A Holiday by Decree
~~ Day 9 ~~
After Tyrion allowed Sansa to throw the first coin into the pool, he had demonstrated and explained to her the technique to use to dive downward, under the water. She had watched with fascination at first. Feeling uncertain, she expressed concern when she realized that it would be necessary to keep her eyes open in the water.
Tyrion assured her it was perfectly natural, and especially important when swimming in natural environments like the ocean; the fact that humans could see underwater, even if it was in a limited way, kept them safe from possible threats in the water. For now, though, they would use their capability for Tyrion's game - to locate and retrieve the tossed coins in the water as quickly as they could.
Sansa was glad that Tyrion had stayed with her in the shallower end of the pool at first. They dropped one of the gleaming copper coins into the water a few more times, and Tyrion demonstrated how to dive for her again. She marveled at his fluidity in water, how effortlessly he could break down and up out of the water at a moment's notice. By contrast, it was still taking her time to get the courage up even to crouch down under the relatively shallow water even for a moment to pick up the coin.
However, slowly after a few attempts, she had retrieved the coin successfully. Before long, she still was not diving down as Tyrion did, but she began to understand how she could take a deep breath before submerging and blow bubbles on the way down to ease her lungs while she was underwater.
The time passed quickly, and soon enough, Sansa's confidence grew, so that she was able to plunge down and pick up the coins much more quickly. Gradually over the course of the morning, they had formulated a sort of competition, where they stood back to back, often laughing, as Tyrion threw one coin toward the shallow end of the pool, and Sansa tossed the other into the deep end.
After hearing the faint plunging sound of the copper, Tyrion teased, "I think I heard where that one landed."
Sansa scoffed, "I know what you're doing: if you think distracting me so I don't hear where you tossed yours will slow me down, you have another thing coming, Tyrion Lannister."
"Fine, GO!" the vexing man behind her quipped, and they both went off in search of their queries.
In spite of Tyrion's much better swimming, he was older than her, and confessed he occasionally had trouble catching sight of his coin in the deeper water. Slowly Sansa had gotten braver about going underwater more immediately after spotting her coin as well, so she had begun beating him more frequently. Hearing his enthusiastic splashing though, she realized he intended to try on hard this one a bit.
A moment later, another splash and Tyrion's loud "Ah HA!" told her this round was his before she even spotted her coin.
