Counting Sheep and Keeping Dragons
Eight Day of the First Month 294 AC
Of course he would remember the sheep, Nettles thought, bidding farewell to the king and heading to where her lazy lizard was sunning in the courtyard.
It was in Sheepstealer's name, after all. The truth was the dragon loved sheep a good bit more than she did. You don't get it into your head to tame a dragon using your flock because you love shepherding past all bearing. Still, what he said about peace and quiet did appeal to her.
One thing that hadn't changed between her first brush with royalty and the second was that the highborn folk of all sorts who wanted to get close to the sort of power Sheepstealer had, the sort of power
she had these days, and just thought their bloody good breeding would just mean Nettles would be falling over herself at the thought of keeping their company, or opening her legs in the case of a few of the worst rockheads. More's the pity that she couldn't handle the latter the way she did the stupider warriors of the Burned Men after the Dance.
Aye, and the sort of place riders can do that is one where the bloody Dance happens. Ulf the White's kingdom, that would be...
Nettles shook her head, letting the thought fly away as Sheepstealer threw himself into the air sensing her desire to fly far and fast. She had been thinking those sorts of thoughts more and more as she got used to Young King Viserys' realm. It was still sort of funny to her that he had that name when he couldn't be less like his namesake if he tried. Pity it was the kind of jest she couldn't share without revealing who she was.
Funny how she could miss people knowing about her past these days when she had cared so little for it in her youth.
Maybe ma was right about the grass always being greener and all that... Nettles thought. By her count, it would make it the third thing her mother had ever been right about.
Maybe being known for who she had been and what she had done was a little like the sheep, the dragon rider considered as she wheeled northward through the sky. You didn't miss them while they were all around you, and then one day you're thinking about the smell of raw wool in the evening.
"Things were simpler then eh, Sheepstealer?" she asked her dragon patting his warm scales a little. "Fuck even the Dance was simpler." The Greens were just men, men who would see her slit up in battle or strung up as a traitor granted but that was just how things went when there were two crowns and two thrones. That was what she thought this new kingdom was about, build up power in the Stepstones then go for the Iron Throne. It was the sensible thing to do...
Bloody wind, getting in her eyes. Good thing there was no one to see her up here.
But then she had seen that
thing riding the blizzard on wings of ice and the rider upon him that was no man, not even a fey. For all she didn't altogether trust the spirit-kin, she could sort of understand them. That thing had just been
wrong. She would have tried to burn it from the sky no matter when she came upon it, and from the rage she felt going through Sheepstealer like fire, he agreed wholehearted.
It almost felt wrong to ask for gold given the circumstances, but Nettles had been curious how the king would take it. After all, one of the first things she had been told when she had been brought before the court to swear fealty was not to ask for gold from the throne lest she seem like an untrustworthy sellsword. The Queen could give her gifts for leal service, they had said, but that would be in her time and in a manner of her choosing.
King Viserys had just handed her a pouch of marks sealed in wax and a made a suggestion about where she could find some peace and quiet.
Then again, he was wearing what looked like a treasury's worth of gold about his shoulders, so maybe I shouldn't have been surprised.
"Let's see about a house and maybe a flock of sheep with someone else looking for them," she said to her dragon as they began their descent. Somewhere reasonably far away from other folk so she could practice her magic a bit. Nettles had Seen some things in her dreams last night that she was itching to try.
How does Nettles' magic advance?
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OOC: Couldn't really fit two interludes in one part and the Nettles' PoV was the one that came to mind first. Thenn perspective next. Not yet edited.
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