daenerys watches her the way one watches a flame in open air, not for warmth, not for danger, but for how stubbornly it refuses to go out. redd stands easy in her boots, coat thrown back, hair wild as a banner the sea itself might salute. there is mischief in her, yes, but also calculation, the sharp knowing of a woman who learned early that charm can be a blade if you hold it right. daenerys does not laugh at the wish, the sea cured her of that kind of cruelty long ago. she stands at the rail with the wind worrying at her hair, eyes on the port city rising ahead of them, pale stone gnawed by salt and age, walls built to keep men out and hunger in. @folkpoet's voice drifts beside her, roughened by salt and smoke, bright with the sort of humor that only comes from having survived too much to believe in luck anymore. ❝ i wish the walls were full of gold, i wish a lot of things, ❞ she has known walls like these before — not always stone, sometimes men, sometimes bargains dressed as mercy. she was born where the sea sings and boils, on an island sailors mark only when they are drunk or dying, and the tide-mothers taught her that gold is the least honest thing a wall can promise, it shines, it lures. it never keeps anyone free. ❝ i used to wish for that too, ❞ daenerys answers at last, voice low, steady, the sound of someone who has learned when to spend truth. ❝ walls full of something that would finally make the taking worth it. ❞ the compass at daenerys’ hip hums, singing metal restless against her thigh, pointing not toward the gold, not toward the harbor, but toward the ache beneath the wishing. she does not look at it. she already knows what it would say. daenerys turns to redd then, truly, and there is no crown in her gaze, only recognition. ❝ walls don’t need to be full of gold to fall, ❞ she reminds herself. ❝ they only need someone bold enough to stop believing in them. ❞