembers her unwillingness to show mercy. Good. She’ll end up in the ground before she’ll end up a Lannister. Maybe that’s better. And then he hopes she made it some place safe, some place near. Hopes she was scooped up by some idealistic Tully, some trout made of as much of duty and dreams as Sansa, not some bitter, war torn, hungry beast like Arya… like himself. But he knows that, as seldom as news is here on the Quiet Isle, he would have heard by now if a Stark had been found. Sandor is not sure if it is the way his mind wanders or his leg getting better, but he arrives at the small, wooden sept faster than he has before. He opens the door, clears his throat, and nods in greeting to the brother within. Clyn, is his name, or something similar. He was of an age with Sandor and talked too much at breakfast. That is all Sandor knew of him and that suited him just fine. He crossed to the maiden and drops drop two pale lilacs he kept from their last gathering, two lilacs too pretty to be mulled into wine. Walking then to the Mother, struggling, he kneels before her. He has been here eight weeks. This is the eighth time he kneels before the Mother. The eighth time he does not know what to say. She was rotting, this mother, degrading… her wooden figure salt killed, the air having wicked the wood upwards, causing it to splinter and frey. He reached out and smoothed an edge with his rough hands. Mother. He thought of Cersei, her deep green eyes, and the way she clutched her wine, harder than he ever saw her clutch her babes. I am sorry, he thought, for his own mother. I am sorry, he thought, for Catelyn Stark. He tries to remember his own mother’s face. He cannot…. he only remembers kind, dark eyes. The same as his sisters. For a lifetime he did not see kind eyes… and then he had seen them in Sansa… You were drunk, he thinks. You were always so drunk. He wonders if he remembers the little bird right at all. He wonders if the Elder brother was right, about the reasons he drank so much at the end… Sansa/Alayne Finally, Sweetrobin is down for the night. For hours Alayne had wrestled him, coddled him, even sung to him, before finally dosing him and stroking his hair as he went to sleep. Armed with a candle, Alayne tip toes in her gown towards her own chamber. She pauses at the door of her father… she hears his soft snores and is relieved. The Eyrie is different when I am alone, she thinks. The Eyrie is beautiful like this. Alayne takes a blanket from the back of a plush bench in the open airway outside of her chamber and wraps it around herself, neglecting to go through her own door. She tip toes down a set of stairs and rounds into a small corridor. Bare feet on cold stone, she finds her way into the tiny upper kitchens. Father says there are guests tomorrow… I shouldn’t. She laughs. Alayne takes a lemon from the small bowl of fruit and cuts it in half. She wraps the remainder in a leaf of mintgrass and hopes it keeps. Sansa would care if her father found her wasteful. I am not Sansa tomorrow. I am only Sansa in the night. She goes on her way. The blanket slipped from her shoulders as she twisted a finger round the tip of her loose braid. Copper is spilling through the darkness again. Petyr will have to fetch for more dye. She had asked before what it was made of. He promised to find out, but never did. His promises were consistent but rarely true. It didn’t bother her much anymore. Lemon juice trails down her chin as she tongues the pulpy core of the fruit. Delicately, she wipes the excess with her thumb and sips it off, entering the garden and dropping the remains behind a row of rose bushes. The cold dances up and beneath her blanket and continues to twirl as she pulls her blanket on tighter. Sansa closes her eyes and takes a breath. The air in the Vale is cleaner and crisper than it ever was in King’s Landing. She does not miss the dampness or thickness of the heat there, does not miss the red sheen its kisses left on her skin. Her skin goes prickly, her nipples harden, and her hair threatens to strangle her far up in this air, but she welcomes it. Its cold and its virtue is the closest she may ever be to Winterfell again. She opens her eyes, not allowing herself to think for too long. Sansa she may be in the hours of wolf or owl, some nights as late as bat, but she had learned that if she took too long in her romancing of the wind, she would find it empty… would notice that the air never smelled of pine or snow or amber, like in Winterfell, nor the home behind her of leather, wood, or wolves. She had cried long and hard at that realization one night… the strangest things broke her in the darkness, like the time she realized the candles were not quite the same shade of white as in Winterfell and Petyr- father… Petyr… be Sansa now, it is okay to be Sansa if you are quiet now- had explained to her that candles, balms, and soaps in the north were made of material the rest of Westeros did not use, and she cried herself to sleep, watching her bedside lamp burn. She found it best not linger on the details. Sansa walked to the center of the garden, the stones painful under her feet if she was not careful, and she knelt down. There would be a Weirwood here, if the old gods were accepting at all of the stony soil. The old gods were her father’s gods. She hoped they might find something of him in her, something of the north in her, and she prayed to them anyway. Thinking of the seven made her queasy now, despite how much she had loved her mother’s Sept. Thinking of her mother hurt in a way that was different from the hurt she felt for her father and for the north. Sansa thought this was probably because the Seven had watched as Joffrey groped her, had stood silent as she was given to the Imp, had cast their colored lights down upon them that day just as they had any other day. She had felt no comfort in them. And in the days after, the godswood in King’s Landing, though nearly a lie, had been her only relief. Sansa spent time in these gardens during the day, but it never felt right to pray with Petyr. Even if he was not with her, she felt like he was always watching. Her father’s gods were nothing to Petyr Baelish. She prayed for the souls of her family, all dead, all gone, even the bravest and biggest, Robb, even stubborn, resilient Arya… even sweet Bran… Rickon, so small… She said a prayer for all forsaken bastards, especially for Jon, who she did not think was dead, who would tighten her furs around her even in times when they could not speak to him. She said cold prayers for her mother, who she could not begin to think of, she could not… and then she would not so much pray for her father, Eddard, as she would remember him. They are his gods. To remember him should be enough. They know him, they know him still. Not every night, but enough, she would recall King’s Landing, that nightmare that seemed too distant to have happened but painfully present all at once. Tonight her mind took her there. And to the Northern gods, she recounted its sins. And she prayed mercy for Margaery, for Tommen, and for Tyrion, too… and wondered why he was the Lannister not beautiful… and Sandor Clegane. She prayed the hardest for Sandor Clegane. He is not yours, nor mine. Nor any gods, I think- she clasped her hands tighter, hoping it would stop the sinking she felt in her belly- but he could be someone in the North. He could belong. Make him kinder, gentle him… please, please… Sansa felt tears run down her face. She looked up and saw that the black of night threatened a purple hue. I must sleep. Alayne has a big day tomorrow. Sansa stood. “Father,” she called out, her voice cracking, her eyes looking for nothing in particular. She wondered if Sandor Clegane had ever called out to anyone, wondered about his father and mother, if he missed them, if they were like him or like his brother The Mountain... and then she heard him in her head. “Stupid little bird…” Sandor Clegane had never called Alayne stupid. He had never kissed her either. The wind seemed to howl and a chill crept up her spine. She wrapped the blanket around herself and turned to head inside. She noticed a bush closest to the breezeway had bloomed late, and dark, purple as the night. Sansa twisted a bloom free and held it to her nose before tucking it into the front lace of her gown and heading to Alayne’s chamber. )
asoiaf,
sansa stark,
sansan,
sandor clegane
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