nourapast

[nourapast]

It had not been the bellows of the Wolf of the North, Benjen’s master, that bade Toron to retreat; like an animal caught in a trap that will gnaw off its own leg to escape, Toron’s bloodlust was a fanning flame in his final act of battle when he rolled on his back to land a strike to Benjen’s ribs, the skin on his stomach split open by his fallen sword. It was a pain that carried on into horrible agony, and yet not nearly as injurious as the branding iron of gold fangs cutting into his shoulder that had him flounder over with a startled cry.  

And so while the invocation of the Red Kraken moves his brother-in-arms to their feet in an echo of grunts and curses, a chill of dread settling among them at the very idea of discontent with Lord Dalton, it is Toron alone that had risen from floor in a vision that had seeded his father’s storied legend; his face and body were a mask of blood and wounds, with no claim to triumph and vindication that he surmised his father had felt all those years ago. Instead, Toron felt every bit of a helpless pup caught in a raging torrent, the heaviness of Benjen’s blood in the back of his throat more suffocation than the manacles of his hands had been. “I’ll be seeing you, whelp,” his voice comes in a broken rasp under the hard rise and fall of his chest that shone luminous with the slickness of their shared sweat and blood.  In a mocking bid of farewell, he spat at Benjen’s feet where one his molars loosened itself on the ruins of their age-old reckoning. Toron left without further ceremony to lead the host of ironborn back to the Red Keep, all of them quiet and drained of defiance as they listened on to his stream of curses and litanies of death howled over broken and erratic strides, each word as incomprehensible and slurred as the last. I’ll kill him! I… I’ll tear through him like pot roast off the bone and hang him by his bowels – and I’ll make Bella watch it all!

Pride was an ember that had not been misplaced, but instead blunted and made all the more violent for the way it persisted  half-mast at words that he committed to memory. But you. The spitting image of your mother. It had cowed and spurred him in equal measure towards her chambers, only to find the room cold and unbearable in Rohanne’s absence. In that moment Toron felt every bit of the abandoned child that he had always been, searching far and wide as young swallows that cried out for their mother’s return. In the hour that followed, her return was marked by a trail of Toron’s blood on the floor as the rest crusted on him like rust on iron. She took in his turbulent state in one long glance and paused at his side, taking to his wounds with the consummate skill of a crow pecking at offal. She would have shaken him by the collar, too, if only Benjen hadn’t torn through that as well. It seemed that he was always meant bleed at the hands of Benjen as if he were nothing else but another one of his foul beasts for the warg to roost in – a jaw to be stretched far too wide, piece of bones and a heap of flesh to be possessed only until he had grown too big within his vessel and torn his way out through Toron all over again. Through the years, Toron had come to know of Benjen’s beloved monsters, some as high as his hip on their haunches or as fleeting as the flash of a raven’s wing, creatures of the night that kept vigil in dens and dank trenches alike the Night Bear. Alike them, Toron’s eyes flash bright and vigilant like two infernal embers, daring  any trespasser to meet the bite of his steel that lay unsheathed across his lap. Beside him, his mother had become troubled in the afterhours of her sleep. His cold, strange, and bewildering mother who had never allowed him a sliver of her vulnerability. Toron made no move to comfort her when she began to shake in the grip of her dream, her eyes darting beneath closed lids while he watched on with the barest acknowledgment. He had answered the call to the culling, too, and had long understood that the bloody path had led him to places and people that could never be outrun.

The next morning, Toron found that for all of his bravado of dogs and mutts, it was a cruel irony indeed to be the one cast away to the doghouse after a night’s absence from his marriage bed, only to return bearing the signs of Benjen’s bondage: a ruby bright flush to the neck wrought by a vise-like grip that had bore down hard enough for blood to fill in the whites of Toron’s eyes. The marks on his shoulder, as small as they were, stung with countless accusations of a love bite. Even so, tensions began to simmer the same evening when Gysella gave him leave to return at her bedside, yet Toron remained at the far end of the bed with his back facing her, jerking his spine away as if settling  something heavy about him. Rage was now a blade he turned in on himself – so much energy had been expended on extreme emotion and left him shrunken and impotent, and so his mind and body did not give way for Toron to make advances at his wife. It was him and the stirring in his heart alone that saw him lie awake in the nights that followed, his skin alight with the the struggle of two great beasts straining and heaving against each other on a tavern floor. 

In the flux and flow of time that it had taken for his bruises to gather green edges and his nose to no longer swell, it is that incessant thought that rouses him to descend upon the winesinks, pot shops and such places of ill begotten violence in the underbelly the capital. He knows, as surely as he knows the beat of Benjen’s blood in his mouth, that he is near. On a night so dark that he made no note of the lone raven circling above, Toron’s steady footfalls sound in time with his heartbeat, stomach tight with a perverse anticipation as the atmosphere shifts itself to one that favours him: with far off figure is one he knows well, Toron stalked further into the cobblestone paved trap of his own undoing, springing into a savage and desperate run at Benjen. In the narrow passage of an alley, Toron slammed his back up against a stone wall with Benjen pinned against his chest in a chokehold, his other hand steadying a blade at the pulse point of his neck. “Well met, Stark dog.” He bears down on Benjen’s neck until he hears a choked grunt, his own arm rigid with pain from their last bout. “Conversation has already run short,” he hisses. “I’ve come to give you a choice. Yield and become my thrall…” Toron laughs wildly over Benjen's shoulder as they begin to flail against each other in a tightly coiled fight for control, swaying on their feet in a macabre dance of death. But Toron’s laugh is short: his mood becomes  grim in the banality of violence. In one motion he uses his forearm on Benjen’s back to apply pressure and wrench him off balance, ignoring the damage he is taking on the wound in his stomach and the knife that has fallen at their feet.  “Or roll over and die by my hand!” With Benjen’s neck held tight at the crook of his elbow, Toron’s breath comes hard and fast against his rival’s ear. “Not to worry though, I’ll let you keep those fangs of yours and melt them down into a gold collar, fitting for my own prized hellhound.” Then, almost unconsciously, Toron’s grip begins to loosen when he takes on a tone of unsolvable tenderness in a way he thinks it hides how much he’d like this: “I’ll be good to you. Better than Stark ever was.” But the moment does not last when Toron makes a move to wrench Benjen his arm and snap it sickeningly. “I’ll kill you! I will have your tongue or your head by the end of this night.”

