SPRING COMES ETERNAL

LIFE IS A SNAKE. THEY ARE THE SAME. IF THE SNAKE REALIZES YOU ARE NOT A SNAKE, IT WILL BITE YOU. AND IF LIFE KNOWS YOU HAVE NO STING, IT WILL DEVOUR YOU. princess serana gardener. the wildflower.

[roseblcod]

𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐃 𝐀𝐒 𝐀 𝐖𝐎𝐎𝐃-𝐁𝐈𝐑𝐃 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄, 𝐅𝐑𝐀𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐓 𝐀𝐒 𝐂𝐑𝐔𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐃 𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐄,

serana  gardener  ,  as  written  by  taryn  .  she/her  pronouns  ,  pst  .

application.    —      connections.    —    pinterest.

an abbreviated history.

from the start, fate marks her as a difficult child: her birth occurs unexpectedly, over a moon-turn earlier than expected, in the middle of a festival hosted by house gardener. guests are rushed out as the queen of the reach births her fourth child amid the grass of their expansive garden, one knee pointing to a collection of windflowers, the other at an abandoned maypole.

in childhood she’s party butterfly, party tempest, constantly flitting to and fro at unruly speed between points of interest. a voracious and exuberant child, she both amuses and exasperates adults with her cleverness, arguing her way out of lessons and popping into conversations not meant for children. her free hours are always spent in the garden, bare-foot and half-wild. seeing much of himself in his middle daughter, the king finds serana especially amusing, and allows her behaviour to go unchecked.

adolescence, predictably, is no easier: left unchecked by the king, the childhood traits she carried exaggerate as she moves into womanhood like a shadow under high sun. she’s vivacious and charming but simultaneously irreverent to the point of insolence, with no crown or guard that can temper her whims when she sets to them. she earns the nickname of the wildflower in courtly gossip, and her reputation carries throughout the kingdoms.

the passing of her eldest brother leaves her at her worst. unable to handle her own grief, her forays into misadventure; things once lacking any intention other than the experience of freedom turn darker and more harmful, and she lashes out at anyone attempting to pull her back. it takes time before serana is well enough to recognize the inherently selfish nature of her actions, and for a time she comparatively cleans up her act -- recognizing her duty as a daughter of the reach is to provide for it with a good marriage.

the king’s decision to rebuff offers of marriage for his daughters is more than serana could have hoped for: she fixates on the notion of spending the remainder of her life in highgarden unencumbered by marriage, aiding the house of her forefathers through counse -- until some time later when her life of leisure begins to lose appeal. after an encounter with a one-eyed harridan in the local market who forecasts her eternal unhappiness unless she become queen, serana comes to acknowledge that what she had once longed for is no longer enough -- and nor can she allow her home to falter under the rule of one outside the house of gardener.

it’s been several years since that moment, which is where we get her now. to the surprise of those around her, serana’s desire and commitment to ascend the throne (and to do so alone, it should be said; unfettered by marriage) has not wavered. no longer as feral as she once was, but will still cause a scene for attention or argue something useless for hours on end<3 just middle child things

misc.

once punched a visiting nobleman’s son as a young girl for insulting her sister. he left with a black eye despite her inability to make a proper fist -- so pip taught her how to make one immediately after.

the most famous story about the reach’s wildflower is that she rode through highgarden in the nude upon her dornish steed, covered only by her long hair (lady godiva who?). it’s been greatly exaggerated, but there is some truth to it: she rode in a nearly translucent slip across the lawns of the gardener castle after losing a bet to her sisters, meaning far few people saw her than on the crowded streets of a capitol city. still, she’s never done anything to discredit the story because she loves it :/

an incredible equestrian, surpassing her siblings and any visiting nobility (and if she’d been allowed to participate in tournaments, she’d have bested them too -- but hold on for another incoming headcanon heheh). a certified Horse Girl overall, down to memorizing the bloodlines of famous dornish sand steeds.

has a trained falcon she decided to name after her brother pip for the humour of going “no not you, bird-pip.” bird-pip is with her here in the vale, as always.

a v lovely singing voice, which is for the best given she was never studious enough to achieve the prowess over instruments that her sisters did

once entered a tournament jointedly with her brother. he performed the feats of archery while she donned his armour to participate in the equestrian events - including the joust. the original intention was for her to remain masked by his helmet for the entirety, but her ego got the better of her after winning the latter. she removed the helmet in accepting a flower from a pretty maiden... and promptly received the worst verbal lashing of her life from dear old ma and pa standing right next to pip <3

[fassy]

A Single Man (2009) dir. Tom Ford “Sometimes awful things have their own kind of beauty.”

