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@thestonepaladin
THE STONE PALADIN.
penned by sabina, all pronouns. dni if not part of the roleplay @theconqueringhq .
lady aelinor massey; the stone paladin - intro • visage | fc: havana rose liu.
lord benjen reed; lord reed - intro • visage | fc: birkan sokullu
lady lysandra lannister née qoherys; lady lannisport - intro • visage | fc: eve best
princess doreah martell; the sunforger - intro • visage | fc: wan qian
starter: @violetamaisonx @glittxeringgold + 2 open spots
during: after the latest plot drop before departing dorne
it was beginning to feel like a reoccurrence. lucifer thought as he stood in the dornish courtyard watching the nobles. he could feel the stares as if wondering the outcome their beloved king was justifiable. he would have easily thrown the culprit into the dungeons if he could but there was two things holding him back. first it was a family member of the crown and second, he was a child. his own youngest child was just around the same age and yet he also felt for the lady lannister. he too spent much time away from his own family do to his duties on the small council. sure his home of stonedance was not that far from the red keep but it was still a journey.
though while that was something that lingered on his mind, the one that sat at the forefront was want happening to the Hand. lucifer had been distracted with with the investigation and he had almost forgotten about Loras but now that everything was solved, he wondered. it was not long before he noticed someone staring. "if you wish to offer your thoughts on what has transpired, at least offer me some wine or ale to prepare myself." he commented. he knew he was going to be hearing some whispers for sure of what many thought once he got ahold of the Master of Whispers and their birds.
Oh, that absolute fucking cunt. Looking at Lady-Princess-whatever Visenya, Aelinor had expected for her to raise her son to be at least a courteous man, or a boy for that instance, some amount of discipline wasn't that bad of a deal, now was it?. Such brutality towards an innocent creature, especially that poor Lady Yronwood and Lord Desmond.
"I don't know where they keep the Dornish Red here, father or we could've had a few cups. But yes, I do have quite a few things to say about Lord Maegor and most of them might not even be appropriate enough."
open!
She wasn't all too interested in the races, having gone to the kitchens to cook up some new recipes. But as she saw people running by with an occasional scream, she could only raise a brow before peaking out of the kitchen and following the crowd. "What's happening?" she asked, walking up besides the person next to her
"It seems Lord Maegor couldn't take the loss of his race and took the rage out on Lord Desmond," she takes a small pause, "I'd expected nothing less from a Lannister and raised by that...Visenya. What are you doing here my lady?"
"I didn't mean gossip, my lady. I only wished to inquire regarding the Lord." Doreah had never made it very clear, but she did like Viserra, as a person. That fondness did not extend towards her family, however. Especially the fatuous Lord Maegor. He was a young boy who couldn't take his loss in a dignified manner and chose to lash out. It would be unwise however to be angry right now. She needed to see Lord Manderly.
"I'd fetched him some water after the dragon pepper he just had, and I don't remember what happened after that unfortunately, and what with the fight right after."
"Alas I don't know how Lord Desmond is doing, presuming that's who you're referring to," she stated, eyes softening a bit as she realized her looks could practically kill right about now. "I don't know the details but I hear he's stable, to say the least. Whether he'll survive the night is to be seen"
"Then I presume something troubles you? I can assure you that my sister has managed the situation," and Doreah did believe that. Deria had always been capable of managing disaster with the ease and clarity that Doreah herself could never possess. "I hope I can be of some help, my lady. Perhaps some talk?"
She took a pause there. "It's Lord Maegor, isn't it?"
open!
'That little brat' she had thought to herself, face eerily calm yet the anger was evident behind her eyes. No one was to blame but the child and the lack of discipline given to him. And as she saw someone nearing her, she turned to look at them, unable to hide the look of anger in her eyes so easily. "If you have questions about who was behind this I suggest you find someone else to gossip with, my liege"
"I didn't mean gossip, my lady. I only wished to inquire regarding the Lord." Doreah had never made it very clear, but she did like Viserra, as a person. That fondness did not extend towards her family, however. Especially the fatuous Lord Maegor. He was a young boy who couldn't take his loss in a dignified manner and chose to lash out. It would be unwise however to be angry right now. She needed to see Lord Manderly.
"I'd fetched him some water after the dragon pepper he just had, and I don't remember what happened after that unfortunately, and what with the fight right after."
