aesthetic + ficlet for got rare pair milestone madness [4 of 8] pairing: lyanna mormont & shireen baratheon based on: modern, summer au :: story concept
Shireen had never been optimistic enough to assume seeing Lyanna Mormont after five years of radio silence would be some star-studded, shiny event filled with flowing conversation and all her frizzy hairs in place. She was not insane. She’d been hopeful enough for normal, though—slightly stilted and expected normal.
But the world had pretty much been saying fuck you since Shireen was born, so she wasn’t sure why she had ever expected anything less than a dumpster-fire-level disaster.
“Hey,” Shireen said, the box of her books she had been bringing to the bookstore scattered around the sidewalk in varying degrees of ruin. Her hair was flying out of its scrunchie, and her shirt was slipping from her sad pale freckled shoulder, and her eyes probably screamed crazy. I-just-escaped-from-the-asylum level crazy.
She’d seen Melisandre, though, something Shireen had been fairly confident she would be able to avoid (again, she wasn’t sure why she expected things to go her way), so Shireen thought it was safe to say the crazy was sanctioned. It was allowed this once.
It would have been fine, too, if it wasn’t for Lyanna still looking her disheveled way of perfect. Heavy black boots on her ankles despite being in cut-off shorts and dark hair wrangled into a messy bun. Her skin was that same smooth brown and Shireen could see the curved scar on her upper thigh from when they’d tried to jump the bluffs and hadn’t known about the few jagged rocks hiding in the depths of the water.
Bear Island was always like that... sharp and unforgiving. Shireen liked it because at least it was honest in that.
Lyanna scoffed. “You’re a mess,” she said indelicately, but Shireen wasn’t sure it was actually meant to be insulting.
Shireen had always gotten the impression that when Lyanna insulted you, you knew because Lyanna made things like that obvious. She was honest in all things—joy and anger and bitterness. Everything was at the surface—strong and forceful like the waves that formed that bluff they used to jump from.
Lyanna reached forward and started to grab the books up. Shireen did the same.
“Didn’t know you were back yet,” Lyanna said, eyes still on the ground.
Shireen eyed her in quick, hurried glances. “You knew I was coming back?”
Lyanna paused and met her eyes. She tilted her head to the storefront, and sure enough there was her stupid author picture hanging from the window. Local Author Returns. “Ah, yeah,” Shireen said.
“You should give me a copy,” Lyanna said as she put the last few into the cardboard box. She took one and held it in the palms of her hands.
“Oh, sure. Yeah, you can have that one,” Shireen said. She thought about all those lines of prose that Lyanna might see herself in. She did not panic.
This book is not about Lyanna, she reminded herself for the millionth time. It’s fiction. It was not nearly as convincing as she would have liked.