[nourapast]

💸    »   rumors :

Rohanne was exiled from the westerlands twenty-three years ago because she stole her dowry. In the past two decades, Rohanne has had her share of problems with Dowager Lady Helya Greyjoy and the more senior members of the Greyjoy household on account of their cultural differences and Rohanne's unwillingness to give out monetary favors at whim. Rohanne and her sister's double marriage to Lord Dalton was another one of their schemes to allow them to remain under the same household and continue their incestuous relationship. On the other hand, others say that Rohanne only withstands her unruly sister so that she may sow discord among Dalton's salt-wives on Rohanne's behalf. Rohanne holds no love for her son, Toron, who has always been an asset to keep at arms length. Her concerns over his unruliness and general disregard for his own wellbeing stem from self-serving interests only. In private, she has been known to strike people with the back of her hand when she is not properly addressed as "Lady Rohanne." Likewise, she withholds addressing others by their proper titles if she finds them to be of little importance. Rohanne has sworn a sevenfold vengeance on Sansara Serry for her relentless pursuit of her husband and has begun making plans to kill her and make it look like an accident. She not only deals in the illicit trade of items but of exotic wildlife. This explains why she has a grand collection of mounted animal heads and capes made from the fur of animals of dubious origin. Grumblings amongst the merchants of the Streets of Gold have begun to take hold as Rohanne is looking to establish a trading post in King's Landing, with many accusing her of having a reputation of depressing commodity prices due via illegal competition.

[nourapast]

⚔️    »   rumours :

Toron repudiates Lord Dalton's lack of leadership capabilities and his dependance on his sisters and 22 salt wives to rule in his name. He returned a changed man after his time in Braavos and the Disputed Lands, having little time of illusions of kingdoms long past where The Old Ways held merit. Toron seeks his to elevate his and Rohanne's status to the detriment of his father's salt wives and Toron's siblings. He is particularly set against destroying his father's favorite, Lysa Farman, and his brother Rodrik. Toron's sword has been spell forged with the blood of goats, bulls and a king to have the ability to absorb and utilize the iron from all the blood it sheds in order to make it lighter in battle. It is such that it appears to be a sentient being of its own that requires its master to feed it, otherwise, both master and tool deteriorate from lack of use being as they are linked together by blood magic. Toron is in court of King's Landing to kidnap and despoil high born maidens of the mainland just as Lord Dalton had done. Toron seems overly interested in his cousins, Lord Jason Lannister's daughters, either due to genuine interest or because of the riches of their father's gold mines. He has taken to vagrancies against the villagers of the kingswood and the smallfolk along the Blackwater Rush.

[nourapast]

🏵️   »    alliances​  :

allegiance: Sworn to uphold the interests of House Tyrell and the Reach. Always trying to consolidate the goodwill of the godsworn of the Faith by her own means or via her brother, the Septon Armond. Also seeking to strengthen ties with Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen and the Targaryen's of King's Landing. Still assessing the the Targaryen's of Dragonstone and how each may benefit their own respective houses. In court, she has tentatively agreed to a misalliance with the Iron Islands via trade negotiations. mother:  Lady Myrielle Rowan of Goldengrove. father:  Ruling Lord Clifford Rowan of Goldengrove. siblings:  Seven; Robert, Lorent, Tristaine, Ellard, Parmen, Abelar, and Erren. children:  Lyonel Tyrell, the heir of Highgarden. marital status:  Widow of Lord Garland Tyrell. paramour:  Lady Sabitha Frey of the Crossing. ward:  None.

🏵️    »   headcanons :

The stretch of Clarice's life can be measured on the pinwheel of the Reach's heaping offerings; green as the hills by Silverhill, blue as the Red Lake, and yellow as the golden apples of Goldengrove that Rowan Gold-Tree buried deep in a pit on a hill. When she was naught but a sapling herself, Clarice conceived the idea of breeding a new apple cultivar that would rival Rowan Gold-Tree's boon to the land. It was nigh on four-and-ten years later that Clarice's apple grafts finally flowered and yielded fruit, whereupon Goldengrove's orchards were rife with a new variety of golden apples with a pink blush. They were a novelty in her household and essential in nearby market towns, with many carts and jams being sent to the motherhouses and orphanages of the Reach. At the tourney to celebrate the new lord of Highgarden, Clarice presented Lord Lorence with one of her prized apples as a token of her favor at the lists, much to the ridicule of the attendants that day. Lord Lorence, recently jilted by Victaria, found it within himself to be charmed by the gesture. At the archery match, he shot an arrow through the apple on the head of a hedge knight and thereafter his courtship began in earnest. Clarice would soon promise him another bounty; many sons and daughters to fill his castle with laughter and song. But Lorence died at the hands of Dornish spearmen along the Prince's Pass, and so that promise died with him too, her loins and the seeds of her invention never to bear fruit again. As regent over the center of learning and culture of the realm, the Lady Clarice has been privy to invaluable texts written by timeless contemporaries, learning from refined ideas and deeper truths only – but Clarice is also a woman learning as she goes, a girl learning as she does, making her very sharp on the surface level but thoroughly underdeveloped and soulless in the essence of her ideas – a conglomeration of a hundred sharp blades that have never forged anything on her own. As a maiden, her influence within her family had also never been exceptional; her physical strength and offensive capacity easily dwarfed by her lady mother and Ser Franklyn, nor it could be said she was as graceful as Leona, or oft-celebrated for her sleight of tongue as Victaria. Rather, it was her piety and fidelity to the the Seven that set her apart, for purity was not merely a moral position, rather a condition of holding no falsehoods or dualities. Now, as both mother and widow, it would seem that every turning of page in the story of her years has woven a greater narrative for her to be in a position of eminent leadership and authority. From the rooftop gardens of the castle, where she may contemplate over from where the oceanroad meets the roseroad, Clarice understands that she may not lead with experience, but with a singular purpose that moves her to action: to protect the Reach's interests and the commonwealth of her people, both high and low born. Highgarden is not the navel of chivalry and honor by happenstance; these are ideals she will call her son's banners to defend till the bitter end. Nowadays, each day is a podium, a new avenue to prove her worth: each hour, a chance to consolidate her son's birthright. Every minute of every day is not hers, but for the plights and grievances of the people she leads. Recently, she has taken to regular hunting excursions with her lords and vassals to establish rapport and enforce allegiances. But it is not the woodland creatures she has grown to fear, but the conflict stirring at the foothills about the crown displeasing the Faith. It is a sentiment that Clarice would hope to smother with a well-timed word and a wave of her hand, but is she not also beholden to the greater sentiments of her people?

🏵️    »   rumours : tw self harm

The happenstance of her marriage to the late Lord Lorence Tyrell comes with a great stretch of rumors: she stole his affections right from under Lady Victaria's nose, or Lord Lorence had his way with her in Highgarden's briar labyrinth after she seduced him on the eve of a masked ball. The steward of House Tyrell is a thorn on Clarice's side; his absence from court is proof of this. He argues with her for the sake of provocation, citing her ignorance borne from youth, and her tenderheartedness due to her sex. She has appointed him keeper of Highgarden and to rule in her name until she returns from King's Landing. After the death of Lord Lorence, Clarice has taken extreme measures to safeguard the safety of her son, Lyonel, that verge on outlandish. She is known to go into fits of hysteria and rend the skin of her face bloody at any perceived danger. Clarice is beholden to the whims of her grasping brother, Ser Franklyn, and her ambitious mother, Lady Selyse. She has bestowed gold and offices to her mother and brother's favorites, depleting the bounty of the Reach. Clarice plans to levy her influence and supporters of the Realm against Dorne and its delegation due to a personal vendetta, all under the pretense of crying foul on Dorne's continued raids on the Westerosi reachlords and stormlords. She is profoundly offended and displeased with the Queen's choice of master-of-ships, due to the Reach's bloody history with godless iron islanders. She seeks to replace Lord Dalton with one of her men, notably the liege of House Redwyne. This is mostly a matter of pride albeit a sound strategy to secure influence in the Queen's small council.

