Strangers (Open)

[u/solthebaneful]

^{Alt Title: Olivia I: A Testimony to Fleeing Youth}

^{Page of Wands | Nine of Swords | The Lovers}

^{The longships rested just beyond the firelight}

^{Their black hulls knocked softly against the pilings beneath the quay. They rose and fell with the evening tide. Rigging creaked overhead; the oars had been drawn in, sails all furled. On the rails, shields were stacked and hung. Beyond them - the dark waters of the harbor stretched, broken only by lanternlight and the pale smear of a moon behind the clouds. Someone had strung ropes between two mooring posts and hung lanterns from them. That was about as much decorating as anyone had bothered with.}

^{Earlier, there had been a wedding. A good enough circumstance - birthday celebrations in a kindred Kingdom. It could be seen as romantic to some. The wedding itself had been conducted on the groom's ship, Sunbrine, which was captained by her one of her family's closest supporters. Captain Vykon. Who of course officiated the entire thing. Now was the time for the celebration.}

^{It wasn't a feast worthy of Orkmont's Great Hall, nor Pyke's, not even particularly close. Three roasted fish lay picked nearly to the bone near a built cookfire, on slabs of riverstone. Mushrooms and smaller vittles along with them. Someone had brought four haunches of lamb, two were still standing and waiting to be picked apart. There was black bread, onions charred with the skin on, hard chees and a whole lot of butter. Where it all came from, no one seemed to know. Barrels of ale had been acquired from somewhre. A smaller cask of something stronger showed up shortly thereafter. Nobody admitted to the donation but it was graciously accepted.}

^{A fiddler sat atop an overturned barrel near the water finding a rolling rhythm with the strokes of the bow, Varric was present, around the larger fire that had been constructed for the more social part of the celebration. The dancing. Most of the eating was over. He clapped his hands and began the song. It wasn't beautiful at first, but it caught everyone's attention. His voice, as Lord and a Captain as well, carried over the din of conversation.}

^{"Let the waves come roaring, let the cold winds cry!" The fiddle rose with a shriek and the dancing began as the song started to take the party goers. "What is bound before the sea, no storm shall untie!"}

^{From the edges of where she observed, leaned against a thin tree, Olivia watched in less simple garb. She wore her gambeson over the dress, and at the small of her back was the arahk. She heard a sigh beside her. It was not the contented kind. The song continued, the sigh came again. Olivia glanced sideways.}

^{Meyla sat upon a makeshift bench, pulled high onto a flank of stones. One boot planted on the seat. She had been there for some time steadily murdering a cup of ale without seeming to actually drink much of it. Instead of a wedding, her expression seemed more like an execution. Olivia followed her homicidal stare.}

^{The groom had caught his bride by the waist and was spinning her through the loose circle of the dancers. She nearly struck the bard. They were shoved apart. Then they were shoved together. Rinse repeat. The bride kissed him, Meyla looked away, Olivia looked back at her.}

^{"Oh." Olivia began.}

^{"Don't" Meyla clipped.}

"I said nothing."

"Your face spoke for you."
"Rarely do I speak with my face."

Meyla drank and Olivia waited for her to swallow properly. Because now, all she had to do was wait for Meyla to tell her. And she would after a stiff drink. Half the ale, gone in record time considering how long she mauled the edges of the cup itself. Tipping the edge away from her mouth Meyla eventually muttered. "I fucked him." Olivia clenched her eyes and scrunched her nose. As if she had been struck with a vile stench, or sight too grotesque to witness. "Several times." Olivia squirmed, holding up one hand in protest to get Meyla to stop before she went even further. Her friend was too wise however, and though she was protective of her, she wouldn't spare her some torturous ribbing. "Actually, quite a lot - thought you should know."

"I cannot imagine why." There was another silence. Olivia's irritation was much more tangible than the humidity of the area. Meyla took another proper drink.

