Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Of Heirs and Honors
Twenty-Fourth Day of the Fourth Month 294 AC
You smile at your niece indulgently, holding back the urge to pat her head. She has recently decided she is too old for that sort of thing. "Yes, obviously I can do that. But I won't force him to. How about you show him how little you think of other people's opinions by trying to do something together with him that he feels comfortable with?" You consider your next words carefully. "If that works out, you can probably eventually convince him to do practically anything you want, including dancing with you. Take it from a brother speaking with experience."
The girl considers your words carefully, disappointment shifting to acceptance across her face. "Well, alright then. It makes sense that we should do other things together, I guess. For when we get married."
"For what?" her mother asks, looking halfway between exasperated and amused. Obviously this sort of out of the blue decision making is common enough to Rhaenys not to be overly concerning.
"Well, it's family tradition, isn't it? And it makes more sense than the other way, where you have to find someone and do silly things to get them to like you, like the Saelot girls are tittering about all the time."
You briefly contemplate Jon's reaction if his half-sister had actually shared this particular 'plan'. She certainly had not done it, else he would not even be in the room. "You have a lot of time to think on such matters. Perhaps you should wait until you are older to decide?"
"But I'll be silly then. Aren't you listening?" Rhaenys huffs. "Is there a spell to make you not sigh and titter over boys?"
"Alright, sweetheart, you asked His Grace enough questions for today," Elia interjects before you have to come up with an answer to that. "Go talk Jon if you want."
In thanks, you offer your good-sister a dance while waiting for the others. "How do you feel?" You expect knowing her murderers, her son's murderers, are dead or soon to be dead, is a balm delivered not a moment too soon, but this is more important than revenge. "Are you happy here? I needn't ask if Rhaenys is, but you're not just putting on a satisfied front for her sake are you? I don't want you to force yourself to do... anything. Not after what you've been through."
"Am I happy..." her gaze grows distant, looking over your shoulder but seeing something far different than the hall around you. "When I was in the Red Keep I pined for Dorne, for comfortable familiar things, for safety. Now it would feel too small, like I was running away from my life and back into the realm of my girlhood. I am obviously not a girl anymore, as that one," she nods towards her daughter, now chatting happily with her half-bother, "reminds me every day."
Her words grow softer, almost hesitant, "Now that both of them are dead, I can stop worrying about them, irrational as it may have been to ever do so behind these walls." There is no need to ask who she is referring to. From what you had heard, The Mountain died in the dirt and Lorch drowning in his own blood. "I can't quite manage to stoke the embers all the way to happiness most days, but the low flame of contentment is there," your good-sister finishes as the lively Dornish galliard fades.
***
Once the music and merriment has ended, you move on to more solemn matters, the giving of awards to living heroes, and to those fallen on the Dauntless and on the other ships during the Fall of Ymeri. Thankfully, none of the great ships fell, though one of the Moonchasers came closer even than the Dauntless during the final approach.
"You know," Lya says softly as she stands by your side to watch the line of returning airmen. "If you had asked me years ago which of my works I would think most likely to bring war upon a god, I would not have answered 'anti-gravity engines'."
"It goes to show what artifice and ingenuity can do when joined by valor and skill," you reply, loudly enough to be heard by the other guests. This is a moment about honoring the realm's heroes true, but it is also about those heroes and their deeds being known and heard far and wide.
- 3x Wyvern Type-B
- 7x Wyvern Type-A
- 2x Manticore
- 9x Heralds
What honors and prizes do you give for the returning airmen and the families of the fallen?
[] Write in
OOC: I hope the transition is not to jarring, I could not think of how to make dances flow more smoothly into the ceremony. Not yet edited.
Ouch, those losses hurt. I assume those numbers are for stuff destroyed beyond the ability to recover, such as using Memory of Function on the Heralds?
Good thing we're going on a naval building spree starting next month.