[nourapast]

On the beginning of the sixth moon of the year 129 AC, Toron and his uncle Veron, along with a host of their men, traveled by dromond into the waters of the Narrow Sea to lay siege to a trading galley by the name of The Black Crane, a Volantene ship captained by a man of certain renown that had monopolized the market of Valyrian treatises and tomes. Toron had unhappily but willingly traversed these waters as emissary for his father, Lord Dalton Greyjoy, because of a bargain that had been struck with Lady Calla Celtigar. Due to the international ramifications of two of the Queen’s advisors colluding an attack against a foreigner of the Free Cities that bespoke of important contacts, Toron had taken fire to the news of this bargain and had threatened pandemonium unto the whole of Westeros in his rage. It was not long after their estrangement that Lord Dalton arranged for Toron to train under Ser Steffon Darklyn so that he'd be too busy to devise plans and he’d be forced to stay in King’s Landing. It was not an arrangement that Toron had been keen to take, and so it was by the candlelight of these long nights that Toron had begun to plan a raid of his own: after the raid on The Black Crane, The Cursed Emerald and its crewmates were to slip away from the Narrow Sea and into the Mander to begin raiding every coast of the realm until finally making their eventual siege of the westerlands. After many weeks of careful planning and several days out on open sea, the ironborn descended upon The Black Crane with wooden cudgels and bitter steel. The accompanying host were like to say that Toron had been distractible during the skirmish, driving his blade into their enemies heads all the same but with scarce focus, noted in the carelessness with which he trounced onto his enemies with no forethought to his line of defense. Still, the ironborn had come away with the lion’s share of plunder: jewels, Valyrian steel daggers, and a red, singed tome bound in human skin. Toron had also come away with a swarm of injuries that’d left him unconscious for two days. By Veron’s command, Toron, his crewmates and the loot of The Black Crane were brought back to Dragonstone, the island that Lord Dalton had secluded to. This change of course prolonged Toron’s plans of  invasion and so his weak condition only worsened in his fury. It was an act of wretched hopelessness when he began to refuse all help from his crewmates, barring himself instead in the privacy of his quarters during the onset of infection and delirium. It was Rodrik, his brother and First Mate, who called upon Rohanne’s intercession and by whose intervention Toron began to make a recovery in the following days. 

It was plain that the forbidding halls of Dragonstone lacked the peace and quiet that Toron needed. He prohibited the company of his father and his wives, eschewed Lady Jeyne Wylde and her children, but sat audience to the Targaryens of Dragonstone as needed. Toron instead took residence on The Cursed Emerald that had been fastened at the port of the fishing village. The nine days and nights he sojourned in the horrid island were spent in bed rest and in the creation of a new map of the Narrow Sea for his father’s study. It was a map unlike anything Toron had created for the reason that he had come in possession of advanced nautical instruments from the plunder of The Black Crane. As it were, the ironborn had only ever had access to rudimentary navigational aids such as sunstones, the position of stars, sounding lines that measured the depth of water, and the use of mountains and valleys as landmarks when sailing along the coast. These instruments, instead, allowed for more precise map projections and scales of distance as well as a windrose network that detailed shoals, harbors reefs, and islands along the coastlines. It was drawn on vellum paper (extending to the equivalent of 4 feet high x 5 feet wide) in highly stylized ink of various colors. Toron had long ago kept sea journals that he had transcribed from Dalton’s empirical observations of winds, currents, ports and safe anchorages, and the conditions of shores which aided in the creation of the map, too. 

On the ninth day of his stay, Toron arrived unannounced to The Raven and waited for his father in his study. The map lay unrolled on the desk and with no explanation of its origins, though anyone who knew Toron well enough could see that the handwriting was his. Toron also made no prolongations or grandstanding gestures to express how remorseful he felt and so he only stared ahead while Dalton looked at it. Finally, he knelt before his father and kissed the Greyjoy signet ring on his finger in a sign of fealty and goodwill. When Toron rose from the floor, he placed his own sunstone gemstone in Dalton’s hand as an unspoken assurance that he would remain in King’s Landing and that they would see each other again. “Besides,” he added, “you’ll need it to find the sun that lays hidden behind the mist and fog of this dreary shithole. I can’t tell up from down most days. In fact, I’d thought the Red Kraken had turned purple instead!” At that, he had laughed heartily for the first time in weeks before disappearing into the mist and setting course for King’s Landing.

At King’s Landing, Toron spent his days with Ser Steffon Darklyn not as a red faced squire desperate to prove himself, but as a solemn warrior who turned to the sword many years ago. He found Ser Steffon to be a fighter who knew from training, a knight who knew from experience. By contrast, Toron had been trained by his father in the acts of ruthless slaughter and relied upon the grisly experiences of battle to grow the sword in his greedy, grasping hands. What the Lord Commander offered, instead, was precision: he taught him against superfluous, wasted movements and trained him to wield lances and morningstars and how to withstand the charge of a vanguard on foot and while mounted on a steed. Above all, Toron learned that wielding a sword was congruent to discipline and rectitude, in showing mercy to his enemies, and how these enlightened acts led to deeds that made a man worthy of the White Book. Toron remained a cynic unto these sentiments but was a quick study nonetheless, even while he had frequent spats with Ser Criston Cole and Ser Lorent Marbrand. But the one figure who he enjoyed above all in the training yard was Prince Joffrey. Once, a Prince of the realm and the legitimized salt son of the Iron Islands would have been diametrically opposed to one another, but it was at the swords crossed point that they found common ground. Their friendship was such that in Toron’s name day he was gifted a mighty sword, the likes of which could be worth its weight in gold dragons on the Streets of Steel atop Visenya’s Hill. It was not Nightfall, but he loved it all the same. 

