So I felt sad today, resulting in my returning to my Song of Ice and Fire obsession and finding a really, really sad thing to write about. What's more depressing than the tragic tale of the little bird and the hound? SanSan, it probably will never have a happy ending, but we like it anyway.
These birds don't sing.
They're just crows, lurking around waiting for him to miss something, trying to gain a peck at the dead bodies that surrounded him. It was strange, being surrounded by bodies and not being the cause of their deaths. In fact, he no longer held a sword at all; instead of cleaving flesh, he was cutting into the earth with a shovel, hacking at it over and over again. He was growing soft from disuse, the only muscles remaining intact being the ones he used to dig the graves. The Quiet Isle was anything but quiet, the birds constantly swarming him, cawing into his ears. He wasn't a warrior anymore. He didn't deserve to be one after he failed to protect her, failed to help her any more than he already had. Those were mere japes at help if anything, barely alleviating her pain and suffering, only to make a small part of himself feel a tiny bit better.
These birds don't sing.
He kept digging, trying to ignore the caws, trying to envision the little bird he knew happy and carefree once more. Ridiculing her for her dreams had been both necessary if she were to have any chance at survival and painful, seeing her naïve assumptions about the world fall apart before her eyes was almost like going ahead and sticking her face into a fire and watching her shriek and cry. Genuinely good and beautiful things were torn apart in this sort of world. That didn't mean he didn't miss it. Last he heard, the bastard boy king was dead and she had disappeared. Disappearing was good. When she was disappeared, he could imagine that she was alive and well, living happily in Braavos and forgetting about every beating, forgetting about her father's head being forced upon a spike, and forgetting about him
For some reason that part didn't hold the same sweet flavor as the rest of his fantasy. He couldn't picture her dead or in conditions she would consider unspeakable because quite frankly he couldn't handle it. Every torturous remark he ever made towards her would have been for nothing if she didn't survive in this world. If she was dead now, he should have just let her keep on chirping like the little bird she was.
These birds don't sing.
If he had been told ten years ago or even just three years ago that he would spend his time digging graves among religious men, he would have called that messenger stark raving mad and continued on his way. He probably would have gotten incredibly drunk afterwards and then rode Stranger to get back to his cot. It was all the little bird's fault. He would have been fine simply going craven and running away from the flames, going somewhere else to continue cutting down anyone foolish enough to attack him if it weren't for her. He didn't know what drew him to her chambers that night, but the moment she arrived he grabbed her and demanded a song. He was drunk, so drunk that some of the details are blurry to that day, but he didn't know what he wanted her to do. He didn't know whether he wanted to fuck her and take the last piece of her innocence and finally get her to hate him, or kill her before the world truly ruined her, but the moment she started singing….
The moment she started singing he really was a lost cause.
Singing a hymn of peace and gentleness wasn't what he expected, and it felt as if she had taken the knife and ran him through anyway. He wanted to take her with him; he remembered that much, but she refused, and it was probably in her best interest that she did. He was insane, he held a knife up to her throat, she was clever enough to know that a drunken and brutally scarred hound with half the mind to rape her would not be her savior; even if she knew he would never hurt her, not really. He couldn't.
These birds don't sing.
It was really her silly little hymn, combined with the Brother who saved him that led him to this moment, displacing earth to bury bodies surrounded by those who longed for peace. That's what he wanted for his little bird, after all, and he hoped she received it without dying. Or maybe, the sweet little bird finally learned and became the wolf she was supposed to be, unbound by the rules and honor code that her silly family followed. He couldn't imagine her trying to take revenge, but she could see her standing proud and strong without fear of those cruel enough to cage a bird or beat a cub.
These birds don't sing.
But he can imagine that his simply changed the song.