[ailichi-deactivated20230730]

one of my favourite expressions in irish is mheallfadh sí an mhil ón gcuasnóig (she’d charm the honey from a wild beehive), especially because the word for charm / attract (meall) and the word for honey (mil) are so similar

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

Nostos: Il ritorno (Franco Piavoli, 1989)

[gifshistorical]

Aurora Ruffino as Bianca de Medici in Medici (2.01)

[roseblcod]

bloomsred​:

“i haven’t lost them,” pip insists with all the convincing of someone who has, indeed, lost their gloves and simply doesn’t want to admit it to their incredibly irritating sister who will no doubt be smug and self-righteous about it for the rest of the frankly too-long journey. and what of it? serana wasn’t his mother, and thank the seven for that. she was tucked safely away in the reach.

“i simply cannot be bothered to find them at the current moment, which is fine because i’m not actually that cold.” despite the words actively coming out of his mouth, pip’s hand still snakes over the blanket towards that strip of warm, exposed skin. will it get him slapped? quite possibly, but it would be a far better alternative to sitting in stony, frigid silence for the rest of the slow ascent.

the carriage rocks again and pip darts his fingers out. 

“don’t be a brat about it, come on. didn’t the septas ever teach you to share?”

when pip’s hands encircle her wrist once more, serana’s head thumps emphatically against the spine of the carriage.

“your hands,” she says with all the indignation of a woman who had never eaten garden insects at the prodding and provoking of her childhood brothers, “are worse than other-pip’s.” the falcon, she means. the one with claws. 

a particularly apt comparison, given the way her arm falls limp across her thigh a moment later, pale and resigned like the little mice other-pip carried home.

“how are they so cold? you know, this is why your engagement with the butterwell girl was called off. not because gil died, but because i wrote to the poor, unsuspecting little thing that if she were to marry my brother, the rest of her moon-turns would be spent in the clutches of something at once clammy and inhumanly freezing.”

[dailyreigngifs]

I can’t remember the last time I had the luxury of being alone.

[lochiels]

“I wanted everything; I wanted to be enormous and overwhelming, yawning and expansive like the light.”

— Gwendolyn MacEwen, from “Mermaids & Ikons: A Greek Summer,” (via mournfulroses)

[bloomsred]

location: the vale of arryn, en route to the eyrie  status: for @roseblcod​

it’s bloody fucking freezing. the gardener banners have only just begun their ascent to the eyrie, and already wind is rattling at the carriage windows, drafts sharp as a blade snaking through for stabs at any skin left unattended. pip pulls his cloak ever tighter, though he’s been doing much the same since they passed under the bloody gate, no change to the glacial state of what once might have been called his fingers.

he thought he understood what a bone-deep cold was when winter had its teeth in the frozen earth of the reach. now, pip isn’t so sure. his teeth have started to ache from all the rattling and his sisters must have noticed by now. though, he if were them, he would’ve likely dismissed himself for melodramatics – which, well, wouldn’t be entirely unfair. he’s fairly certain all the septas in highgarden have done the same. 

another draft, and pip is cursing every arryn he knows under his breath, up to and including the most recently deceased. this is, after all, entirely his fault. if the old crone hadn’t croaked so quickly they’d all be back home, enjoying spring in the gentle sun instead of this grey stone. he reaches for the blanket across his and serana’s lap, as if it’ll do anything more than offer the illusion of warmth. he reaches, and catches her petal-soft skin instead.

“seven devils – how are you so warm?” without hesitation, pip slips his fingers around his sister’s slim wrist, drinking in the blessed warmth from just this exposed sliver. “give me some of that.”

[roseblcod]

it is the quietest she has been for some time, and the longest stretch of silence that will be seen by the princess’s retinue until a great deal later. travel, perhaps even moreso than sleep, rendered from serana the perpetual need for motion and noise, tucking it aside momentarily for the hungry sensation of observation and subsequent daydream. later, when she has adjusted to the scenery and grown accustomed to the sight of stone and drifts of snow (suddenly no more or less intriguing than marble pillars and meadows of green), she will bore of her surveying of the land and insist on a mare, pulling ahead from the gardener escort in order to explore ahead. but for now — for a brief moment — it is enough to simply watch through the frosted window.

until, of course, pip ruins the reverie with a grip of cold fingers.

“get off.” 

instinctual as a hare in the claws of a falcon, her struggle is immediate, arm tugging away from  peregrine with a snap. “being crown prince entitles you to father’s throne and the entire bloody kingdom, not my body heat.”

there is the carnal, deep-braided urge to push her free hand into his face, irritated as much by the disruption as the chill of his body. she stifles it only by the thinnest of gauzes.

