Of Tumbled Crowns
Eleventh Day of the Seventh Month 293 AC
Keeping your tone carefully light you answer: "You seem rather impatient, my lady. Not even a name I have to call you by, yet you interject so harshly." The fey woman does not react to your rebuke, though the Westerosi sailors certainly look ill at ease to hear it, not so much from chivalry as simple worry you would judge. Thus you continue: "Two questions are raised by your words. One, what dominions you are speaking of, and two, what Lord Tyrell's stake in the matter is? Blunt though the words may be, so far I see little reason why I should let you claim the crown, for an independent kingdom in the Reach is hardly something I look forward to, be it headed by men or the deathless fey."
"Such haste..." the woman crocks her head to the side, cat-stilted eyes glowing like jewels in the lantern light. "Did not the Lost Ones tell you of the misfortunes of haste?"
The answer to her cryptic words comes to you in a flash—the Singers. If she would play that game then you certainly have an answer to it. "Indeed, they have taught us much, and we them. That which is oldest and most enduring is not always soundest with the changing of the world." Or in words less cunningly-shaped to be pleasing to the ear:
you won't have all your own way if you try to change the world to your whims. Likely as not this one can read the thoughts on your face if not in your mind.
A sigh escapes her lips, even that gesture imbued with delicate elegance, the sort that would make many a knight lose their wits you'd wager. "You may call me Dusk-Dancer, for I was among those who danced the path from twilight into the realms under the sun. As to your questions two, oh child of flame and air, know that I do not speak of lordships that man could use, but of places where the plow will break rather than cut the earth and the beasts of the fields would wander and be made wild again. Know that I speak not of a crown of men, but a lost crown of Faerie itself."
"How could a fey lord lose his crown?" Theon blurts. "I thought..." he looks ill at ease with all eyes upon him. He turns to Moonsong. "Sorry, captain, didn't you say their crown were as much a part of them as the eyes in their heads and heart in their chests?"
"And it's a boring story this would be if all things stayed in their places to be sure?" the captain of the Hunter's Moon shrugged, her gossamer wings ruffling like petals on the spring wind.
Now the fey lady, Dusk-Dancer, does look towards the threshold sprite with something like faint disdain in her gaze, as a man might look at a particularly tall weed by the side of the road. "Yes, you do so love interesting tales, particularly the ones you make so..." Turning back to you she explains: "Three kings there are in the Feywilds—the Warrior bright and bold, the Lord masterful in all the works of his hands and will, the Sage wise in things that are, things that were, and things yet undreamed. Yet the Warrior is lost unto himself, knowing no purpose beyond the day. The Lord sleeps eternal, for his crown a mortal claimed for his own in a game of wits. Fairly won it was and well the mortal reigned over both kindred, but he has passed to dust and now only the Sage endures." Her next words have the air of somber verse:
Long have we wandered...
Far we have seen...
Long have we pandered...
Lost we have been...
"We ask only for that which is rightfully ours, yet now lies locked beneath the cold sea," the sorceress explains. From the look on Lord Paxter's face this is as much news to him as it is to you.
Still, the Lord of the Arbor schools his features with the skill of long practice and adds his voice to the spirit's plea: "I have been charged by my lord to seek this crown and return it to Highgarden. Of what pacts or arrangements have been made of its disposal then I know not, but I can assure you no one intends to see an independent Reach." He snorts: "We aren't the bloody Ir..." The words trail off.
"Ironborn," Asha finishes. To your surprise she is smiling. "I've sailed and seen enough of the world to know there's truth in those words, though they are a touch lacking in the famed courtesy of the Reach."
Lord Redwyne inclines his head, like duelist acknowledging a touch on the training field. You suspect he would not be calling Asha a girl playing at being a reaver now. It is no small thing to acknowledge the follies of one's kin as well you know.
After offering a nod of your own to the young Greyjoy to show your own appreciation, you turn back to the crimson-haired enchantress: "I have seen a great many powers wake these past few years, kindly, cruel, and those who are neither, and even among the first kind I have seen them turn the lives of mortal men on their heads. Thus I must ask what would happen if your sleeping king is woken?"
"You are untrusting," Dusk-Dancer challenges.
"I am cautious," you answer, not quite the words that would have been first on your lips, but 'I am alive' might have seemed like too fearful a reply before the men of the Reach who had never faced the great evils of the world and know not what lurks in the sea, the sweltering lands of the south, or the deepest north.
"Know that the Lord is mighty but it is not his might we seek, but his counsel," she replies. "If men find us strange and perilous in our needs then that is because we are half dreaming. If a lord reigned over us again beside the Queen then we would be easier to know to the mind of mortals, more rooted and solid in our dealings. Does that seem an ill thing to you, oh king crowned in flame?"
What do you answer?
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OOC: Asha and Theon are doing surprisingly good in diplomacy now. 
