Storm's Child
Seventeenth Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC
Though Dany is curious about meeting the Shadowbinder of which you had heard rumors about these past years you have more important business to attend to than satisfying curiosity about the mages of Asshai, business
west of the Narrow Sea. You now had the means to transport a Heart Tree without harming it and it would be the work of hours at the Flesh-Forge to craft a simulacrum of it to fool mundane senses. The time had come to remove the hand of the Old Gods from the fortress Durran raised for Elenei, the home of his heirs. Now all you had to do was persuade the latest of those heirs of the wisdom of the act. You do not even try to hide a chuckle.
"What's the jest?" Dany asks as she takes your hand for the journey across the gulf of space.
"I was considering the prospect of establishing a temple of the Storm God in Storm's End. We have crafted a ritual to uproot that which is of the very bones of the earth, and that was the easy part."
"Cousin Stannis isn't that bad," she giggles, rather undermining her point. "It's not like he fears apostasy from the Seven, or anything else really. He just thinks gods are useless."
"How did you know that?" You had spent enough time around the man to guess that much, not to mention things Maester Cressen and Davos Seaworth had let slip in the hearing of your vassals and companions, but you had not seen Dany looking over those reports.
"Shireen..." she trails off frowning. "He was a little insensitive about it, but I think he was trying to spare her from getting hurt later. He saw her praying to the Mother about healing for her scars a few years ago. I don't think Shireen really understood what the Seven were in those days, just copying Lady Selyse."
"Stannis told her not to put her faith in gods?" you guess.
"Something like that, he told her not to trust anything she couldn't see with her own eyes and then he told her to get off the floor lest she catch cold." Dany shakes her head. "I think most children would have started crying then and there, but that was when Shireen figured out her father loved her, since he was worried about her getting sick again and not what the old sickness had made her look like, the way most people are." Your sister pauses thoughtfully, taking a bit of chocolate from the bowl on your desk. "I think she migt have been a bit like, well...
me even back then. I like her and not just because she's our cousin."
"I guessed as much from all the times you went to sleep in the middle of the day to dream with her," you grin, happy that Dany is growing to like more of your family, even if she is never going to see Shireen the ways she might have if she had not sacrificed her childhood upon the altar of power. You can almost see 'Aunt Daenerys' giving the girl presents for her to love and her father to grind his teeth over.
Scenes of hoped for peace aside you will have to speak to Stannis first on matters he might not be entirely comfortable contemplating. First you would have to prove the Father Sky exists, then that he is a god and lastly, perhaps most difficult of all, that he is worthy of worship.
How do you approach Stannis on the matter of moving the Heart Tree and creating a temple of the Father Sky?
[] Point out that restoring the ancient triumvirate of First Men Gods would be of great aid against the Deep Ones who were their foes of old
[] Explain that the Empire is rather lacking in friendly powers with domain over the sky, but the Others are thought of as masters of it
[] Expand upon the power of Elenei's bloodline and the way in which the resurgence of Father Sky's worship would empower his House in these times of waxing magic
[] Write in
OOC: All the arguments above are basically pragmatic because this is Stannis, one would have to be far less observant than Viserys and company not to realize appeals to sentiment don't really work on him.