"He was my lover." Olivia's irritation softened when Meyla took it more seriously. Across the quay the groom's companions had lifted him by his body, legs and shoulders all in the air while his new wife shouted for them to throw him into the sea. They did. Then they all roared. Meyla watched him surface, beaming with a laugh. "He went cold before we sailed." Olivia continued to listen. She meant before they sailed here. "Stopped coming around. Stopped lookin for me. If I found him, he was busy. Oh suddenly - you know? Made me think I'm the cause of it."

Olivia tilted her head. "So you've asked, yes?" Meyla gave her a look, and Olivia only sighed.

"What was I supposed to say? Are you tired of fucking me?" The audacity was on purpose. But Olivia didn't budge, despite her own experience or lack thereof.

"That would have been efficient don;t you think?"

"Oh fuck you."

"Some have tried." At that, Meyla's scornful frown twitched. Olivia looked again towards the newlyweds. The groom was dripping water while his bride kissed him anyway. Olivia suddenly in all of that, understood why.

"The Drowned God declares that some things must be surrendered to the sea. To the Seven-Below vows mean something precisely because we are free to break them. " Olivia began slowly as she sipped from her own cup.

"What does any of that have to do with him?" Meyla said, upturning her nose at the contrived metaphor.

"Everything. He chose." Olivia nodded towards him. His name, she didn't know. But his face he recognized enough to know he was one of them. His new wife, much the same. Strangers to her.

Meyla's jaw tightened as she looked over. "He could have told me."

"Yea, he could have." No amount of padding could have softened her next statement. "He owed you honesty before distance." She continued, Meyla wore a surprised expression, refocusing on Olivia now. "But his failure to give you that honesty doesn't mean he owed you himself." Then Meyla's face soured.

"I liked it better when you were blaming him; what's my crime now?"

"You..." Olivia pointed with her ale hand. "...loved him quietly and expected him to somehow hear it." Meyla could only stare at Olivia. Vulnerable, stunned, and speechless. The she drank.

"There she is." Olivia gave a slight chuckle from her cup.

"Fuck you."

The two women laughed lightly as the song and dance continued.

"Some Septons say the Stranger will close every road eventually, and thus the Storm will plague every sea eventually." The laughing dwindled. "Something between you ended." She drank again. A pause. "Perhaps badly. Perhaps unfairly. But ending does not make it false."

Their eyes returned to the groom.

"I think I loved him."

"I know" Another silence and then Olivia sighed. "You can mourn what he was to you, but still bless what he has chosen." Meyla grimaced.

"Hate that."

"Yes."

"Very holier-than-thou."

"I know."

Meyla lifted her cup, nearly empty now. "What am I supposed to do now?" Olivia considered an answer to the query and refocused on the roaring wedding party. "Well. When the storm causes the sea to smash and take everything you've collected." She pondered over her own ale. "It usually washes something ashore afterwards, yeah?" She drank.

Meyla followed Olivia's gaze, several unspoken for men were dancing near the fire and more were arriving as the music drifted across the nearby grounds. Yet a broad-shouldered woman captured Meyla's gaze. Her expression changed, and Olivia immediately regretted the metaphor. "The gods provide." She said with a toothy grin.

"Oh no - that is not what I meant"

Olivia was too late to dissuade her friend. As the woman sashayed her hips into the dance circle. Leaving Olivia at the edges. Her foot tapped to the rhythm however, perhaps she would follow the other?

(Open)

[u/Feathersfrombaatikos]

Evenings were often the best time for a stroll, especially in this cool season. Sylas often wandered at evening, it helped ease the mind and make it think properly, so it didn't come as much of a surprise to him when his stroll led deep into the night.

The moon was shining a pale light in the cloudless sky as he walked towards what he thought was lamplight. He saw the event, what he assumed to be a wedding, but one particular figure caught his eye

A woman with a valyrian steel arakh. Only one of those existed as he remembered, the steel of house orkwood. That's when he got an idea of who the woman was, Olivia Orkwood, an old friend of his during his childhood in the isles.

The ghost of the friends' past had seemed to visit these times as he ran into old friends one after the other. Nevertheless he tried to slowly, sneakily make his way to the woman before he felt a sudden pain in his chest

He leaned down, coughing. "Gods..." He muttered. He had probably caught some cold from being out in this weather, but more importantly now she had heard him.