In effect, Toron’s namesday gift instilled a gravitas to his training to a disquieting degree that the court of King’s Landing were like to say that he was fixing to assassinate Daemon Targaryen if the need to meet the mainland’s biggest military asset with force drew near once the Iron Islands declared war against the Crown. Toron did little to assuage these concerns and in fact inflamed them with grandstanding demonstrations of his martial prowess – in this way, it was like living back in Pyke. He learned long ago that the only way people came to respect him was by inspiring fear and fanning the flames of his reckoning. It could be said as well that the company he kept did not help his reputation. Princess Aliandra of Dorne was a frequent companion of his at King’s Landing, a figure both equally reviled and awe-inspiring. They were both foreigners to the sensibilities and intricacies of the court of King’s Landing, and in each other, they understood more and less than the illusion of being good people or the concession of being wicked: rather, the pair of them saw the world for what it was, and how this is was not a thing so binary as the rest believed. In their time together, this led them to delight in life’s finest and most terrible experiences together: drinking, gambling, disrupting the streets of the capital by the clamoring of their steed’s hooves on the cobblestones, and all the pleasures of the mind but never the body. Toron could not help the way which he unabashedly looked at her, and it could be said that his yearning for her tethered him further to the mainland. Still, pursuing her was not so much as a question of propriety but a risk - in the months that followed, Toron had received news that his father had brokered a marriage pact with the First Magister of Lys, a noble banking family that would make the Iron Islands fertile in gold and trade. Toron was to marry Larra Rogare, and while he was glad to receive her and her dowry, he could not help the doubt he felt in marrying a woman whose disposition and Gods he did not know. This was still the opportunity he had been waiting for all along and he faced it with a stiff lip, even if he found it hard to face Aliandra at times. 

At times, Toron found himself more alone than he was back in Pyke; he could count on his father and mother to be elusive as always, but for the first time in his life Toron found himself bereft of his cousins by Amarys and Esgred, both of his aunts well-tempered advice, Alannys’s wiliness, and Penny’s jabbering. Penny’s absence was hardest felt by him and it was by this reason alone that he could not bring himself to visit her in Highgarden. Each visit would lead to a new farewell and a new wound on his heart. It is why he preferred the impersonality of letters rather than the stream of heart wrenching goodbyes upon the sandbars of the Mander. Perhaps it is because of these absences that Toron did not eschew Lord Corlys’s company any longer. Lord Corlys and Toron coincided many times along the port of the Blackwater Rush and in the halls of the Red Keep, but it wasn’t until Toron’s return from Dragonstone that he told the Sea Snake of his recent travels and how each wound had been worth its blood in plunder. Much to Toron’s surprise, Lord Corlys invited him to Hall of Nine so that he could regale him with stories of his own and he could showcase the treasures he possessed. It wasn’t until four moons later, in the final days of the tenth moon, that Toron finally set course for Driftmark. He suffered a great fright by Meleys who sat defending the coast, but once allowed into the castle, he lay witness to Lord Corlys’s storied legend and all the priceless treasures he had come away with in his nine great voyages. For the first time in his life, Toron did not steal from the dragons horde of treasures, finding that he prized Lord of Driftmark's stories far more, especially those of his most recent expedition to Qarth.

It would not be until a few days later, on the eleventh moon, that Toron set sail to King's Landing once again, awaiting the return of his father and Penny.

[nourapast]

toron had been pouring over his work on his mother’s accounts of creditors in norvos and indices of merchant emblems by their port of origin, but at the interruption of gysella arriving like a foot through a glass window to the inviolable space of his cabin aft, he concedes to it like losing a game of dice. toron’s head hung in defeat and he huffed out a self-deprecating laugh as he set aside the logbook to his left. he rose to his feet to meet her and closed the door behind them in an effort to shield them from view of the men and women who manned the cursed emerald, cursing himself all the while that drowned god take me now, people will start talking. he had come to realize that it not a newfound thought; gysella taught him how to slip from the fishnet of gossip, and in return, he had warned her that he was not one to protect reputations. yet here they are, him and this spindle of a woman behind a bolted door, and the evening was suddenly all the better for it. “gysella.” he offered in lieu of a proper greeting, bearing her name with distance when she began gloating about how much toron missed her.  toron could not turn that knife on himself by acknowledging the truth of it, and so he only rolled his eyes in answer. then, toron tested a mocking laugh to tactfully follow her comment of the capital. “will you have me speak on the mainland so soon? surely you don’t intend to ruin the day so early on.”the memories of city began to drag like sticks in the sand, leaving slow and careful patterns behind him that drew up images one edge at a time. he recalled that a glass of clean spring water was a kindness, no more than the flies that swarmed the punnets of dead fruit were a gift. in the dregs of the city, they served a horrid soup that was unlike gysella’s creations, called “bowl of brown.” it was anyone’s guess as to what or whose meat they used to thicken the broth.“i’ll spare you from the tale,” he said with a wave of his hand. “it is a city full of fools that will dance at the command of another for the right morsel.” toron eyed her from above the pot of soup that he had begun to stir with the serving spoon, the fragrant smell filling his nose and the steam flaring in a milky mist where the light struck it. “and you?” he asked after a moment, his eyes bright with interest as he began to serve spoonfuls of soup into each of their bowls. “i much rather hear what you’ve been up to in the doom and gloom of my absence.” 

as it were, if any other man would have been quick to denounce toron as a halfwit for leaving gysella with on the shoals of the sunset sea with little more than a bleak farewell, not even daring to spare her any letters in the aftermath. toron’s attention had centered on the ambit of obligations and commendations that would be moons and more in the making. in doing so,  toron wanted to believe himself impervious to enticement, perfectly capable of separating his heart from duty with a cold indifference. he would not be like the captains he had seen in his time, or his father or rodrik for that matter, both whom blunted their wits with flights of fancy or grandstanding entreaties of love, too occupied in the skirts of women that were fools to their charms. toron disavowed rodrik’s winsome smiles and his father’s honeyed tongue altogether, but even so, every gesture of toron’s was a word that bespoke of how much he delighted in gysella; he touched the cup that she had touched, drank from the part where she had drunk, and contrived to adjust the tuft of lavender blooms behind her ear if only to feel her in his hands. in the years and countless moments that followed, lazing side-by-side in the rays of a dying sun inside sheltered coves with the promise of the night to come, toron was ever bold and had brushed his hand against her own, splaying their fingers together until one day he brushed a kiss to the center of her palm. he had kissed the inside of her wrist, and then the corner of her lips, and then, and then…

now, it is the touch of her, slight and short as it is even after all these moons apart, that serve as a reminder as to both what sustains toron’s yearning and contains it within a bell jar. he answered her approach with a pitiful reflex of his mouth that angled to meet her own, only to come away cold and disappointed when she kissed his cheek instead. toron winced at his folly and turned away to the top shelf behind him to procure a chalice for her, as well as a wineskin sack that he tauntingly waved towards and away from her grasp. “dornish red.” toron held her glance, dropping his eyes down the height of her in a slow and deliberate observation of her body in mimic of what she had already given him. “like your dress.” when he settled down into his chair, toron had half an eye turned towards gysella as began to eat, a sign that his attention was dwindling. at mention of his father, though, toron had taken in a sharp inhale of displeasure through his nose before the gravity of these new circumstances became dislodged in his throat. toron's eyes went bloodshot as his chest heaved violently against the food that became stuck in his throat until at last he he groaned out a rasp of relief when the food went down his gullet.

