Catelyn (I)

Lady Catelyn Tully's entire world had been turned upside down over the last three weeks. So much had transpired that it was now nearly impossible to believe that it hadn't been all too long ago that her lord husband Ned and their firstborn son Robb had come stumbling back to the gates of Winterfell, having disappeared for the better part of a week, and rambling on and on of the most incredulous things.

Even a man with as impeccable a reputation for honesty as Lord Eddard or Ser Rodrik might have been understood to be raving mad, were it not for the marvelous trinkets they had brought with them to confirm the truth in their tales. Catelyn was shocked enough as it was with the small fortune of gold their horses carried – it had been as if her lord husband and his bannermen had just randomly found 10,000 Gold Dragons sitting about in the middle of the Wolfswood.

But what had really struck the Lady Of The North beyond belief were the… the… devices these foreigners had given to Ned and his company. There was, to name just one of many, that wondrous flameless metallic lantern that could capture and store the power of the sun. As Ned explained, during the day, this device was to be left outside to absorb the light of the sun, and at night, with the push of a button, it would release this stored-up energy in a brilliant white light that could outshine any great hall's hearth, and yet at the same time was devoid of any heat or smoke or flame (this, he explained, was the magic of something called "electricity").

Ned had received two of these lanterns as gifts – one he retained in their personal bedding chambers for his own personal use, for reading at night. The second he had ordered to be installed in the great dining hall of Winterfell, though he had first requested Maester Luwin to have a look at it and try to glean some of the secrets of its construction. The old Maester at once took an immense interest in it and went about as per Ned's instruction. Catelyn had to wonder just how much of a shock these devices must have been especially to a Maester of The Citadel.

And all of this was merely the beginning. Within days of Lord Eddard's return, Catelyn too had the opportunity to meet these foreigners for herself. She would forever remember the day when Lord Stark announced that several of these foreigners were to come to Winterfell for further negotiations, and that this delegation would be arriving in one of their flying "dragon-ships". In order to avoid any needless panic and chaos that the great beast would inevitably have caused upon its arrival, it had been agreed that the delegation would land somewhere in a clearing well away from Winterfell, and then proceed to the castle on horseback. Nevertheless, word had somehow gotten out, and a crowd of smallfolk from all the surrounding villages and hamlets had gathered at the site ahead of the Starks' delegation, eager to catch a glimpse of these fabled "sky peoples" who had by then had become the stuff of local legend. Even in the vast and sparsely populated North, it was amazing how quickly rumors could spread.

Ned had warned everyone there of what to expect. And yet still the arrival of the flying ship was something completely otherworldly and utterly terrifying to all those who bore witness to it. The great thunderous roar made by the beast; the great gusts of wind emerging from its wings. Catelyn had never seen anything quite like it before, and she was sure she probably would have fainted out of shock there and then if not for Ned's fortitude beside her. The sight and sound of the metal beast was enough to put all the horses and even the direwolf pups to panic (it was a fortunate thing, then, that Ned had ordered all of the animals tied up in anticipation of this). Several among the crowd had even fled the scene in fear. Even among the Stark children, the only ones not to express any fear at the spectacle of it all were Robb, who had seen it before, and Arya, whose natural curiosity and excitement seemed to outweigh any sense of dread before the shadow of that great winged beast. Otherwise, Sansa and Brandon were shocked and completely wide-eyed at the sight before them, but followed their father and mother's example and remained calm throughout the entire affair. Lady Catelyn was just grateful that she had had the good foresight to have left the youngest Rickon at Winterfell for the day.

In stark contrast to their dramatic entrance, and in contrast to the innumerable wonders they bore with them, the foreigners themselves were rather plain in appearance. Apart from a couple of dark-skinned Summer Islanders and Dornishmen who accompanied the party, they looked as if they could have passed for the Blood of the First Men, or of the Andals. The vestiments they clothed themselves in were plain and functional, devoid of any of the ostentatious colors and finery that Catelyn usually associated with exotic travelers from afar. And they all spoke the Common Tongue – some of them even in accents that Catelyn recognized, and had she not known better, would have placed them somewhere between Winterfell and the Reach.

The leader of this trading party, Lord Frederick of House Kovacs, was an intriguing character. Charming, tall, with dark, brooding looks, and rather personable in a conversation – once one managed to look past his scruffy hair and rather casual, un-lordly demeanor. He and his squire, Ser Daniel of the House Zimmerman, clearly must have been highborn nobility amongs their people, but they presented themselves in a down-to-earth manner that rather reminded Lady Caitlyn of her own lord husband's austerity. Nonetheless, Lady Catelyn could see beneath it all lay an air of confidence, intelligence, and (dare she say it?) superiority that reminded her of an old acquaintance of hers down in King's Landing...

The rest of that day had been no less eventful: the sky-peoples had such incredible tales to tell. For starters, their dragon-ship, their "Falcon", was considered tiny next to the main ship that had brought them all the way to Westeros – a ship, they claimed, the size of a city and yet able to fly faster than a bolt of lightning.

The children, for the most part, seemed to have taken a liking to these foreigners after having gotten over their initial apprehension – especially Robb, who had been with Ned with they first met them, and Arya, whose adventurous spirit never failed her, and who seemed to find in these foreigners something she could admire. Perhaps it was their societal values? Catelyn quietly disapproved with many of the things that Lord Frederick spoke of over dinner, but she could understand the appeal these values would find among the base, plebeian classes.

But for all their charm and wonder, Catelyn found something fundamentally unsettling about the sky-people and their purposes here in The North. Yes, she was disturbed by the sight and sound of that dragon-ship. Yes, she was disturbed by the stories Ned had told her of the "fire arms" – Catelyn was not a trained warrior, but even she could see the applications of such forces on the field of battle. And yes, she was disturbed by the loose, almost Dornish, level of disregard these foreigners had for proper social conduct and hierarchy. That they seemed to have taken a liking to the bastard Jon, of all people, attested to this!

But what really disturbed Cat most of all was the fact that the sky-peoples had been like them once. That they had advanced from that stage to where they are now, and all within a few hundred years… all of this had completely upended Lady Catelyn's entire perception of the Realm, of history, of everything she had ever been taught up until then. And like her lord husband, she too could see that not all of the changes they would bring would be for the better.