“i told you, i told you not to take your gloves off when we left the carriage. i knew you were going to lose them.”

[itslatingirl]

[dunnetwins]

There was something feral about her, for all her neat gown and properly braided hair. She looked like a wild thing new-caught and just barely groomed into submission.

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden (via dunnetwins)

[hautekills]

Christian Dior haute couture s/s 2017

[tenderspirits-deactivated202012]

...as she ran her gown rustled softly like the wind in the flowering borders of a river.

J.R.R. Tolkien, from “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,”

[roseblcod]

freyjad​:

                             THE  ALLIANCE  BETWEEN  THE  NORTH  AND  THE  VALErequires  freyja  to  put  on  a  spectacular  performance .  she  cares  little  for  the  pageantry &  frill  of  it  all .  the  further  north  one  travels ,  the  more  solid  &  practical  the  affair  becomes . the  climate  requires  it . winter’s  threat  will always  outweigh  a  splendid  affair .  if  she  is  uncomfortable  with  the  display ,  she  makes  no  show  of  it . she  makes  herself  tall ,  fur  lining  her  collar  and  a  modest ,  a  wrought  iron  circlet  marking  herself  a  queen  all  the  same 

                    the  lords  of  the  northern  council  speak  around  her ,  as  if  her  presence  is  somehow  a  nuisance .  she  knows  that  her  power  unnerves  many  of  them ,  that  her  word  means  more  to  their  king  than  any  they  can  utter .  she  leans  into  the  discomfort ,  smiling  placidly ,  canting  her  head  politely  to  those  that  pass her . she  is  solid ,  unwavering ,  fearless despite  anything  that  churns  inside  of  her .  she  must  be . she  worked  for  the  respect  that  she  has  garnered ,  she  must  work  to  maintain  it . 

                      from  the  corner  of  the  eye  she  spots  the  lithe  movements  of  an  unmistakable  rose ,  both  in  affect  and  apparent  confidence.  she  blooms  with  every  step .  one  of  the  lords  mutters  a  name  in  her  ear  - the  gardeners  are  a  veritable  bouquet .   ❛ princess serana  ❜  the  greeting  is  returned ,  before  she  listens  to  the  other’s  thought . she  has  to  stifle  the  urge  to  quirk  a  brow ,  to  smirk  at  the  mention  of  the  weather .  it  is  always  the  weather  where  the  north  is  involved . freyja  finds  herself  amused  by  the  notion .  that  some  predestined  force  would  see  the  two  together . 

                    ❛  it’s  a  pity  that  it  so  often  requires  the  birth ,  the  marriage ,  or  the  death  of  a  king   to  bring  … intrepid  minds  together .  ❜ the  words  are  uttered  coolly ,  without  a  hint  of  disrespect  to  the  late  ruler  that  has  called  them  here .  it  is  the  way  of  the  world . women  rarely  convene  without  an  inciting  incident.  ❛  but  if  it  is  fate ,  as  you’ve  suggested ,  that  leads  to  our  meeting ,  i  can  only  hope  that  we  will  part  as  friends.❜  she  gestures  to  the  bench  with  her  hand .   ❛  sit ,  please .. ❜

“thank you,” there is a little mandarin-coloured butterfly that floats between one rib to the next. to part as friends. serana tries to cup the twittering thing with the hands of her heart, putting to rest with the reminder that the queen of the north is as braided to political propriety as the rest. she sits, brushing skirt beneath thighs not yet entirely free from the vale’s chill. “i should hope the same.” 

“you will have to forgive the trite nature of my reference to weather in greeting,” her attention skirts momentarily to the attendant at her side, commissioning cups to be brought forth and shared. “but being a second daughter and fourth child of my own good father, i am afraid all i know of courtier conversation is bound in the frivolities.”

“tell me, queen freyja, do the salutations associated with women endure unchanged once you have ascended as queen, or do they find new ways to entertain our ribbon-bound minds once a proper crest sits upon it?” there is an extension of something there, laid out across the table, thin and clear in the satirical edging that lays alone the spine of her words and the stomach of serana’s shrewd gaze: we know what they think of us, don’t we, you and i?