“you can’t marry rodrik!” toron sputtered in a prodigious peal of disbelief, as if by the force of his tone alone could elucidate all the reasons as to why he renounced this lackwit proposition. rodrik was the closest to toron in both age and in his heart, but toron’s esteem for him did not occlude him of his glaring slights: he was a man grown with scarred hands and a wind battered face, but this did not mean he bore the scars of a warrior or knew how to hold the hilt of a sword in the ways that toron did, nor could he be depended upon to carry the responsibility of commandeering his own ship and be the leader that his crewmates needed. he was distractible in the ways that toron was not and easily beholden to his appetites, with whores aplenty that sought him out at every port. if not for obella, he may have sired countless bastards on milkmaids and highborn ladies to fill every orphanage in the greenlands. this may have bred contempt against his brother’s lack of sense – but the thread of blood ran fine and strong as ever between them. rodrik’s lightheartedness was the element that brought toron the greatest of joys on days he was too beleaguered to carry on. “he is soft and yielding. it will be a burden to him.” toron shook his head,  a look of absorption taking hold of his face. “a burden to you, as well.”  then, his eyes fixed on her pointedly. “he is not like us, not like you and i.”

“besides, your roads always bend towards my door.” he notes with an unaffectedly casual tone, delivered more as a fact that was not meant to condemn or  endear; all single mindedness was not sentimental enough to dissemble or take offense. “i will not make my brother a cuckold.” toron took a long draught from his chalice, his gaze turning about the room in dark, smooth casts. “alannys and tyanna, and now rodrik. the girls have been promised to foreign princes.” a terrible smile of resignation came over him then, almost in a grimace. “with father’s new position and my mother’s many business associates beyond the narrow sea, i suppose it’s only a matter of time they foist a foreigner onto me, as well.” toron leaned deep into the backrest of the chair, his hands going to the back of head as he glowered at the door. it was plain that he hovered between wry and inconvenienced in the stagecraft of political alliances  that his parents were devising. then, the chair creaked at the sudden motion of toron leaning towards gysella, his hands folded over on the desk when he fastened onto her with glaring intent: “i propose a trade. an heir in place of a second son. trueborn sons that will inherit titles and lands instead of salt sons borne from different mothers and that will be hidden from under your nose. the power as a lady of a great house instead of being the jilted wife, a footnote to a larger tale.”  a beat later, he falls silent to let his proposal hang between them. the way that his mouth pulls into a smug grin, though, tells her that he knows he already has her. she was of his own ilk in a way, much so that he recognized himself in her in the best and most horrible of ways. at times, he felt deflated by her surety of him, and other days he reveled in tantalizing her as if they were two thieves after the same jewel. still, there was no way for toron to mince next his words and so he persisted on firmly, river-like, sea-like, in that he does not stop not even for stone. “in return, i ask nothing of you that you will not freely give. but if i am to have you, it would be by the neck, the teeth, the ankles… because when i want, i want all.” he leaned back into his chair and tilted his chin in her direction. “i will have my place in this world, come hell or high water – will you dare to do the same by my side?”

[nourapast]

Queen Rhaenyra’s reign has changed things vastly and Clarice’s role as Lady Regent has not been spared from this dizzying shift, but she has not let herself be deterred. As one the of strongest voices against the the Iron Islands’ ruling liege and their vassals convening in court, least of all to stake their interests in the the small council, Clarice had been all too perturbed at securing peace agreements between the two regions with the exchange a Tyrell son of noble birth, anointed with the seven oils and named in the rainbow of light, for a godless fledgling bastard of Pyke. However, after being presented to the newly legitimized Lady Penny Greyjoy by Lord Dalton Greyjoy and Alla Florent, Clarice knew as soon as she laid eyes upon her that she could welcome her into Highgarden and into her heart. “She will be a daughter to me,” she had promised the fearsome Lord Dalton. “I did not know Penny as a seed in her mother’s belly, or as a soft babe in the arms of the man who contributed to her conception. My new daughter has come to me already a girl, missing some but not all of her childhood teeth. I am glad to receive her into my halls and my homeland.”

Lady Clarice was also glad to not enter into trade negotiations with the Iron Islands, even while she still ensured that the ironborn were to not raid and reave in the Reach any longer. Later on, she had received news of the trade negotiations between Dorne and the Iron Islands with a scoff. Part of the agreement had been to not call upon her southernmost vassals to intercept these ships, but Lady Clarice has been heard to say that she also stills her hand if only to see how long this ruse between these two faraway regions will last. However, it is Lord Jon Tyrell that had grown all the more discontented as time went on. In a manner that was always contemptuous, and always fruitless, Jon had gone into theatrical tirades in an attempt grasp for an offense that would match the one served to his honor and to his weakening image of Clarice. It is by Jon’s spite and the harshest critics of the peace agreement negotiations that Lady Clarice’s image does begin to sour, with many calling her a conniving woman that has betrayed the Tyrell’s and made two innocent children the pawns to her ambitions. To assuage these sentiments, Clarice organized a tourney to celebrate the third name day of her son, Lyonel, and called upon knights and squires of the Reach of both noble and common birth to compete in martial games with the prizes not only being monetary, but also the guarantee of her patronage. In display of her beneficence, she would assure their reputation as knights financially (as patrons are also sponsors) and theoretically in connections to a noble house (championing for noble houses and wearing their colors). The fine selection of men who had won in the contests were glad to receive their Lady Regent’s patronage rather than having been shipped away to some border garrison.

The next event that followed Lyonel’s name day tourney was a welcoming ball in honor of Lady Penny. It was an evening with great fanfare where the honored guest became a beloved novelty, delighted over by all. Invitees arrived to witness Clarice’s newly remade family, curious to get a look at the girl who had so spectacularly regaled a grand evening. As the days went on, Clarice filled her daughter’s days with artists, educators and a septa so that they could engage her in topics of numbers, philosophy, religion, and the arts. It is from these innovators that Clarice hopes that Penny will learn her sensibilities so that she may lead a morally just and divinely inspired life. However, it seemed to Clarice that Lord Dalton always arrived to undo her work. His visits to Highgarden are unwelcome and consistent, but she withstands him for the sake of Penny even if she had allowed his entrance inside the castle a sparse few times. The presence of men and knights of strength double during Lord Dalton’s visits to let him know that he is not trusted. Lady Alannys’s presence is less welcome as well, but as she comes with Prince Joffrey on the dragon Tyraxes, more consideration is taken into making her visits more welcoming only while she remains in the presence of a Prince of the Realm. Still, among the maid servants of the castle it is known that Clarice has asked them to inconspicuously separated Lady Alannys and Prince Joffrey at times so that Lady Leila Rowan can beguile the prince instead. It is Lord Toron, Lord Dalton’s heir, that has been ignored altogether. While he has not embarked to Highgarden, he has written plenty of letters to Clarice with requests to establish trading voyages at the Arbor. These letters have gone unanswered even if she shared weekly correspondence with his father where Lady Penny and Lord Henley’s wellbeing are discussed, with some of these letters even including portraits of Lady Penny in the Myrish painting style and Lord Henley by Lord Dalton’s unsteady hand.