"Good eve, my lady," Lysandra replied, though they quite frankly were tired. They still couldn't figure out what it was that kept them feeling this way, as the journey from Lannisport to Sunspear hadn't been eventful at all. In fact, they didn't remember participating in anything quite aggravating on the road, yet the exhaustion lingered all the same.
"Merely admiring, I won't be participating in the race myself unfortunately. She is beautiful."
eyes immediately drawn to the mature lady of the two as piperette bowed once more in gratitude; eyes sparkled at the observation of the stranger and her beloved tuls. "she represents beauty and grace alongside power," pipa expressed, "everything i wish to be."
"I'm sure you already embody it." If Lysandra could peacefully ignore the pain in her lower legs, lower back and in her thighs without frightening the poor lady in front of her, she would reward herself with a goblet of Lannisport wine. "Do you perhaps know a place to rest? I fear the heat is taking its toll on me."
Please. Please. A place with some shade. Something.
"I completely agree," and yes, Aelinor did agree as a matter of fact. It was an assumed rule that the Northeners never fared well in the South. To think about them in the heat Dorne would be downright pitiful after a point. If she couldn't adjust, how would they?
"How are you, Lady Eliana?"
"Me? I'm perfect, surprisingly," she admitted with a soft chuckle, a rare sight to see the stone-walled Lannister loosened up. Maybe it was the Dornish wine or the fact she had actually managed to find a near perfect match with Edwin but she was genuinely happy lately and she was unnerved by it as well. "Things seem to be going in the right direction, I simply hope they stay in that said direction"
"what do you make of the newlywed couple? a lot has happened indeed..." Aelinor didn't particularly know what to make of it for now, but she supposes things will happen in the way they need to. "I'm sure they will stay in that direction, Lady Eliana. If you do wish to tell me more about him, I'm an eager ear."
Benjen has conversed with Boltons before, even the notorious Torrhen (not the best lad to strike up a conversation with, but otherwise it was probably Lord Glover). But he hadn't had the opportunity to meet the Lord Tyron. After a tense conversation with Maeric, an ale would've done him some good as well. In a foreign land for a wedding he had no genuine interest in.
"I would say otherwise, Lord Tyron. If not an ale, what else?" He gestured Tyron to the seat next to him. "How do you fare? I thought I'd see you at your brother's wedding."
He could play the role and quip 'a pretty woman' despite having no lust for one but he felt the need to not be someone he wasn't - having always been proud of being himself, even if didn't favor others. He had lived 18 years under the thumb of his brother and father, being forced to follow a role he had no want in and once he got that sense of freedom he ran with it
"Please," he snorted, "lord torrhen would rather see me dead then show up at his wedding, my lord, I fear you haven't heard of our relationship have you?" he asked with a raised brow, amusement in his eyes
Torrhen Bolton had a reputation, alright. Benjen knew that, but really thought of the Bolton Lord to be more of a pest to be squished. The notions of the Boltons to skin and make them into a tapestry. If that sounded threatening enough indeed. He never dwelled over his fellow bannerman as much, especially the Bolton or he might say things not appropriate enough.
"I'm not aware of the relationship in specifics, no. What do you do here?"
Where: Somewhere either on a balcony or outside courtyard or garden, even Water Gardens if you wish! When: An hour after the wedding feast ended ( post 1st plot drop ) ( capping at 4-6 )
Ronnel shook his head as he buried his hands into his palms. How could things have gone so terribly wrong?? For the past hour, in the presence of no one else but his personal guard, he had raged and rained curses upon Cassian, blaming the knight for everything that had transpired. And then he had dreamed up of possible scenarios in which he could annul the marriage and punish the Dornishman for what he had done. And then how to punish Aemma. Next came the memory of Rhaenys death and that made him cry quietly for awhile as grief returned momentarily and overwhelmed him.
Eventually, sadness and even more troubling thoughts invaded his mind. How could his cherished daughter, his bright-eyed princess do this to him?? To their family? Was it partly his fault? Had he made too many grave mistakes in his role as a father this past several years that Aemma turned out this way?
Hearing someone cough quietly behind him, he instantly assumed it his valet finally coming to aid him. "Arnolf, could you possibly please find some ice in this god-forsaken place? I think I may have a black eye courtesy of that damn Dayne."
