Kings Landing was by no means home. Ever since she arrived, she could not find a way to fully relax and allow herself to be anything but perfect. She did her duties to Myrcella and then spent the rest of her time longing for the heat and the sands and the southern seas. There was nothing keeping her north beside deep love and loyalty for the Martells. Was she wrong to assume she was more than just a pawn in their multi-layered and elaborate games? Perhaps. Perhaps not. On days like these, it did not matter. She was alone and worse, she was lonely.
But such thoughts only appeared when the girl had enough time to spare on melancholy and reflection. She’d longed for a home, a family. And just as her thoughts took her back to the home she never knew, words of comfort echoed from the small room she’d almost passed by. The sweet silky words of Summer Tongue left her frozen in her step and she leaned against the door to absorb every second of it. Without fully meaning to, she got the attention of the woman whose voice was by no means extraordinary but left her with such a mixture of emotions she hardly cared.
“You ought to give yourself more credit than that.” with a smile more honest than she’d mastered in days, Xanda approached the other with an immense amount of liking one would not usually attribute to a stranger. “Forgive the intrusion but I’m afraid I could not help myself. It is rare for songs of the Summer Isles to be sang so far up north. Especially this one.” it was a song her people used to calm their children or those they loved. They sang it to their infants right after birth and at funerals after the burial. It was a song which followed life, from it’s inception to the very end. “Oh, where are my manners.” Xanda chuckled at last, approaching the other more openly. “Xanda Sand, by no means a lady so feel free to relax.” with that, she slipped into a seat next to her as her curiosity entered her features. “Do you speak the Summer tongue?” with that, she looked up awaiting a response. There was so much she wanted to know, so much she wanted to ask, but she knew better than to go all at once, so she settled for the simple.
Jaeyi had expected to apologise and keep walking, this interaction being little more than a courtesy, so when the woman questioned her on her song, it took her a moment to stop her step and take in her words. “They call me Redscale.” Was all Jaeyi replied in terms of a reciprocal introduction. She was weary of women who walked these halls, there were so many who would try to use her to get information on Margaery and could not be trusted, especially those who dressed like Lannister handmaids. The openness of this girl melted her stoic exterior a little and she considered the fact that if she heard a voice singing in Yi Tish one of these days, she imagined she would look rather like this girl, so excited and curious. She decided to err on the side of friendliness, and reconsider her decision to keep her name to herself. It was not a very important name, not anymore. “My name, though, is Jaeyi.”
She also had little want to speak of the song she had been singing - it reminded her too much of a past she would rather forget, and actions she could never leave behind. Admittedly, the bastard’s shoulders slumped a little and her guard loosened when the surname Sand was shared. Jaeyi liked the way the bastards of this land carried their status with them always - she would rather be Jaeyi Flowers or Jaeyi Pyke, than Bu Jaeyi, a girl who carried her father’s surname with her wherever she went, illegitimate or not. Things were different in Yi Ti, where children carried the names their father’s willed, and they had been different in Yunkai, where children left their names they had been born with outside the city gates alongside their freedom. No one had asked Jaeyi’s name for a whole year until the woman with the silken voice and lovely eyes had been called by their master to help patch up a bad scrape. She had asked, and Jaeyi had told, and from then on she had not been so alone. For a while at least.
“No. I don’t even know what those words mean.” She added, thinking it unkind to not answer, despite distrust. “Someone used to sing it to me, a long time ago. So often I suppose I just picked up all the sounds and learned to imitate it. She used to call me a parrot when I did it.” A smile found its way to her features at the memory, tarnished though it was. “If it is your tongue, then I am sorry for butchering it as I am sure I was, though I am unsure why a Dornish girl with the name Sand would speak it at all.”