Clarice’s correspondence with Lady Sabitha of The Crossing was a different matter altogether. Clarice was not so unfamiliar with herself to not recognize that she might have grown infatuated during their initial meeting, and while they continued to socialize at the Red Keep, Clarice started to believe that she may have spun their friendship into something that couldn’t and probably never will be. Still, Clarice was happy to receive Lady Sabitha’s ravens and quickly grew enamored at her friend’s poems that sent her heart racing. Clarice could be seen writing into the long hours of the night until one day she received word from Lady Sabitha that she was pregnant. It was an easy decision to brave a journey of hundreds of miles to the The Twins with Lyonel and a small retinue from Highgarden. Lord Roger Tyrell had petitioned for more important tasks as of late, and Clarice was all too happy to appoint him as castellan in the meantime while Lord Jon had grown distractible in his duties. It was at the Twins, where much attention had been paid to Lady Sabitha’s wellbeing, that their passionate love affair began. None could be seen without the other thereafter, and while Clarice was seen entering the guest room during the nights and emerging from it in the mornings, the bed had always been neatly arranged from the day before and many of her items and smallclothes were found in Lady Sabitha’s chambers. There was much talk about Clarice’s unexplained animosity towards Lady Amarei Charlton and how quick she was to dismiss her at every turn, and on one occasion, these ill feelings had culminated into a heated argument between the two that no one but Lord Forrest had been able to qualm. Nevertheless, Clarice continued to visit the Twins as much as time allowed, with Lord Roger ever poised to prove himself as castellan in her absence.

[nourapast]

the   market   square   is   as   a   river   and   hordes   of   trout   swimming   upstream,   churning   under   the   blanket   sounds   of   chatter   and   wares   at   the   rhythm   of   a   fast   gait   in   the   eye   of   a   surge.   only   here   is   oseye   uncharacteristically   filled   with   a   mildness   more   often   seen   in   minnows   -   it   asks   for   very   little,   and   takes   even   less.   all   it   needs is   some   water   and   some   space   to   move   around   for   the   water   to carry   him   upstream.   it   is   for   this   reason   that   oseye   bristles   when he   feels   the   other’s   acknowledgement   set   upon   him,   his   black   eyes settling   bright   and   pin-straight   on   blade,   a   hairline   short   of   becoming   a   glare.   “go   chew   someone   else’s   ear   off   about   your   lonesome.   the   week   is   long   enough   without   your   magpie   chatterings.”   then,   drawing   high   and   sidelong   so   as   to   shield   himself   from   the   inquiry   of   ale,   he   proffers   the   following   to   a   sardonic   scale:   “if   my   lord   pleases,   he   can   sweep   and   swab   my   ships   that   rock   at   anchor.”

[nourapast]

oseye  is  stood  beneath  bronze  sun  at  high  noon,  tireless  as  beasts  in  their  pits  from  his  place  upon  witch  tide’s  deck  as  he  observes  the  low,  watery  light  overhead  in  silence.  the  day  is  fragrant  with    merchants’  incense  and  elixirs  and  wind-whipped  with  the  foul  and  stagnant  breeze  that  shaped  all  three  hills  in  kings  landing.  and  then,  on  the  surface  of  the  water,  bobbing  up  and  down  on  a  current  caused  by  a  wind  not  too  fine  for  the  sieve  of  oseye’s  senses,  a  rowboat  drags  its  oars  and  goes  nowhere.  this  displacement  in  the  middle  of  dead  air  and  deader  lands  makes  the  gulls  overhead  cry  a  forlorn  scream.

kept  as  he  is  to  his  silence,  he  turns  face-front  to  witness  the  city  blown  across,  pleased  to  find  it  leveled  when  a  flurry  of  black  hair  glints  against  his  sight  like  glass  catching  light.  he  regards  her  fully,  leaning  from  above  the  bow  of  her  ship  with  a  grin  as  if  to  say:  ah,  you  at  last.  so  he  makes  no  greetings,  no  prolongations  that  lend  themselves  to  honeyed  balladry  or  silken  anticipation  --  the  high  queen  was  no  moony-eyed  maiden  to  be  taken  by  riverside  and  placated  by  such  things;  she  would  crush  them  underfoot  as  do  the  storms  of  sea  that  which  cleave  at  the  eye.  “there  is  a  rat  in  the  hold  !”  oseye’s  voice  called  out.  “a  tanner,  abed  and  unclad  in  your  cabin  aft  !”  

the  sun  hangs  heavy  above  his  his  frame  when  he  leans  back,  his  fingers  silvery  with  the  glint  of  something  sharp.  “your  deck  hands  say  it  will  take  you  less  than  one  hourglass  turn  to  cut  him  into  seven  little  parts  to  feed  the  seven  gods  that  are  worshipped  on  these  lands.”  when  he  turns  his  hand,  there  comes  the  sound  of  the  snip  of  a  blade.  “i  say  it’d  take  you  less  than  the  second  it  would  take  you  to  turn  the  hourglass.  so  don  some  mail  and  let  us  hear  that  sweet  blade  of  yours.  i’ll  give  you  a  prize  for  every  piece  if  i    am  right.”

[nourapast]

“we  all  have  our  duties.  mine  are  not  given  unto  celebration.”  oseye  replies  evenly,  countering  blade’s  bluster  with  the  aversion  of  one  who  has  been  struck  by  the  urge  to  shatter  glass  onto  their  palms,  straight  into  bone.  statesmanship  and  merriment,  in  blade’s  world,  must  be  familiar  counterparts.  two  sides  of  a  golden  coin.  oseye  does  not  share  the  stomach  for  it,  both  the  venom  and  vice  it  proffers.  even  so,  the  sea  does  not  reveal  what  it  carries  underneath.  “the  targaryen  and  i  have  always  come  together  to  grow,  create  value,  exchange  value  and  serve  one  another  well.”  he  offers  deliberately  vague  on  the  tethers  of  a  scarcely  hidden  lie,  the  parlance  of  an  honored  guest,  and  not  of  a  king  who  would  pay  the  iron  price  for  another  throne.  

oseye  chuckles,  a  low  rumble  like  a  rush  of  blood  to  the  head.  “o-ho!  no,  i  don’t  suppose  lions  scare  off  too  easily,  do  they?  with  how  they  laze  under  the  sun  in  the  presence  of  lesser  beasts,  letting  one  tousle  their  mane  and  pull  their  ears  before  they  set  their  claws  on  you.”  lifting  his  chin,  he  spares  a  short  moment  for  calculation.  “even  so,  from  what  your  king  tells  me,  two  hundred  years  is  a  long  time  to  learn  restraint,  to  bow  and  scrape  to  the  masters  of  the  home.”  then,  oseye's  voice  drops  lows  as  his  eyes  crinkle,  as  if  making  space  for  a  wide,  facetious  smile  that  does  not  yet  exist  --  as  it  were,  the  lannisters  were  not  the  only  family  who  consorted  with  beasts.  “i’ve  chewed  through  bigger  bones  than  yours, boy. a cat is still a cat.”  