"Lord Ronnel," Lysandra had heard of the commotion, while recovering from Dorne's fiery red peppers. Aemma Arryn and Cassian Dayne marrying each other without the permission of Ronnel. Lady Aemma marrying someone from a region where her mother died. How ironic indeed. Had Lysandra been in Lord Arryn's position however, she would've definitely acted similar. Not that she'll comment on it for now.
"I hear your daughter is a wedded woman for now.."
She had not announced herself. She rarely did. The door had simply opened, and there she was, crimson travel-worn but no less composed for it, surveying the wreckage of a man before her with eyes that gave away precisely nothing.
"I am not Arnolf," she said, almost gently, stepping further into the room as though the invitation had already been extended and accepted. "Though I suspect ice would do you some good, yes. That eye is not your finest feature at present."
OPEN STARTER.
she had never seen her homeland so filled with life, the endless gallops of horseback across the once barren dunes as piperette takes a moment to settle herself alongside her steed 'tuls' whom still hasn't quite forgiven her for the endless travels of the previous eight months.
yet... they both still make it out.
as she focused in on the minature details within the trusted mane, she couldn't help her eye wander towards a passerbyer coming up to them as she nodded her head to them.
"good eve," she exclaimed, "and do not judge me nor my tuls for prepping in a different manner for the desert race."
"Good eve, my lady," Lysandra replied, though they quite frankly were tired. They still couldn't figure out what it was that kept them feeling this way, as the journey from Lannisport to Sunspear hadn't been eventful at all. In fact, they didn't remember participating in anything quite aggravating on the road, yet the exhaustion lingered all the same.
"Merely admiring, I won't be participating in the race myself unfortunately. She is beautiful."
When: Evening of the 7th day ( capping at 3 ) Where: The wedding feast at one of the open courtyards of Sunspear
Platters of spiced lamb, charred green peppers stuffed with cheese and herbs, gull eggs diced with bits of ham, onions and the famed Dornish Dragon peppers; citrus-glazed eel fresh from the Summer Sea, snail stew, honeyed dates, firewine sauces, blood oranges, and buttery flatbreads still warm from the ovens that came along with sides of chickpea paste and olives. The overly sumptuous and richly exotic feast almost over-stimulated Desmond with sights and smells of it.
Though his appetite wasn't that large, he was however always eager to try new cultural things and this wedding feast was one of them. Thankfully for his health, he was now free to sample all kinds of cuisine of his choosing and thus he excitedly made sure to try a bit of everything that was either served to him or spread before him. However he should have practiced a bit more caution for barely had he chewed a few bites of a rather large spoonful of gull eggs when all of a sudden, his indulgent expression turned into one of complete horror.
Heat exploded across his tongue like wildfire. Desmond's face flushed almost instantly—first pink, then a deep, alarming red creeping up the neck and ears; while his baby blues watered so quickly it looked as though he was on the verge of tears. An inhale of breath and the next minute, he was coughing and making a pained moan as he struggled through the hellishly spicy effects of the Dornish Dragon peppers. Seven hells, what was he to do?? He couldn't possibly chew till the end and swallow this down. It was burning! But could he spit it all out?? In front of everyone at his table? Why oh why had he put in a large spoonful of it into his mouth immediately? He should have nibble a mouse-sized bite of his spoon. Glancing desperately around, his eyes blinking frantically, Desmond looked for anything to help and without thinking it through, he snatched a goblet of wine right from the hand of the nearest person and wolfed it down desperately and clumsily along with the chewed morsel upon his tongue. Choking and spluttering, Desmond could no longer care about etiquette in his suffering right now. "Aahhhhh!" he gasped aloud as the food now burned his entire throat and the spicy effects still could be felt all around the walls of his mouth and tongue. "I'm so sorry, but it burns, oh it is still burning! Gods, is there water anywhere??" Sweat started to bead across his forehead.
As a Martell, it should've been no surprise that she adjusts to the heat of the desert. The heat of most things, as a matter of fact. The feast had been loud and bright and full of the kind of warmth that clung to the skin like a second garment; spice and smoke and the sweet rot of firewine filling every breath she drew in.
The wedding feast had swelled into its fullest noise by now, the long tables groaning under their loads, the air thick with spice and smoke and the bright clatter of cups. Doreah sat with her spine straight, bronze pauldrons catching the torchlight, a goblet resting between scarred fingers she had not yet raised to her lips. She rose without hurry. A servant passed near enough and Doreah caught the edge of their tray with two fingers, lifting a clay pitcher of cool water and a clean cup from it before they had quite registered she had done so. She crossed the stretch of floor between them, her steps measured, her war-hammer's weight a familiar pull at her back, and she set both the pitcher and the cup down in front of the stranger with a firm, unhurried sound.