[roseblcod]

𝐕𝐘𝐑𝐎𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐃𝐑𝐈𝐅𝐓𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐊.

the world around him quivers like dying flames — morphed by mirages and shadows on dark walls, labyrinthine as facets of a light splintering at the heart of a crystal, and as endless as turns around a timepiece, unremarkable and strident. it comes to him then, as it did when he was a child in the phantom-lit rooms of castle driftmark: the feeling that he does not belong. he coils, a silver snake in a blooming garden, surrounded by symphonies too errant to be written by men of math yet still as predictable as a melody resolving. nothing here could hold his attention like the undulation of a storm-ridden sea, like the tapestry of velvet night met at the edges by gilded shore. 

vyros finds it morbid, how rapt they are with death, how they churn around a white idol bereft of his vitality. they stand at his side, as vyros once stood at his mother’s, wondering how they might look when death’s shroud finally drags over them — beautiful, hollow, dismembered, ashen — oh, how it stirred the yearnings of a royal ego to determine one’s importance, to stack oneself up against the dead. had his father been of sound mind, he would have angled himself there among the rest, bewitched ever-long by his own perceived immortality.

it occurs to the master of ships to take his leave. his violent and sapphire gaze scans the room for the elegant line of his sister, but his search is ended by a rising sun instead: princess serana. 

her voice’s timbre is as bright as a bard’s, demanding the focus of the masses ( though they willingly lend it ) — happily entertained by her procession through the great hall, her sweep around craggy greystarks and through the lannister’s den — as lyrical as she is mischievous. her figure is alarming & not as he remembered it in her youth: lanky and huddled at the foot of black bear, curveless and bones against his chest as they rode. vyros notes she is just as precocious, only the edge of her his sharper, more deadly, more precise. when he finds himself the victim of her meandering, a tide of laughter at her back, he leans back, opening himself up to the bite of her challenge as if to say: here i am.

“the sea is a place of mysteries, princess. you’ll find no answers there.” he speaks lowly, perhaps to annoy the masses stirring impatiently in the silence she’s summoned. “it might disappoint you to learn that i have the answer to your riddle.” a bit louder now, his eyes caught on her like a hook in gills. “but the fun it is in the unraveling.” 

“i would hate to spoil all the fun.”

he is all that she remembers: tall and broad, in the frame of one suited to knighthood but somehow bound to nobility; the valyrian-pale of him that was not pallor nor even the absence of colour, but seemed instead to serana to intimate some kind of incredible resistance to things as otherwise irrepressible as sun; and more than his look was that maddening, languidly self-possessed countenance that had carried with him all those moon-turns ago in highgarden, a thing he displayed now in the simple move of reclining under her gaze — casual and mighty as the tide that had borne him here. when he leans back, serana finds herself resisting the urge to follow by sloping forward.

perhaps moreso than the way he traces perfectly into the silhouette of her recollection is the manner in which he shapes fully into what she has imagined:

he is the man, after it all, with the answer.

“at last we have a challenger.” the raise and sideways cant of her chin, coordinated to the spread of spring lips (red, fresh, blooming). his response delights her  — that he adds water to the moment to render it supple and elastic, stringing between their fingers rather than crack it suddenly between his teeth. he allows her to play. 

“in my turn of this room i have trekked from castle black to the sand-hills of dorne and stone paths of drumm hall,” she churns gently about the space before them, circling pacing languidly between the feet of watchful nobles. “and yet now as i arrive here before you, you deny us our answer. after i have made so far a pilgrimage to locate great wisdom, and tired my feet in the process. well. i shall have to ask our audience. will we have it?”

the answer, when she turns her head to with arms extended to collect communal response, is the clattering of iron cups against dark oak and the jeers of younger men. serana looks once more upon vyros, the din of answer as firelight behind her, setting the line of her body in disparate silhouette. how far the wildflower has come, how little she shirks against winds and rain. she smiles then as the netting of serendipity drapes over them, feeling under the heavy webbing of circumstance that they are cloaked in that this turn of her lips is for him. there is no choice, now, but to lay facing one another.

singleminded to the point of recklessness, a maester had once said. “see, now; i shall simply have no other. if you assert yourself as victor in our contest, lord vyros, you must prove it or pay the fine.”

“what will it take the pry the answer from your tongue, my lord? must i sweeten the pot with my own, meager allowance,” the room coughs amusement as her voice dips itself into a well of honey and irony, daughter of the second-richest coffers in all kingdom come. “or would you demand something more imaginative for your reward?”

[roseblcod]

amid the crowd of recent arrivals taking to mead, SERANA asserts herself in the center of all for the attention of one. ╱ @vyrcs​

her voice, when it rises above the din of the great hall, carries smooth and confident across the surfaces of men’s heads: landing squarely upon each crown until the weight presses them into a curious quiet.

had she not been born a princess, serana would have found quick employ as a bard.