[nourapast]

“you   must   bear   it,”   he   answers   in   plain,   because   they   must   all   do   the   same,   though   it   is   also   known   that   he   does   not   have   the   frame   for   it   either.   “this   is   the   capital.   a   glass   of   clean   spring   water   is   a   kindness,   no   more   than   the   flies   that   swarm   the   punnets   of   dead   fruit   are   a   gift.”   then,   so   quickly   as   it   takes   for   him   to   blink,   the   realization   this   brings   on   ekes   out   like   a   bird   through   an   open   window;   quickly,   his   hands   dart   out   to   catch   it,   to   clutch   it   to   him   as   bird   to   nest,      a   strong   hand   on   her   stray  thread   lest   his   daughter   were   to   descend   upon   winesinks   and   pot  shops   and   such   places   of   ill   begotten   violence   for   the   misguided   quest   for   strong   spirits.   so,   in   the   tenth-of-a-second   lag   it   takes   for   him   to   decide   how   to   redirect   her   from   the   idea   of   a   forward-facing   thrill,   the   kitchenhand   had   set   off   in   the   jerk   of   a   step   with   an   assortment   of   drinks,   one   of   which   oseye   had   picked   off   the   stem   and   extended   to   kaelys.   in   the   south,   it   is   a   familiar   cocktail,   a   triad   of   herbs,   spices,   and   white   wine,   and   thoroughly   able   to   intoxicate.   but   more   importantly—   a   drink   to   stimulate   the   appetite,   and   therefore   an   invitation   to   extend   their   time   together   when   the   hour   of   the   bat   marked   the   promise   of   feast.   “let   us   toast   to   this   most   trifling   arrangement,   if   only   because   it   happens   every   few   decades.”   oseye’s   glass   teetered   in   the   air   in   mocked   pedantry,   the   illusion   splitting   at   the   sound   of   a   quick   swallow   from   his   glass   of   finely   aged   wine,   five-and-twenty   years   banished   from   all   light   and   held   in   the   cellars   of   the   arbor.   “in   fifty   years   time,   you   will   be   high   queen,   and   i   feasting   with   the   drowned   god   and   the   mermaids   of   old.”

[nourapast]

oseye’s  laugh  rings  both  vicious  and  threadbare  in  its  insolence,  for  is  that  not  what  they  were?  plunderers  and  despots,  primitive  creatures  of  time  immemorial?  between  them,  this  is  understood.  king  aedar  gives  to  them  in  a    tawdry  show  of  excess  and  wariness  --  here  is  a  room;  you  may  disperse  in  it.  here  is  a  table;  you  may  fill  it.  but  the  limits  are  always  clearly  defined  by  walls  and  corners,  sharpened  edges  so  that  they  always  remember  that  their  space  here  is  only  borrowed.  it  is  a  show  of  golden  fools,  drunkard  husbands  and  pretty  dresses  who  have  been  play-fighting  for  so  long  they’d  forgotten  the  wonder  of  battle.  so  yes,  let  them  preen  and  balk,  for  a  mainlander’s  esteem  could  never  hope  to  hold  a  rotten  candle  to  the  reverence  the  high  king  received  from  the  ironborn.  “let  them.”   he  answers  in  lofty  indifference.  “let  them  fill  your  cup  and  break  bread  and  salt  and  honor  your  guest  right.  let  them  stir  fire  into  your  hearth  and  plump  your  featherbed,  emote  you  with  songs  and  tales  and  entreaties,  all  the  while  they  tell  fables  through  the  grapevines.”  with  a  pause,  his  gaze  turns  about  the  room  in  dark,  smooth  casts.  “but  above  all,  let  the  dragonspawn  king  speak  to  you  of  promises  that  he  cannot  keep  true...for  you  will  know  this:  they  are  nought  but  pissants  in  their  mounds,  tending  to  their  little  matches,  plowing  their  furrows.  when  all  this  is  said  and  done,  their  king  will  be  the  whipping  boy  of  the  whole  affair.”

tilting  his  chin,  a  little  proud  in  a  way  he  has  always  been,  oseye  makes  no  pretence.  “you  will.”  the  high  king  smiles  first  with  his  eyes,  though  it  does  not  round  out  on  his  lips  with  softness.  it  shone  like  steel,  fierce,  and  with  the  same  appetite;  for  what  better  way  to  rise  above  one’s  father  and  mother  than  by  this  moot  for  peace,  with  all  four  of  their  children  standing  joyous  sentinels  to  their  father’s  designs?  “may  you  outlive  us  all,  and  may  your  mother  and  i  live  long  enough  to  see  you  abreast  with  many  a-children.”  and  then,  as  if  almost  with  a  sigh,  bleary  eyes  and  all  for  what  he’s  bound  to  hear  next,  he  says:  “and  a  spouse  at  your  side.”

“it  depends.”  oseye  took  a  long  draught  from  his  glass,  dark  eyes  filling  with  something  that  could  not  be  measured;  something  he  cannot  reel  in.  “there  are  no  quick  dealings  in  the  name  of  peace.  so  much  so,  the  targaryen  will  soon  find  that  he  will  go  knee-deep  into  slaughter  to  protect  such  frailty.”  when  his  glass  empties  he  stands  at  rest  in  the  rim,  droplets  of  red  arbor  gold  lapping  at  the  sides  of  the  glass.  shoulders  rolled,  body  lax,  for  the  high  king’s  strategies  are  honest.  he  does  not  turn  to  lies  and  whispers.  and  above  all,  he  had  never  occluded  kaelys  of  his  intent.  “i  will  not  deny  him  such  carnage.”

