A/N: So it turns out I'm not quite done with playing with Westeros' folklore. I'm tempted to continue in this vein a bit if there's an interest in the relationships of the Seven (and their parallels to canon characters). Standard disclaimer applies; George built the world, I'm just having a bit of fun.
The Stranger watches the Maiden everywhere she goes. There's nothing logical about this obsession save that she is everything he isn't, everything he'll never be, and is everything he'll never have. She's smiles and sunlight and flowers and pretty smiles and 'please' and 'thank you'. She belongs to no one, and because of that seems to belong to everyone. Black hearted jealousy burns beneath his dark cloak for she may be nobody's, but she'll never be his.
The Maiden is ever aware of the Stranger in the background, his gaze burning into her back. She doesn't understand the looks he gives her when he thinks she's not looking. She doesn't see what draws him to his shadowed corners and keeps him there; what stops him from walking out into the sunlight. He's the only one who keeps her at arm's length when the rest of the world rushes to hold her close and sometimes she hates him for that. But her curiosity, no longer childlike and not yet adult, desperately wants to know what it would feel like if he ever took her in his arms.