“my good lords and ladies of the realm, as i know we all wait with great patience to be allotted to our rooms and apartments by our generous host, i propose we occupy ourselves with something other than the consumption of their fine ale - as i hear it, several members of the night’s watch has arrived with the north, and as i can only imagine their thirst, we had best conserve our stores for the duration of our stay.” 

the room raises its head with a chuckle, fists banging against wooden tables in approval. 

what game have you for us, princess?  “a challenge — for all the great houses present to assert their worth. however, given we have the space nor the finery to enact an impromptu joust, i suggest a riddle to occupy our time. each house may be allotted a guess, but to guess falsely is to place 50 copper pennies into my satchel. that who answers correctly first shall win these relatively modest pot, but most importantly the title of sharpest wits in our little gathering.”

when general ascent is gathered the din submits once more, back bent flat and palms stretched over floor, for serana to assert the puzzle.

“a vessel have i, that is round as a pear, moist in the middle, surrounded with hair; and often it happens, that water flows there.”

several answers crop forth, drawn forward by their own inspiration or her goading. a lake! an oasis! an amphora! 

suddenly: a cunt!

“was that you, lord greystark?” her head turns rapidly, and serana saunters left among the crows of laughter that thicken the air, hand placing fondly upon the giant’s mighty shoulder. her head cants forward as if to share in conspiracy, amber hair drizzling upon wet fur. “while i have no doubt that water flows when you are present, my good lord, including those of a woman’s; i would place wager on the fact that it arrives more plentifully from your enemies when you draw your great axe. for whom their vessels are  —  i hope —  far less round.”

her shoulder cants coyly with a widening of her eyes as she straightens up once more, each gesture an enunciation of her sharp reply. the hall, once more, sways with the sounds of mirth for a princess that did not flinch for a shout of vulgarity. it is a great testament to her stamina, serana feels, that she does not stray immediately to the side of the one she waits for. the profile of him lingers in her peripheral at all times, a streak of silver amid the rooms dim, hearth-lit bronze. the trek to him is deliberately slow diagonal, stopping to goad several lords into answer before she strays toward his retinue.

“ah, and here we have blackwater’s master of ships.” there you are. serana eyes find rounds of valyrian amethyst, familiar from long ago, and steps forward. in the quiet her steps echo. “so appointed, i hear, not for the measure of his valour or that which has seen him dubbed fearless, but the manner in which his valyrian colouring sets him apart. they say his crew is never unable to find their captain in storm — save the oncoming of a heavy mist.”

laughter, again — but her gaze has no bounce; it remains solid, tucked, upon vyros.

“what say you, lord velaryon?” the stem of her so straight and high. the rose situated deep within her ribs turns its great perfumed head toward him, red and flush. his gaze upon me. “has the sea given you lesson enough to solve our riddle?”

[roseblcod]

shortly after arrival within the spindles of the vale, the wildflower of highgarden watches the wolf-mother of the north from within the crowded great hall. ╱ @freyjad

there are stories of wolves and girls, of that she knows. serana has been warned in many ways by many men of the things that beasts do to girls in the dark, each narrative strained as if to omit man’s place in the dark woods, accrediting violence only to four-legged creatures. occasionally (and far too often in serana’s opinion), there could even be found a tale of a maiden who fights back, baring cleverness like teeth.

but rarely, if ever, have there been stories of women who are wolves. 

how fortuitous, than, that the queen in the north lives at a time adjacent to serana’s own.

she watches from afar, vigilant as a rose among the bramble. there are acres of men between them; princes and sons of great lineage that span the seven kingdoms like so many fields of gold. some too are kings, carried through the hall on the cloaks of their retinue. they mean little to her. serana has met enough kings to know they are rarely more than common men with bent necks. 

it is a queen for whom she hunts. 

it has always been in her nature to move at first opportunity, having not the countenance to wait, not the capacity to stutter; and so it takes very little time at all for serana to cross the great hall after observing freyja from afar: only enough to remind herself of what must be done. her trek is quick and sure, and though her heart thumps, she persists. her own father had once called this an indomitable spirit before he had decided it a nuisance.

“queen freyja,” her head inclines as she arrives at the wide wooden bench, a movement of proper respect. “having arrived for the first time in the vale, i must say i find the climate to be a middle-ground between your own home and mine.” a place wedged between eternal winter and deathless spring. “and so i am compelled to believe that perhaps,” her eyes find the wolf’s. she looks for similarities between them. her mouth is so unafraid it lifts at the corners, ribbons wrapped around the winking greeting. “it is here we are meant to meet, you and i.”