"Drink slowly," she said, pouring. "Wine makes it worse. It spreads the oil across the tongue. Water will not save you either, but it is better than the alternative."
"You took a full spoon," she said. "The Dragon peppers are not decoration."
WAN QIAN
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Trigger Warnings: drinking, mild nudity
Aelinor perhaps had the smoothest arrival with her family, having finally spent some proper time with her father after all and also having gossiped with her siblings till she reached Dorne. She wouldn't lie but the outfits were a much reprieve than the more restricting Westerosi attire. "I forgot as well, my lady," she smiled, "so flowy after all." The heir of Stonedance didn't seem particularly interested in propiety for now. Propiety while you melt alive in this sun. My ass. "When did you arrive here if I may ask? After or before Lord Edwin?"
Ah, she had nearly forgotten about her betrothed - nearly being the keyword. She found herself lost in thought with him whenever she thought too hard about it and she had to admit the Stark brother had managed to get under her rather thick skin in the best way possible. "I got here before him, and I fear he's going to look for a reprieve from the heat" she chuckled
"I completely agree," and yes, Aelinor did agree as a matter of fact. It was an assumed rule that the Northeners never fared well in the South. To think about them in the heat Dorne would be downright pitiful after a point. If she couldn't adjust, how would they?
"How are you, Lady Eliana?"
@thestonepaladin - benjen
He had officially offered his and his men's loyalty to the Stark family and to say he was mentally drained was an understatement. Before the wedding started, he sat at the bar and had one beer. Then another. And then one more. Yet, surprisingly, he felt almost nothing. Maybe it was his tolerance or maybe it was his adrenaline pumping through him but he was nearly sober after 3 ales. "I feel as though I'm going to regret all these ales in the morning" he muttered to himself
Benjen has conversed with Boltons before, even the notorious Torrhen (not the best lad to strike up a conversation with, but otherwise it was probably Lord Glover). But he hadn't had the opportunity to meet the Lord Tyron. After a tense conversation with Maeric, an ale would've done him some good as well. In a foreign land for a wedding he had no genuine interest in.
"I would say otherwise, Lord Tyron. If not an ale, what else?" He gestured Tyron to the seat next to him. "How do you fare? I thought I'd see you at your brother's wedding."
( Birkan Sokullu, cis-male, he/him ) HARK! I believe the heralds are announcing the arrival of BENJEN REED, the 41 year old, RULING LORD of HOUSE REED OF GREYWATER WATCH. They are known to hold loyalty towards HOUSE STARK/THEIR HOUSE/THEMSELVES and little birds sing of them being STEADFAST & WARM-HEARTED. When one dreams of them, images of "murky water catching gold morning light, a fire kept burning past midnight, mud on good boots and no apology for it" comes to mind. However their RECKLESS and STUBBORN nature can make for difficult times. Time will only tell what their true intentions are. { Sabina, 25, she/her, ist, N/A }
BASICS
full name. benjen reed. titles. ruling lord reed, lord reed, lord benjen, benny boy (only by his close friends and kin) age. one-and-fourty gender. cis man (he/him) marital status. widowed (emotionally), legally he is separated from his wife. religion. the old gods and the new. affiliation. house stark · house reed
APPEARANCE
face claim. birkan sokullu height. 6’3. eyes. hazel. hair. brown.
PERSONALITY
moral alignment. chaotic good. mbti. ENFJ. enneagram. 4w3. positive traits. Magnetic, observant, playful, resilient, intuitive, devoted negative traits. Performative, insular, avoidant, hypervigilant, melancholic, repressed.
CONNECTIONS
parents. lord melwyn reed and lady jonelle reed (nee dustin) (deceased) siblings. lady/lord/liege _____ reed, lord/lady/liege reed, lady utp (nee reed), lord/lady/liege _____reed spouse: open! pls do contact blog (@thestonepaladin to discuss in detail!) children: marcel reed, meera reed (deceased).
ORIGINS!
ONE. THE HOUSE THAT MOVES.
Greywater Watch has never been taken.
Benjen Reed learned this before he learned to read. Before he learned to swim, which in the Neck was the more pressing skill. His father told him standing at the water's edge, one hand on Benjen's shoulder, watching the castle sit on the dark water like it had always been there and always would be. "No one has ever taken it," he said. "No one ever will."
