A Bridge Across Time
Nineteenth Day of the Twelfth Month 292 AC
The world has a slight sheen of unreality about it, as though you were in a dream, as though your feet might skip from the ground as you walk. After so long dreaming, preparing, hoping, the helpless wish you had as a child, the one that came to mind the very first night you gained your magic now stands fulfilled. Your mother lives again in defiance of cruel fate.
Your mother lives again...
Yet you remind yourself that you cannot let your guard down. Here you stand in an island of safety amidst a savage and unforgiving land, and more than mere snow can come sweeping from the North. Perhaps needlessly you check with Soft Strider to ensure all those coming with you can endure the rigors of the journey, that you have enough food without depleting the supplies already here... For your mother, of course, you brought furs both warm and fitting to her station, and just to be sure Dany can ward her against the cold. The line of thought stutters to a halt. That is something that will need addressing...
"Mother..." you begin. "There is something I need to tell you."
She starts slightly, tearing her eyes from Dany who had taken to flying wherever the height of the chambers allowed. "Only one thing?" You are glad to hear the hint of humor in her words.
"The world has changed since... Dragonstone. I've changed, and so has Dany, besides the
obvious." You smile at your sister's 'antics' which you suspect are far more calculated then they look. It feels more than a little uncomfortable to play this game with your mother, but you comfort yourself with the fact that you have no intention of lying, only carefully measuring out the truth on the trip south, to bring her as gently as you can into a world wholly strange to her.
You stop, open the catch on your ever-light ring and then utter a swift spell to launch a narrow stream of sparks into the air. "No pacts did I enter for this power, no dark rituals did I work, only the power of my blood." you explain swiftly, before she can speak. Dany would not be wholly truthful if she said the same thing, but that is a tale for another day.
"Daenerys, too?" she asks. To your relief there is no condemnation in her voice, but there is worry.
At your nod she says, "You should be careful letting others know. Magic is not well seen." She still sounds a little disbelieving, not at you but at the whole situation you suspect.
"That boat is well and truly sunk, your grace, with the Usurper's fleet if nothing else," Ser Richard speaks up.
Your mother looks surprised between the knight and you then she nods to herself, the slightest dip of the chin. The relation between a king and his trusted sworn sword she can understand... things will be more difficult for her when you reach the Deep.
"We did not sink any of the ships," you correct Ser Richard's metaphor. "Though a few of the ships from Dragonstone defected to our banners."
You tell the tale then of how you had been 'civilizing' the Stepstones, building a kingdom far stronger and more lasting than the one that Daemon did, of how you conquered it from an Ironborn renegade, glossing over his inhuman allies, though mentioning sorcerous healing of the ills of mind and body that draw more and more people to your ports each day.
"Baratheon will send another fleet, or Tywin Lannister will," she says at last.
"Let them," you shrug. "As Stannis Baratheon discovered it is rather hard to drive sailors against fire raining from the sky, no matter the source."
"You have a dragon?" She asks, surprised, just as you reach 'your chamber.' Seeing no other option she leans against the wall. You should ask the Children to bring some chairs
"In a manner of speaking," you reply, changing your skin to the more inoffensive Wyrmling shape. "Unsurprisingly the way to do this was
not to drink wildfire." Half-way through the jest you remember your father, his spirit hangs in the corridor like some hateful specter. "Mother, I'm sorry."
"For what, sweetheart?" she asks, the worry in her eyes clearer.
"For not realizing how unhappy you were, for not seeing father for the
monster he was." You answer, changing back.
"Your father was...
unwell," she starts.
You cannot stand for her protecting him even now, lying for him. "I asked Lord Bloodraven to show me father's life and he did. I saw it, the burning and the killings, the cruel whims and mad rages."
"I never imagined I would ever have a personal reason to hate
that man," she says slowly, trying to reach out and comfort you.
"Should I not have seen, mother?" you ask. "If I had not seen Lord Rickard and his son die, what heavy punishment might I have laid upon the Starks when the day comes that I am king of the Seven Kingdoms in truth?"
"You are a..." she stops herself, looking down for a moment. "You
were a child. It will be hard getting used to this. Yes, you deserved to know, but you are
not responsible for not somehow stopping Aerys as a young child."
Hearing the words, the conviction behind them is a relief, as if a knot you had been carrying within your chest for so long you had grown used to it had suddenly come undone. This time you do not resist the hug. "Now come," she says "Tell me more of how you came..." she waves a hand vaguely around the chamber.. "Here."
"What do you want to know?" you ask, settling beside her, Dany on her other side.
She looks at you as though you had asked a rather silly question. "Everything."
What do you tell Rhaella about your time in Braavos?
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OOC: We are going to take things in relatively big chronological pieces with a reasonable amount of summarizing when it comes to getting Rhaella up to speed, with you guys voting for the general shape of what you do and do not tell her.
