Among Familiar Faces
Thirtieth Day of the Fourth Month 294 AC
Baelor Hightower, called Brightsmile once more, proved the rightness of his name as he gave an only faintly condescending smile to the ill-favored Mace Tyrell, a man about as far down the ladder of Imperial favor as it was possible to be without hitting bedrock, or was that without hitting fire? Supposedly, there was a great sea of fire and molten stone upon which all the world floated.
That would fit the strangeness of the world as it had been revealed these past few years.
No solid foundation to rest upon, only fire and strange currents...
Perhaps unsurprisingly, he was one of the few Reacher Lords who were still offering even that much of a smile to his former overlord. By now there was likely not one knight in the Reach who did not know the Tyrells had been planning to sell them all to the Court of Stars as stage props and cheap mummers, and most were not inclined to be charitable and assume folly over malice. For his part, Baelor genuinely did not care, one was precisely as bad as the other when it came to results, and in the end that was all that mattered. House Tyrell had failed in its stewardship of the Reach not through any failing of heritage or thinness of blood, of which they had been so oft accused, but through the practical failings of ambition.
The Lord of Oldtown savored his wine.
Some men are quick to drink and quick to blood, quick they are also to the grave, his father had advised, and like many of the nuggets of wisdom the old man had tried to drum into the stubborn head of a much younger Baelor, this too had proved its worth, and not just in the literal sense. Power could be the headiest of all elixirs, and if indulged in could lead one to ruin.
A pity you could not see this place, this day. You would have loved it, father, he sent his thoughts wistfully towards a man who was likely not in the Seven's Heaven. Leyton Hightower, scholar, philosopher, and aspiring seer would likely find it too boring to linger there. He very deliberately did not think of what the fate of a soul that lost its way might be. That, too, was a skill the smiling man had cultivated.
A few minutes later, Baelor could be found toasting with a boisterous gathering, including young Lord Redwyne, some Northeners he could not put a name to off the top of his head, and of course Oberyn Sandviper, the Count of Golden Fields, recounting his exploits... on the battlefield, for a wonder. People who called the Dornish vipers and snakes always worried about the poisoned head. What you really had to watch out for was the habit of slithering through the cracks all the way to the top...
The Red Viper sniffed dramatically, glancing in Baelor's direction. "Does my nose deceive me? I think the wind is about to break..."
"I think it is just the jest going stale. It's been near on twenty years since you've first made it," Baelor replied lightly. He had admittedly been coldly furious to have his suit of Elia so brutally cut short by a moment's indiscretion, but the passing years and their tragedies had a way of wearing away at the outrages of youth.
"But the look on your
face," Oberyn insisted. "A pity we did not have bespelled mirrors back then to preserve it!"
One was admittedly reminded why some company was best had in small doses. "True... true...." Baelor agreed placidly. "If memory serves, it was only three days later when you indulged too much at Lord Jordayne's wedding and puked in his cousin's lap while trying to seduce her. At least wind can be blown away, unlike other... accidents of courting."
Oberyn looked at him as though he did not quite recognize him. "When the fuck did you grow a sense of humor?"
"Around the time you got 'exiled' to the east and monsters started crawling out of every hole in Oldtown," Balor snorted. "It was either laugh or cry at them, and crying does not go with the face or the name."
"Good to see you putting that smile to good use scaring away the squids and all..." the Red Viper started to answer.
"You can stop flirting now. He's married and happily so," a familiar feminine voice called out from behind Baelor. Elia's sense of humor had clearly not changed even after being brought back from the dead.
"Flirting?" came the arch reply of the Count of Golden Fields as the lords with him laughed with varying degrees of sincerity.
"You
clearly wanted him all to yourself," the princess continued, undeterred.
The gleam in Oberyn Martell's eye was perhaps more than Baelor wanted to deal with. It was a good thing he
was faithful and that he took his father's advice on drinking.
OOC: A bit less coronation focused than my other interludes, but this was where the story wanted to go. To be clear Oberyn did not call the most favored of his sister's suitors Breakwind because he wanted to seduce him... but he would not have said no to an assignation then as now.
