Nobody was waiting for them at Tyrosh but Jorah kept looking over his shoulder and refused to settle. He would leave her on the inn for days with just about enough food and disappear like smoke the gods know where. They weren't there for a month before he had somehow get them safe passage toward the summer islands, she didn't mind to be uprooted yet again, Tyrosh streets were colorful from her high window but the eyes of everyone were colder than the snow she had yet to see.
This time the travel was uneventful, the dry goods merchant was a petty little thing that didn't care for her as long as he got paid and Jorah pulled his weight around the ship. It was while looking at him, sweating under the brazing sun, pulling the ropes from the high veils that she fell the stirrings of something it would take her years to put a name to.
Lotus port was nothing like Braavos regardless of the fact they both had sea water, ships and that dead fish smell all port's seemed to need. Here that smell didn't mix with the sweetness of decomposition but with the equally sweet smell of rotting fruit. Bravos had been cold, hard like the steel swords they cherished so much, while Lotus looked more like the fruits baskets they had for sale, hot and wet, half dripping, half rotten, always colorful.
-Come, I have a place to stay here, I know the…owner-
It turned out that it wasn't an inn or anything alike, but a house, were Jorah would pay with gold and work for room and food. It was a nice place, old and very big, surrounded by trees, here houses seemed to be so far away from each other, so unlike any other place Dany had been before, houses on the continent barely had space to move between them much less miles of fruit plantations. The interior was more like a dream, were every manse and "luxurious" palace she remembered was a memory of brown dirt and harsh stone here everything was white, blue and green. White of cold marble under her feet, of lace curtains like ghosts fluttering between the harsh light outside and the shadows inside, of the sheets on her bed and of the linen dress Jorah got for her. Blue in the decorations of the tiles, animal after animal, flower after flower, a jungle in blue and white covering the walls, blue of the endless sky above and of the equally endless turquoise sea. And green, green of the other jungle, the one outside, always relentless, trying to invade the house, covering full halls and creeping through cracks on the walls.
The owner that Jorah "knew" was Ife, a big woman of skin like chocolate, thick smiles and thicker hips that regarded Dany with that level of absentmindedness most adults reserved for small children and the mentally retarded. But then what interest could she possibly have in her, just a girl, all knees and elbows that scurried around the house like an unobtrusive shadow and warmed stone eggs on the sun. She didn't mind, time and her brother attentions had left her wary, others hadn't helped, every person she had know before seemed to want something from her, at this point indifference sounded more like peace than anything else. And peace indeed it was, no court to hold, no handmaidens to be wary off, no brother or rich merchants to placate. She wondered if her travel toward Braavos left her half wild, because some days she was sure had forgot how to talk and it didn't take her long to lose her shoes again, walking barefoot between the shadows of the trees and curtains, eventually even outside, into the trees.
She found what little companionship she needed on the kitchens, were Ife's mother Yejide ruled as sure as any queen and where no man dared to enter. Around the hearth batting eggs and pulling the feathers out of dead chickens she learned of gods and mortals, of food and fire, she learned to cook. She even remained when other women whose name she never learned brought news from all around the islands, who was born, who died, who married and who cheated, she learned of the secret world she never cared or even knew, the world that resided warm under the stairs and she wondered if this was what it meant to have a mother.
Jorah worried, at the beginning- There are others your age close by, it would do you good- But eventually he to forgot and left her be, more worried about whatever he did on the docks at morning and working around the house in the evenings. More worried with Ife and their midday naptime on the hammock, under the shadow of the mangoes in the backyard. Ife whose smiles were thicker and wetter for him when she giggled and moaned under his, so big, hands and above him, all glistening naked skin. They squirmed, playful like children and Dany would watch them, crouched in the shadows of the portal. Her own hands would be wet to, on the mango she always made sure to snatch before they took reign under them, the flesh tender and soft under teeth's, her eyes as unwavering as the string of anger/shame/desire on her belly.
But for all her resentment of Ife and her hips she was still the one she ran to when, during the first storm of the season, with the air crackling and charged she woke up with a pool of blood between her legs. Jorah falling of naked from her bed tangled in the mosquito net, sword already in hand, would have been somewhat funny/infuriating/desirable if she wasn't so sure of her imminent death. Ife wasn't one for hysterics though, or shame for that matter, that night on the portal Dany learned not only to wash blood out of linen but everything she apparently had to know of cotton in her underwear and of men's and women and "dicks" and "cunts" She tried not to think how she already knew that last part, not with Jorah looking at them with a half amused half abashed smile on his face so close by, sitting half naked on the portal rail with the storm downgraded to a pitter-patter of drops and frogs at his back.
The next day, with the earth still wet and that electrifying charge on the air, Yejide dressed her in white with blue beads collars and bracelets then taking her hand and a basket of white roses marched toward the enraged sea. They entered enough for the water to lap their knees, Danny carrying the basket by then.
-An offering for the Mother, little mother-
-I am not a mother Tata-
The old woman gave her a thoughtful look and a toothless smile.
-Not yet little mother, not yet-
That's was enough she supposed, and left the precious charge float away on the next wave, watching till the hungry sea devoured it. When they got back Jorah waited on the porch steps, he said nothing but gave her a new dress