[nourapast]

rowena  takes  her  place  at  his  side  and  oseye  looks  every  bit  of  a  corollary  to  her  evening,  an  egress  to  her  presence  and  the  eclipse  to  everyone  else’s.  “it  is  beneath  you  to  take  point  on  such  easy  bait.  you  can  sweep  through  any  lordling  with  little  as  a  fine  comb,  anyhow.”  his  hand  reaches  towards  her,  smoothening  out  a  stalk  of  her  hair  over  her  shoulder  in  a  gesture  of  affection,  his  rings  shining  silver  and  gold  under  the  torch  light  when  his  hand  drifts  to  her  back.  news  of  her  displeasure  do  not  disquiet  him,  only  mirrors  her  as  added  provocation.  he  knows  his  wife  to  take  to  duels  and  bloodsport  as  fledgling  creatures  do  to  morning  milk.  “though,  i  am  not  one  to  deny  such  familiar  thrills.”  looking  above  her  brow,  oseye’s  face  took  on  a  look  as  if  seizing  up  a  weapon,  for  rowena  must  have  drawn  the  black  length  of  her  crown  from  her  own  bones,  protruding  like  swords  and  lances  that  warn  any  warmth  away.  oseye  loves  her  for  many  things,  but  if  the  foundation  of  love  is  understanding,  violence  is  their  origin  --  in  its  pull,  by  its  lay  of  claim.  it  was  no  different  to  the  violence  lawless  seas  that  lapped  at  the  blood  of  a  thousand  men  and  staked  claim  to  man’s  treasures  and  the  plunder  of  half  a  hundred  distant  lands.  “if  it  were  up  to  me,  i  would  have  you  baring  the  brunt  of  our  treasury  across  your  brow  if  only  your  knees  could  stand  it.”

[nourapast]

“you  look  green  about  the  gills.”  he  repeats  flatly,  river-like,  sea-like,  in  that  he  does  not  stop  not  even  for  stone.  if  there  is  curiosity  on  what  prompts  the  baratheon’s  recalibration,  it  lurks  far  beyond  the  iris.  oseye,  a  man  of  an  age  in  all  the  ways  that  matter,  has  learned  that  is  not  so  much  that  young  people  do  not  pay  attention;  they  simply  pay  attention  to  everything,  and  with  unequal  prioritization.  and  so,  standing  over  like  a  homing  beacon  in  sarisa’s  shadow,  he  presses  on  with  an  slight  grin  of  his  own.  “if  i  didn’t  know  any  better,  i’d  say  almost  pleasant.  if  i  dare  to  guess,  you  were  stood  up  tonight?”

[nourapast]

“dumb  wench.”  he  counters  both  dry  and  flatly  as  any  compressed  terrain,  which  is  often  paired  with  the  cleft  of  an  incredulous  squall.  it  is  not  so  much  an  accusation  as  it  is  an  indictment  of  her  nature,  to  think  herself  the  world  and  the  sonder  she  does  not  understand.  he  looks  severe,  which  is  habitual;  but  there’s  an  understanding  there,  too,  as  he  is  familiar  to  sarisa’s  way  of  obtruding  with  all  the  heft  and  sway  of  a  swamp  cat  --  so  his  temper  remains  sheathed  over,  impervious  to  her  when  she  passes  him  in  careless,  half-mocking  fashion  because  she  was  of  his  own  ilk  in  that  way.  but  most  jarring  were  the  differences  between  them  the  high  king  could  draw  upon  the  sand  to  its  most  finite,  rocky  composition.  naturally,  then,  oseye  mirrors  her  with  added  provocation:  “i’ll  snap  that  green  neck  of  yours  faster  than  you  can  keep  muttering  yourself  stiff  at  me.”  

still,  he  grows  quietest  yet  when  she  calls  attention  to  the  pearl  of  many-a  tale  when  she  came  across  the  shoreline  as  a  palpitating,  flighty  young  thing,  setting  things  to  destruction  in  his  lichen  slick  halls  and  the  jagged  rocks  of  lordsport  --  allusions  to  a  time  that  were  naught  else  but  a  threadbare  acclamation  to  the  depths  of  her  lawless,  raging  sea,  even  now.  “it  is  as  always,”  oseye  concurs,  offering  a  fact  of  his  own,  “you  do  naught  else  but  go  about  following  your  own  tunnelling  nose.”  he  looks  back  to  sarisa  after  a  moment  with  a  knowing  grin.  “aye,  at  least  the  stag  has  known  pleasures  of  the  world  before  the  hounds  were  let  loose  to  claim  their  hunt.”  the  insinuation  of  possession  is  made,  and  oseye  stands  wide-eyed  and  catty  as  he  leans  into  sarisa’s  bitter  bite  like  hook,  line,  and  sinker:  “tell  me,  is  the  one  you  have  been  pledged  to  gladdened  by  your  bold  whims,  or  does  he  deny  your  spirit,  hold  you  for  a  body  only?”  

[nourapast]

“such  talk.”  oseye  purses  his  lips  in  admonition,  drawing  her  at  length  like  a  child  at  the  sole  of  his  heel  or  one  hooked  too  far  over  the  edge  of  the  parapet.  when  his  lips  flatten  to  a  harsh  line,  it  signals  a  sweeping  dismissal,  disavowing  the  notion  and  tune,  as  if  to  say:  let  her  fall.  let  her  bowl  over  the  blood  she  is  served,  as  if  it  were  naught  but  spilled  wine  that  she  should  drink,  a  trifle  that  she  can  make  merry  with.  the  high  king  is  an  archivist  of  the  end  of  times,  of  all  endings,  indiscriminately;  treasuries  and  vaults  overflowing  with  ill-gotten  gains,  priceless  shipwrecked  diamonds,  bone-picking  for  artifacts  pilfered  from  burial  grounds.  in  par  to  the  course,  oseye  spares  her  no  omens.  she  is  the  same  to  him  as  all  others;  a  means  from  whom  he  must  claim  reward,  or  something  to  shatter  between  his  hands.  with  the  promise  of  plunder,  his  eyes  (glossy  as  black  stone)  root  onto  her  jewels  with  interest.  they  hang  like  square  eyes,  his  greed  reflecting  on  them  with  liquid  brightness.  tipping  his  chin  forward,  he  regards  lysa  with  a  visible  wiliness.  “where  did  you  travel  from?”

[nourapast]

his mouth fills with smoke that tastes like woody, rum-dashed tobacco, and the only thing that fits in the hallway is how his shoulders flatten comfortably into the wall. everything else is uneven puzzle piece against the other, jigsaw gone awry. the company of a ghost notwithstanding, the sound stabs through his cortex like a frisson, all the sharper for its unknown origins. no matter, this is a body trained to be of service, to respond to external stimulants because there is a value in what others see and what stems from within.

it is said body of service that bounds the corner, whose body is willing, though not necessarily capable. too slow to cease the actions, only quick enough to pick up the pieces after.

when he settles at the doorframe, he drones in on all the moving parts of the scene, quizzical, the look of a woman judging fruit in the market as The Bird lumbers across the surface of the floor. he notes the inconvenience that has befallen on The Bird and that ignatius, too, has to bear—though in quick succession, he is apologetic for thinking that the pair of legs that hang off the wall, like a doll flung akimbo, are every bit of an inconvenience. “right,” he says, both suspicious and confused, like he’s part of a prank or he’s accidentally witnessed a botched attempt at white collar crime. “what’s all this, then.”

the ladder creaks against the shelf it'd smacked against. it is ignored in favour of: “did you... get tossed around by a bird?”