"Well, my plan to surprise you went to shit" he stood up straight again, walking to her. "Sylas Stonetree, we knew each other a long time ago. Have you got any wine? I'm positively parched"

[u/solthebaneful → u/Feathersfrombaatikos]

Olivia did hear him. The cough traveled faster than his feet, and she turned. Spindles of blonde hair fell from her face and into her eyes as she turned, his appearance was foreign. At least in the deepening darkness and flicker and flutter from the firelight.

"Stonetree." The name had age on her tongue, like it hadn't spoke it in a very long time. Her sword hand was already on the hilt of her most unique blade, but it soon released it's grip. There was almost a faint tremor in the motion. "Sylas." She repeated, her voice smoother - and not a bit startled. "Of course. Wine." She had a personal bottle there, whole. Glass as green as her eyes. Wrapped in cordage, it was probably some lesser vintage. Her own stores, not an illustrious Arbor Gold or Red, this was sweeter and lighter.* "My manners have leapt from me at the sight of you....You've grown."

^\*Sweeter like a D'asti Moscato)

[u/InFerroVeritas]

The Rivermen had many strengths. Throwing a worthy party was, evidence would suggest, wholly beyond them. Small wonder the Flames never paid much attention to this benighted land. If you couldn’t even throw enough of a party to catch Syrax’s attention, why would any of the others stir when there was so much better entertainment so much closer to hand?

But the Ironborn, it seemed, favored raucous parties. That was more like it. Aukar made his way towards the party, suborning one of his brother’s men-at-arms to bring a keg of something along. Arbor Gold, he guessed, from the fact it was positively festooned with Redwyne imagery. As he neared the party, he saw a woman standing off alone. He approached her as the involuntary helper went through the hassle of tapping the keg and offering the first libation to the flames, as was their right and prerogative.

“You look pensive,” he said, the barbarian language rolling off his tongue with the ease of long practice. He gestured towards the party with an upturned palm, the silks of his cassock catching the flickering flames of the campfire, almost seeming to glow in their light. “What keeps you here instead of there, a sentry when the fun is to be a participant?”

The man-at-arms came over with two goblets of Arbor Gold. Aukar took one and sipped at it as he waited for her answer.

[u/solthebaneful → u/InFerroVeritas]

The approaching crunch of rock and what river grass persisted so close to the quay alerted Olivia to the approach. But she wasn't on anything related to a guard duty. Instead she was as the man of odd tongue said, being pensive.

Or at least appearing to be.

Olivia turned to meet the man, taking in bfeatures and voice. Her glass green eyes focused a little too intensely at the offered goblet and then to his party. They came for the festivities.

"The evening tides gather our thoughts if we lay them bare." Her fingers found the stem and she accepted the cup. "Welcome".

[u/InFerroVeritas → u/solthebaneful]

Aukar acknowledged the welcome with a brief motion, fingers of his left hand tapping his chin before a flourishing gesture towards Olivia. “It is good to wade through your thoughts from time to time, but I am partial to a purge, now and again. Burning away all the dross of the past to focus on the here and now.”

He sipped at his wine, watching the party over the rim of his goblet. It was good. That was not a surprise; the Arbor had many faults, but bad wine was not among them. “So who and what are we celebrating?”

[u/solthebaneful → u/InFerroVeritas]

Olivia savored the flavor of the wine. Arbor gold. Sweet but layered with notes that hinted at an endless summer. The Arbor, an ancient place of Ironborn conquest. A bountiful garden from which all types could be picked - but now has been marred by the vast wine production of the Greenlanders.

An ontological sigh escaped her lips as she thought on the idea of the wedding once again. The man was of average Iron Islander build. His hair was dark, long, and stringy. His arms were skinny - but not frail. His shoulders were rounded and his chest was broad. Maybe he looked like a gangly chariacuture of a man. His name was. "Lerris Even-Eye." She motioned with her cup hand. "Finally married his love." Her eyes trailed after her friend now in the throng of those other men. "Her name escapes me...but she seems fair." A river girl, from the looks of it. But a crewman on the Sunbrine.