Sansa showed Sandor more kindness than he had ever known. If she were human, he was sure she would've had some halfwit bard write a dozen songs about her. It wouldn't have been difficult. She was beautiful and kind. She was gentle and serene. All it took was finding more words, putting them to rhyme, and some drunken strumming on a lute.

She had her own songs, though. She sang to him often. He could never understand the words, but whatever ill feelings he had were gone as soon as she sang.

"What is that language?" He asked her once, after she was done singing.

"It's the language of the sea." She shrugged. "Every creature that lives there can understand it. I don't know any songs in the common tongue. Are there any good ones?"

He laughed. "No. They are all ridiculous fairytales."

"Fairytales?"

He tried to explain. "Children's stories about love, and royalty, and knights."

"Do they all have happy endings?"

"…No." He grimaced. "Most of them do, though."

"Are they made up, then?"

"No." He shook his head. "But they aren't all the truth either. Sometimes people pay others to write songs and stories about them, and make them out to be better than they actually are. Just because someone sang it in a song doesn't mean it's the truth."

"My songs are true, though."

"What was that song, then?" He asked.

"That was the song of the mother turtle." She told him. "She has to leave her eggs on the shore, and return to the sea where she waits for them to find her. She waits and waits, but none of her babies ever come back to her. She believes that they are dead, and mourns for them until the day that she dies, but her babies alive all along. They had only been lost and unable to find her again."

"And how do you know that's a true story, and not something someone just made up?"

"Because I wrote it about my mother." She smiled sadly. "My mother wasn't a sea turtle, but all of her children were taken from her somehow. She had five, and when she was killed, she thought everyone was dead except for me. But I was married by then, and she hated the man who became my husband, so I'm sure she had heard sometime before her death."

"There's another song," She said after a moment of silence. "I didn't write it. It's about a merman and a human woman. It's said that the woman was very beautiful, and loved by many men of her own kind, but she loved the merman most of all. Theirs was a secret affair, because no one would ever understand their love. But she was made to go away, and the merman missed her greatly. She tried to love another, but instead found only sadness. She had a child that died, and went to her old friend for comfort. The merman offered to take her away, to take her to sea with him, and she threw herself into the ocean. They found a witch to give her the tail of a fish in exchange for her beauty. So she traded her legs and her beauty for the tail of a fish."

Sandor laughed. "I've no pretty face to trade, but perhaps that witch could give me a tail as well?"

The smile dropped from her face. "Why would you want that?"

He turned away. "What about the other songs, then?"

She was quiet for a moment, and then he felt her hand on his shoulder. "They would kill you, or capture you and hurt you." She whispered. "They'd do it now, if they could. They'd find a way to get you under the water."

"Who?" He turned to her. "Why?"

She pursed her lips. "My husband's men. Either husband, take your pick. The first husband's family would kill you; the second husband's men would probably capture you and torture you. They would do anything to get me to go to them once they had you."

"Why? What did you do?"

"My first husband was never well liked by his family, and he didn't like them much either. I think he killed one of them, and they think that I helped him do it. I didn't." She took a breath, slow and calm. "My second husband, I… He was trying to hurt someone I cared about, a child. I couldn't… I never wanted to marry him, I was supposed to marry someone else, but the plans, they all went sour and he said I had to marry him instead if I ever wanted to be free. But he was going to kill that little boy…"

"And you killed him first, didn't you?" There was something in her expression that he'd seen a thousand times before. Every time he went to war, every time a new knight was made, every time a young boy's dreams were crushed, they had that same look. Their first kills changed something inside of them, and every kill from then on changed them more and more until they were dogs just like him. She said she'd killed three men. "Was that the third man you killed?"

She nodded. "My family, we lived in colder parts of the sea. My siblings and I kept sharks, big black ones with white bellies for our family's color. They were rare, almost gone. The Merking had mine killed when it was only a baby, but my sister's escaped. I was with my husband when I saw her again, my sister's shark. She had grown, and was so big. She knew me, she remembered. All I had to do was tell her that I was in danger, tell her that I didn't trust him…"

Sandor had heard of sharks. They were monsters in the sea, big creatures that swam faster than you could believe and had rows and rows of dagger-like teeth. The Captain of his old ship had kept one's jaws hung up on the wall, to remind the crew what could be lurking beneath the waves.

"You said your second husband was killed by sharks."

She looked away. "She had a... pack."

The image of those jaws entered his head. A dozen of those creatures, twice the normal size, tearing at a slick-skinned merman entered his mind and refused to leave. "Seven hells, Sansa."

"I had to." She said, grabbing the front of his tunic. "I had to."

"We all do what we have to do." He told her. "In your position, I probably would've killed him myself."

"He told me to keep my hands clean, I…" She looked down at her own hands.

"Where did that blood come from, before?" He took her hand in his, trying not to tear through the thin skin that came up her fingers to the middle knuckles.

"One of them found me. I didn't kill him, but I fought. I scratched at his gills." She held her hand up to her own, on the side of her neck, they were fluttering nervously the more she spoke. "He might've died afterwards, I don't know. I scratched really hard. He bled a lot. I didn't stay to find out, though, I swam away."

"It's alright now, listen." He tried to calm her. She seemed close to tears. "How about I dig out a little pool for you, and you can stay here on the island with me for a few days? Would that make you feel better?" Usually she had to return to the sea for food, or to sleep. She could take short naps on the land but it was uncomfortable for her.

She rubbed her nose with the back of her wrist. "I'll help."

So together they dug out a hole just big enough for her near the center of the island. She took some empty wine bottles, and he took a large shield, and they took a few hours filling it with water from the ocean until it was full. Sansa lowered herself in, careful not to splash, and smiled at him.

"I'm getting more of my ocean on your land, Sandor." She said. "You have so little to live in, and I have so much. This isn't fair."

"It's my island and I'll say what's right." He rasped. "And you can have your little puddle if it suits you, and I know it does so don't bother lying."

He turned his back to her and began tearing at one of his lengths of fabric to make a new roof for his lean-to when she spoke again.

"Sandor, would you really have traded your legs for a tail?"

He paused, but decided to tell it true. "Yes."

"Would it have been for the same reason the lady did it for her merman? You would change yourself… for me?"

"Yes." He didn't turn to look at her. He couldn't. But the silence that followed stretched on and on, and the more seconds that passed the tighter his chest felt. He had almost decided to turn when she spoke again.

"Would you like me to sing for you?"

"If you would."

And she sang, and he found he was no longer troubled. While he couldn't understand the words, he was sure she was singing the same song she had told him about before. He would trade his legs, and whatever else it took, if he could, but he couldn't. There was no witch to cast some spell, and the story might not have been true at all. But that he thought that might not even matter, because she was there with him.