Benjen was five. He believed him completely.
He was a loud child. Theatrical. He performed elaborate plays in the marsh for his siblings, who tolerated this with varying degrees of patience, and for the birds, who did not. He climbed things not built for climbing. He had a voice that carried further than was ever strictly necessary and opinions about everything from the age of three and no particular interest in keeping them to himself.
His mother called it spirit.
His father called it exhausting, but he said it the way men say things they are secretly proud of.
What nobody called it, because nobody had a word for it, was the other thing. The way Benjen could go completely still in the middle of all that noise. The way he watched people. Not rudely, not openly. Just quietly and with great attention, filing things away somewhere behind his eyes that he would not take out again until he needed them.
He was his father's eldest. He understood what that meant young.
At ten years old, he was sent to ward at Winterfell.
TWO. THE PLACE WHERE WINTER FALLS.
He arrived in autumn. The trees had already gone bare and the sky sat low and grey over the walls and Benjen, who had grown up with water on all sides and mist in the mornings, looked up at Winterfell and felt, for the first time in his life, genuinely small.
A boy came out to the yard.
Nine years old. Dark-haired. Arms at his sides. He looked at Benjen the way you looked at something you were still deciding about.
Benjen looked back. He did not know what to say. He was ten and had just ridden for days and the keep behind this boy was enormous and grey and nothing like home.
"I'm Maeric," the boy said finally.
"Benjen," he said.
Maeric nodded, once, like this confirmed something. Then he said, "Are you hungry?" and walked back inside without waiting for an answer.
Benjen followed him. That was more or less how it started.
Edwin found him the next morning. Seven years old, smaller than his brother, with a gap where his front tooth had recently been. He appeared in the doorway of the room they had given Benjen, looked him over with great seriousness, and held out a piece of bread he had clearly taken from the kitchens without asking.
"Maeric said you might be homesick," he said.
Benjen was not homesick. He was ten and would not have admitted it even if he were.
"I'm not homesick," he said.
"Right," said Edwin. He sat down on the floor anyway and ate the other half of the bread.
They trained together. They got into trouble together, the specific trouble of boys left largely to their own devices in a castle large enough to get genuinely lost in. They found every room they were not supposed to find. They dropped things from heights they were not supposed to climb. There was an incident involving the kitchens that none of the three of them have ever fully explained to anyone, and by unspoken agreement never will.
Maeric was quieter than his brother. More careful. He thought before he spoke in a way that Benjen, who had never thought before speaking in his life, found equal parts baffling and worth paying attention to. He did get angrier easily, and sometimes Benjen’s antics made Maeric smile a lot easier. A truly worthy audience of his stories. Benjen dedicated himself to making sure everyone smiled around him.
Edwin said whatever came into his head and it was usually funnier than it had any right to be. Benjen was somewhere in the middle and louder than both of them and they balanced each other without knowing they were doing it, the way children do.
He learned Winterfell the way he had learned the Neck. Not from lessons but from living in it. The corridors that were warm when they shouldn't have been. The yard at first snow. The hall at a feast. The silences, which were different silences than the ones he had grown up with.
He did not understand the silences, not at ten, not at twelve. He began to understand them at fifteen, sixteen, when he was old enough to hear what was not being said. The weight of a look across a table when certain names came up. The set of a man's jaw when he thought no one was watching. The North had not forgotten Torrhen's knee. It had opinions about what that meant and those opinions had edges and they lived underneath everything like the hot springs lived underneath the stone.
Benjen said nothing. He was a guest and he knew what he was.
He left at eighteen.
He rode south through the Neck in early spring with the water high on either side and he was a different person than the boy who had arrived with nothing to say and followed a nine year old inside because there was nothing else to do. He had things his father could not have given him. He had Maeric, who was not easy and was worth it. He had Edwin, who had never once in eight years stopped being funny. He had eight years of a place that was not his and had become part of him anyway.
He still writes to them. They still write back.
Five years ago Maeric took Winterfell. Benjen was thirty-six. He wrote a letter and sealed it and sent it north and did not tell anyone what was in it.
THREE. OH, MY SWEET DARLING, THE STARS YOU MAKE.
