Missing children

Selyse was walking back and forth on the ship's deck as they kept sailing towards the ancestral home of House Baratheon. It was the only way she revealed how deeply worried she was about her husband and her two daughters.

Shireen and Rhea had been kidnapped in front of her very eyes.

She had no words for explaining the terror she had felt, when magic of all things had moved her, the girls, Mya, Eric and Brienne from the Great Hall of Storm's End and into the capital of all places. Where those monsters had been attacking. And her daughters had been taken hostages together with their cousins, both within the marriage bed and outside the marriage bed, as if those monsters wanted all the members of the new Baratheon generation to be threatened if Robert and Stannid did not obey whatever they were told. One mistake, and the whole House Baratheon may die out.

"Stannis...Stannis, please, bring our girls back home safely..." she pleaded in her mind, her hands trembling, not from the cold sea winds but her own inner fears.

Selyse had never been the most motherly of women, rather the type to prefer older children that could behave reasonable well and speak properly to people around, over wailing infants who was dependant on adults for everything and young toddlers who had those horrible daily tantrums, but she loved her daughters despite them not being the needed male heirs for Stannis and he was fond of his two children as well in his own manner without saying it.

But in this situation, Selyse had never cursed her own limits as a Great Lady like she did now. She had failed to protect Shireen and Rhea, the two blessings in the marriage, and there was nothing she could do to aid Stannis on his mission to try saving them. Sure, she was two months away from having a third child, perhaps the son who could become a little brother to the girls, but what if Stannis and the girls never returned?!

Stannis, her stern, humourless but still loyal husband who had never broken his marriage vows. Shireen, the sweet-natured and clever oldest girl. Rhea, in every inch a miniature of Stannis and his personality with the Targaryen looks.

Would she be finding herself alone at Storm's End, having to try raising a third daughter or much-needed son without those three alongside her as a family?

Selyse feared for her husband and daughters in so many ways that she could not focus on anything else, praying to Elenei that the daughter of the sea god and goddess of wind would protect her family.

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In Winterfell, a similar feeling of dread had fallen over Catelyn Stark ever since she read the newest letter from Eddard.

Sansa and Arya had been kidnapped by someone who held a grudge against House Stark for the Rebellion and what role Lyanna had played in it.

The current Lord Stark knew his wife well enough to know that Catelyn would never believe him if he wrote that their daughters had been kidnapped by the aged-up "ghost" of the stillborn bastard child that Lyanna had borne Rhaegar, so instead he had written that someone had acted out of revenge for the Rebellion when the attack on the capital happened, taking use of that none of the Stark guards had been there with Eddard and his three children.

"My girls...my poor girls! Cursed be that long-reaching shadow of the Rebellion, and how Lyanna is affecting the Stark family even now from beyond the grave!"

A cry came from the cradle next to her bed, reminding Catelyn of why she could not leave Winterfell now. It was not just for Bran and Rickon needing their mother and her own duties as Lady Stark, she had given birth to a third daughter mere days before her two older ones were stolen from him, in front of Eddard's very eyes as he was unable to stop it from his own injuries.

"Saya, I am so sorry...I hoped that we four would be able to travel south when you were a few months older and meet your sisters…." she whispered, taking the baby into her arms and cried. All Catelyn could do was to pray to the Seven and the Old Gods that Sansa and Arya would be found quickly and saved as soon as possible, so Eddard could bring them back home to Winterfell and herself, so they were safe.

"Ned...please, please, bring them home…!"

She could hardly know that Sansa and Arya were actually in a whole different world at that moment, and that any search for them in Gondor would be a nightmare because the Kingdom was pretty huge even now long past its glory days and that the girls was about to join the "Orphan labour force", a legal system where the orphans in Gondor past the age of seven, was made to leave the orphanages and sent to work as young maids and farm-workers on various farms out in the countryside, if they were not already registered as apprentices in some craft inside the cities or the larger villages.

~X~X~X~X~X~X

Author note: Agriculture plays a crucial role in the economy of developing countries, and provides the main source of food, income and employment to their rural populations. I headcanon that Gondor does not want any groups of young thieves or similar gangs out on the streets if they are orphans with no relatives to care for them, so this "Orphan labour force" was invented as a way to both keep children off the streets where they risked to get into the bad side of the law, and to offer them a chance to both support themselves through work, but also to get extra workers for farming families at important times of the year such as sowing in the spring and harvesting in autumn

Saya's name is a combination of the names of her sisters, and given that Catelyn is 32 years old and Rickon was born the year before, I thought she still had a good chance of getting pregnant with a sixth child, and thus prevented from traveling to King's Landing for now, for very good reasons!