Obara

The morning lessons had been called off because maester Calleotte was busy helping Kayala deliver her baby, so he couldn't teach the girls that day. That was good news for Obara, who had never liked lessons very much. She hardly knew the letters and it was painfully difficult for her to read a whole text, no matter how simple its words may be. So she was happy, playing with her sisters and their dolls, while they waited for their little brother's birth.

Playing with dolls had never been Obara's favorite activity: in Oldtown it had been her only entertainment during the hours in which her mother slept, but she had never liked it that much. In the Water Gardens she hadn't picked a doll until that moment, and when she did she found them even more boring than before. But her younger sisters liked them, and she wanted to play with them. Besides, Tyene had got to the Gardens only a couple of days before, so that she could see their little brother when he was born, and it was the first time in their lives that they were together. Obara knew that if she wanted to spend some time with her she had to play children's games, because there was no other way.

So the 3 sisters were together in Nym's room, each of them braiding a different doll's hair and dressing them up with pretty gowns as to go to a party or a feast. Of course, this sounded very silly for Obara, who hadn't been to any such event, but considering what she'd been told about them she didn't find them interesting in the least and didn't understand the necessity to dress up especially for the occasion. Her mother had told her once that men didn't care about what clothes women wore or what hairstyle they used, as long as there was a beautiful body under the dress. Obara knew her mother had extensive knowledge about men's preferences, as pleasing them was her job, and she believed her. But she decided to keep playing without complaining instead of sharing this information with her younger sisters.

"Ladies, your father is calling you. He wants you to go and meet your little sister," maester Calleotte announced when they had been playing for hours.

"Our little sister?" Nym asked. "Weren't we going to have a little brother?"

"There is no way to tell if a baby will be a boy or a girl until he or she is born, Nymeria. Most people use the male gender to speak about unborn children, even though they may turn out to be girls. Now that your sister has been born, we know she is a girl," he answered.

Obara, Nymeria and Tyene followed the maester to the room where their father was with Kayala and the newborn baby. The maester knocked, was given leave to come in and entered the room, followed by the girls. Tyene was the first one to get in, while Obara and Nym stood shyly by the threshold.

Kayala was lying down on the bed, with her legs covered by the light sheets. Oberyn sat on a chair next to her and the baby slept soundly in a small wooden cradle near them. Tyene came near it to peer curiously at her sister before addressing the captain.

"How is my sister called, Kayala?" The little girl asked in her sweet voice.

Obara remained in her place, not daring to go near. Her younger sisters were pretty, they could be cute and lovely whenever they wanted and everybody liked them. Nobody could say the same of Obara: she wasn't a beautiful girl, and she didn't have good manners or a natural charm to make up for it. She loved her sisters, but she couldn't help envying them a little for that, and for having their father since they were little.

"Her name is Sarella. Do you like it?" Kayala told Tyene, smiling.

"Yes, I do. She is very pretty," Tyene praised her.

Nymeria decided then to come near Sarella's cradle and take a tender look at the baby. "She is beautiful!" she exclaimed. "Will she be a Martell as our cousin Arianne? Or a Sand like me? Or is she a Flowers?" She asked then.

"She is a Sand like you," Father replied. "As long as I don't get married, I won't have any child with my surname. But it doesn't matter, because though you are not Martells you are still my daughters. You are all my little snakes."

Oberyn called his daughters "little snakes" ever since the day he had told them the story of why they called him the Red Viper. Nymeria had asked him then if they couldn't be snakes like him, as they were his children and wouldn't be able to be suns because they weren't Martells. Oberyn had accepted her idea, and adopted that nickname as a way to address them fondly since then, and as weird as the nickname sounded, they loved to be called that.

Obara knew that Oberyn loved her, and he'd always treated her like his daughter even though he didn't know for real if she was and in spite of her mother being a whore, but she still had her doubts. She had always thought that a baseborn girl as her had absolutely nothing in common to a girl of a noble family, and it amazed her to find that to her father she was equal to Nym. Of course, Obara had noticed that in the Water Gardens both noble and lowborn children played together, naked in the water and without distinctions. Maybe it means that here all children are the same, she thought. But when I grow up and become a woman, will I remain equal to my sisters for my father? Or will I be just a whore's daughter?

"Am I, too?" Obara asked her father, after coming near him. "My surname isn't even Sand: I am a Flowers, because I was born in the Reach. Am I a little snake all the same, even if I'm not dornish?"

"Come here, Obara," her father motioned for her to sin on his lap and she did so. Looking tenderly into her eyes he told her "You decided to come to Dorne with me, so you are dornish, because you chose to be. For me you are a Sand, just like your sisters. If you want all of Dorne to know you as Obara Sand, that's how it will be. You will be my Sand Snake, like Nym, Tyene and Sarella. What do you think?" Her father embraced and she laid her face against his chest.

"Yes. I'd like to be a Sand Snake," she said in a low voice, but there was a smile in her face.

"Sand Snakes! I love how it sounds!" Nymeria exclaimed.

"Well, as the daughters of Red Viper of Dorne you needed a title fittingly important and fearsome," Oberyn replied.

"But if we are Sand Snakes, Arianne can't be one of us," Tyene complained.

"Arianne is already a princess of Dorne. She doesn't need to be a Sand Snake," Obara told her younger sister.

Then Sarella started to cry, and Kayala picked her up to nurse her. "Well girls, I think it's time to leave Kayala and Sarella so they can be alone for a while. You can come back to see your little sister later. In the meanwhile, don't you want to go and play in the pools?" Their father suggested.

"Yes! Let's go to the pools!" Nymeria and Tyene said together.

"The pools are for children," Obara complained. "I don't want to go." Obara was the oldest of all the children who were living in the Water Gardens and she was now too old for the pools. She didn't find it so amusing to splash at kids that weren't much older than Tyene while they jumped and ran around the pools, getting in and out. She could run faster than all of them and push them in whenever she wanted, and she felt out of place there. She was no longer one of them, if she had ever been, but an elder who had nothing to do there anymore. Besides, her breasts had just started to take shape and now she had hair between her legs, and it made her awkward when the little ones saw her.

"If you wish, Obara, you may come with me to play a different game. When I first met you, I promised you I would teach you how to use the spear, do you remember?" She nodded, hopeful. "I haven't yet fulfilled my promise, but I intend to. Would you like to start today?" Oberyn held out his hand to her.

The truth was that with the evenings she spent playing in the pools, the lessons, the introductions to her new family and the children in the Gardens and her riding lessons, Obara hadn't thought about the spear even once since she first got there. But now that Oberyn mentioned it, she realized that she wanted to learn how to use it, and she was very excited to do so, just as she had realized many moons before that, even though she had never thought about it, she had always wanted to have a father who loved her and taught her to be strong and independent.

Obara smiled, took her father's hand and they went together to the armory to get a spear for each of them and then to the yard, where Obara had her first fighting lesson. During the class she felt small, weak and unable to look after herself, but she wasn't out of place or awkward; she was just where she belonged. She was at home, with her family.

Author Note: I know that the books don't say anything about Obara ever being called a Flowers, but as she wasn't only born in the Reach, but she also lived there for 10 years, I thought that, at least at the beginning, she might have used that last name.