He was not supposed to fall in love with her. That sounds worse than it is. She was not forbidden, not unsuitable, not anything she was not supposed to be. She was the daughter of a sworn house, a crannogwoman of the deep Neck, and she had a laugh that Benjen heard across a crowded hall one evening and turned around to find the source of before he had made any conscious decision to do so.
He made a fool of himself, initially. This is known, and it is known because he told it himself, which is either confidence or a lack of shame and Benjen has never been sure which.
She was not impressed by him. This was new. He found it interesting. He found her interesting, more to the point, and he told her so with the directness of a man who has always found honesty simpler than strategy.
"You say that to everyone," she said.
"I don't, actually," he said.
She looked at him for a moment. "I know," she said, and walked away.
He thought about that for three weeks.
He married her two years later in autumn, in the marsh, with the Watch moving slow on the water behind them and half the Neck in attendance. He had prepared words. He had been preparing words for months. He was good at words, had always been good at words, and he stood there holding her hands and looked at her face and every single one of them left him completely.
She raised an eyebrow.
"I know," he managed, eventually.
She laughed. The Watch moved. The water caught the light.
Meera came two years later in high summer. She arrived loud and absolutely certain of herself, which Benjen felt was appropriate. She had her mother's mouth. She had his eyes, his way of going still in the middle of noise. She had, from the very first moment, her own particular gravity.
He held her in the first hour and she looked up at him and he understood, with complete clarity, that he had not previously known what it felt like to be undone by something good.
He called her his star. He was aware this was embarrassing. He did not care at all.
FOUR. WHAT THE WATER TOOK.
She was seven.
She had been asking to see the Watch move for months. Every morning, every evening, variations on the same question delivered with the persistence of someone who had correctly identified that persistence worked on her father specifically. He kept saying soon. She kept asking. He took her out on a morning in early spring, when the mist was still on the water and the light was just coming in grey and flat over the marsh.
She was laughing when she went in.
He remembered this afterward with a precision that will not negotiate, will not soften, will not be reasoned with even now. Not just her face. The sound. Full and completely hers, and then the water where she had been, which was still in the way that water is still when it has just closed over something.
He went in without thinking.
The Neck is cold in all seasons. In early spring it is a cold that has no interest in you at all. He went down as far as he could go.
It was not enough.
The crannogmen pulled him out. What state he was in when they did is not something any of them describe. In the hours after there was nothing in him where feeling should have been, just a blankness, just the particular silence of a place that has had something taken out of it.
Marcel was three. He asked for his sister in the simple way of children who do not yet have a word for gone.
Benjen answered him every time.
FIVE. MY STAR FADED AWAY.
His wife left in the months that followed.
He did not fight it. He stood in the doorway of Greywater Watch and watched her go and then he went back inside to Marcel, who was three and smelled of sleep and needed feeding.
There had been words before she left, quiet things that cut deeper than any scream. She was right in her way, and he was right in his, but that mattered little when the ground between them had turned to peat and rot. They were two people standing on different islands in a rising tide, calling out through the fog until their voices went thin, only to realize the water had already taken the path back. You can describe the drowning all you like, but the lungs still burn the same.
"I can't stay," she said. It was the only honest thing left between them.
He looked at her, the damp air of Greywater Watch clinging to his skin like a second shroud. He thought of a dozen pleas to keep her, but a Reed knows you cannot anchor the tide.
"I know," he said.
She vanished into the mist.
He lingered in the hall until the chill settled in his joints. Eventually, he moved to the bedside where Marcel lay. His son was small, a tangle of limbs beneath a furs, dreaming of nothing while the world shifted beneath him like the floating islands they called home.
He went to his own bed.
He woke when the sun hit the moss. He kept moving.
Marcel learned to walk where the solid ground surrendered to the muck, with Benjen hovering close enough to be a second shadow. By four, the boy had developed a tongue like a whetstone and opinions on everything from the taste of frog-legs to the way the wind turned. He lacked his father’s penchant for the dramatic, possessing instead his mother’s blunt edge and a way of watching the world that was unnervingly still. Benjen looked at things to understand them; Marcel looked at things to dismantle them. He only ever needed one look.
Benjen loved him with the same terrifying gravity he had loved Meera, and this time he knew exactly how deep that was, and he stood at the edge of it every day anyway.
He never called the boy anything that would make a man blush. He thought plenty of things that would, of course. Sentimental rot about the curve of the lad’s jaw or the way he held a spear, but he kept those buried in the peat where they belonged.
