The air was pregnant with the smell of salt. Clumps of seaweed had washed up on the beach. The waves were rippling gently.
She was running a mere race against the sea breeze.
Her feet was aggressively trampling the sand, leaving the prints of a girl of nine-and-ten. She could almost muster up a cry each time her soles pierced through the shells brought up from the shore. She would not give up, though, but in truth her liveliness for this game was approaching its end, but nonetheless, her pace quickened and she was getting nearer to the cliffs.
Lilah could almost pace the sounds of the waves beating the shore with the sound of her heart throbbing. She felt that at most times, when she had been alone with him.
Climbing upwards, her feet bloodied, a sudden dread of her Septa's remarks about looking proper to the forthcoming dinner crept into her bewildered thoughts. Septa Wayne was a ghastly wench. If anything, Lilah would have never come to learn the meaning of that mean spirited word if it had not been of her continuous existence.
Climbing upwards, her fingernails were scraping the bare foundations of the rugged rocks, and she prayed to the Seven that her feet would not turn traitor and make her slip into the darkness. The Seven had never given their undivided attention to her foregoing prayers before, so she doubted they would give heed during this hour either. In an instant, her heart was hammering like hail on a hard surface. The rocks scraped against her bare skin painfully, red seeping into her cloth. Her weak arms and dehydrated body could only hold her up for so long. Keeping a steady pace was far from her mind. Instead, surviving at any cost, replaced it.
She could not concentrate on the details of what she had witnessed, her memories likened a fog in winter, her mind fought hard to drum up a thousand different details to plaster across it. But there was nothing that could truly describe nothing. Each thought she had seemed loud and exposed, just like every movement she made in the silence that wrapped like the fog around her. Maybe the fog was somehow in her, just as she was in it.
She reached the top of the hill.
Lilah blinked for a second, and wondered if she had been dreaming all this time.
«I spent a great amount of time here as a child, you know.» He said with a slight smile.
«Suppose you were to tell me this a bit earlier, so I could discover some serenity somewhere else.» She spoke more quickly than he did.
«I reckon if you are thinking of isolating yourself from your surroundings, you ought to have a seamstress make you a shield to wear.»
«Stop.» She said with a low voice. Tears were welding up. She didn't think she could stop it this time.
"You ought to take a shower when you go home, and your handmaiden should get double the pay in Gold Dragons."
"Robert has turned you into a blathering knight, has he not?" She was too annoyed at him to care for his comments. This was her finale departure from life, consequently witnessed by her finale paramour.
His head bent slightly to the side, and he almost smiled at that, before he continued, «I've seen my fair share of high-born ladies being sold like cattle in court.»
She looked directly at him. «Jaime.»
Coming to know the Lannisters had its advantages, and she had come to learn a vast deal of wearing a false front in the eye of the public, but it was an impossible task to do when confronted by the young Lion instead.
The Lannisters were perhaps most notorious for their crooked and bent schemes to sustain their power and position in Westeros, going as far as masking deaths of those who dared to spout scurvy rumours of their Household name. Jaime Lannister had been born into this house.
She strived hard to not deem him harshly for the actions of his father, so she liked to think that he was simply a commoner at times. It would ease her thoughts in moments like these, but it was nothing but a feeble segment of her vivid imagination to cover up the relentless truth.
«I will not wed him. I'd rather die.»
«Now, where's the joy in that?» He smirked, and looked at her directly this time.
«I rather much prefer your sister's presence if you are here to mock me.» She spit.
Jaime Lannister was much like his sister after all; a fear of showing his loved ones his true feelings or thoughts, and one might think this as a sickly disease in their household, but they wear it so proudly it would be sheer amazement if it was the former.
His locks were stuck to his damp forehead, and his eyes were the kind of green that pushed its way through the piles of gritty snow to remind you that spring was coming. Septa Wayne recited plenty of times to her ears about the improper and uncivilized ways of gawking at others, though she was far too occupied to practice this.
«You think too much and feel too much, and you run ridiculously fast.» he said flatly, snapping her out of her thoughts. She blinked at his remark.
«Are you my newly appointed Septa, Ser Jaime?» She said with a condescending sneer.
«We're jesting now, are we? You're not a Lannister, Lilah, you ought to know that by now.» he divulged, his tone seemingly sharper than before. Was he looking for the old Lilah? Seemingly, his gaze was fixated on the gash across her neck, like he had never laid his eyes upon it until this very moment.
«What do you reckon by that?» she managed to utter out, bristled by his response.
Jaime sighed, before opening his mouth to say, «Gods, Lilah. You know what I meant. You can't conceal your feelings with snide remarks. It is not of your nature, I'm afraid.» He paused for what seemed like an eternity.
He looked down. «I came here to apologize.» He said with a strained voice.
«What for?» She whispered this time around, staring down at his hands. She dared not jump to conclusions in these moments, as one word could ruin it all. He wanted him to say it.
«For whatever part I had in this… fostering this sore moment of your life.» Her chest tightened, a knot emerging in her stomach and sweat was forming on her forehead.
She didn't want to hear that, but she gave him a stifled smile instead.
«You told me you had a dream... where we grew old together.» She pressed, her eyes filled to the brim with tears. She had hoped he wouldn't see her in this light. A forlorn, little girl who lacked will to restrain herself and her blubbering thoughts.
He stood there for a while, refusing to meet her eyes. «I suppose our last reencounter did not last for long and I did not think of it in that matter anymore.» He said, abruptly amending the matter of the affairs.
She was naught but a fool for thinking he would be generous enough to give away a round answer.
He had voiced it not to many moons ago. Lilah never forgot the blissfulness of it all, and she had held on to that for quite some time, but the lack of realism can turn the mind into a weary, feeble thing. She stood witness to that and she had locked something away, something deep inside her. The truth that she had once known, but... she chose to forget.
He watched from high above as the waves crashed violently against the base of the crumbling cliffs. «Lilah...» He paused. «I do not have time to see to every fleeting moment that goes wrong in your life.» He sounded honest this time.
The chill sea air bit into her, pushing her back from the precipice, but she stood her ground, watching as waves built up speed and height from far out in the ocean until the peaks rose high above the salty body of water and crashed over into the cliff. As a child, she had feared these mountainous heights and Renly had teased her for as long as she could remember. She wondered what her brother would think of her now.
She would take matters in to her own hands, she decided.
She held his gaze and said, «I'm asking you to take a leap of faith.»
Jaime looked everywhere and nowhere but in her direction. «You know I can't do that.» He looked at her this time, licking his lips.
She threaded lightly further to the ledge.
«If I jump, would I survive?»
«Take a second.» He paused. «Think of Renly..." He paused. "Think of Stannis.» His voice was calmer than before.
His eyebrows curled against each other, and his eyes widened with anger. «Renly and Stannis is waiting for you!» There was a hint of plea in his voice this time.
«I DON'T CARE!» She finally screamed, while she tried to hold back the seething torrent of tears to wash away her anger.
«You said we would be together! You said we would grow old together!» She turned around, no longer facing his pleading eyes.
«But you don't know for certain, do you?»
«Lilah, Seven Hells! Don't do this!» He shouted into the wind.
Her left shoe left her right foot, and so did the rest of her.
«Lilah!»
The sounds of the undying waves hitting the rocks was sounding more and more like a lullaby, time felt slower than before and she fell into an eternal sleep.