SIX. WHAT HAPPENS NOW.
Marcel is thirteen.
He has announced that he is too old to be read to, with the certainty of someone young enough that the certainty is still touching. Benjen has received this information and adjusted accordingly. He talks to him instead, about the Neck and the crannogmen and the history of the house, and Marcel sits and listens with the face of someone pretending this is ordinary and not quite managing it.
Benjen is forty-one. The correspondence arrives and requires answering. The men need riding out with. The councils need sitting. The letters go to Winterfell and come back from Winterfell and somewhere in the texture of all of it, reliable and without guarantee, he finds something to be glad about. The mist on the water in the morning. A letter in Edwin's handwriting. The particular face Marcel makes when he thinks no one is watching him and something has made him laugh.
Some mornings it comes without effort. Some mornings he goes out to the edge of the water and stands in the cold until it surfaces.
It always surfaces.
He still talks to the bog. He is aware this is strange. He does it anyway, standing at the water's edge in the early morning the way his father stood there once with a hand on his shoulder.
Greywater Watch has never been taken.
He gets up every morning. He keeps the fire going. He is, by the measure of his world, still standing.
Most days that is more than enough.
open! 1/5 (but i'm easy honestly)
Dorne could piss off.
Myriame sat perched on the lip of a marble fountain. The heat of the air suffocating her. Her skin,usually the pale cream of winter, had ripened to an angry, stinging pink. She fanned herself with a desperate, rhythmic vigor, but the lace fan only served to blow the same stifling hot air.
She eyed a trio of beautiful Dornish ladies stroll past, their silk gowns whispering against the ground. They glanced her way, she was certain of it, and their laughter sharpened. It wasn’t exactly clear if they were laughing at her but it certainly felt like they were. They faded into the distance, their laughter ringing in Myriame’s ears.
Dorne really could piss off.
If she had thought Kings Landing was hot eight months ago, this was on an entirely new scale. Give her the North. Give her grey skies and biting winds, the sharp breath of the sea and the blessed chill that seeped into bone. Anything but this.
She glanced over one shoulder, then the other. The courtyard was momentarily empty, the guards retreated to the deep shadows. With a low groan, Myriame abandoned all pretense of being a high born lady.
She lunged forward, plunging her head into the fountain.
Oh it was bliss.
She held her head underneath the water and let peace take her. The water was tepid by Northern standards, but against her scorched skin, it felt a mercy sent by the gods themselves. She stayed submerged, ears filled with the dull thrum of the fountain’s pulse, letting the silence of the water drown out the oppressive heat and the memory of those gorgeous ladies. For a few moments she wasn't a lady out of her element, she was just a creature surviving.
The feeling of a presence behind her broke her momentary tranquillity.
“What?” she snapped, wrenching herself upward.
She looked a drowned rat, and she knew it. Dark, sodden strands of hair clung to her cheeks, and water cascaded from her chin, darkening the bodice of her gown. She blinked rapidly, droplets clinging to her lashes as she glared at the intruder through a blurred, watery veil. Although she couldn't quite make out who it was, “Have you never seen a woman try not to melt where she sits?” she demanded, her voice sharp.
The presence behind her did not startle, did not retreat.
"I have," said the man, pleasantly, "not in a fountain, though."
He was tall and looked equally as miserable as she did, though he had suffered his heat with somewhat more dignity. Somewhat. The neck of his doublet was open three buttons further than decorum strictly allowed and his hair, dark and damp, was doing what hair did in this place, which was everything except what you wanted it to. He had the look of a man who had stepped outside this morning fully intending to be well-presented and had accepted defeat sometime around the third hour.
He sat down beside the fountain with the particular ease of a man who had long since made his peace with looking ridiculous.
"I did consider it," he said, nodding at the water. "Briefly. I decided it would be undignified." A pause. "I am reconsidering."
He looked out across the sun-blanched courtyard, squinting against the light the way men squinted into blizzards. A different angle. The same expression.
"They laughed at me in the market this morning," he said, conversationally. Not wounded by it. Just noting it the way you noted the weather. "I was wearing a wool doublet." Another pause. "I did not know it was wool. I thought it was the light one."
He turned to look at her then, properly, a man entirely unbothered by the sodden hair or the ruined bodice or the general wreckage of it.
"There is," he said, "a cold spring in the Neck that I would commit unspeakable acts to be standing in right now." He extended a hand. "Benjen Reed."
