A crown of roots and ice
pt.2
She was a small girl living in a big man's world. While she was excited to travel North, enjoying the change of scenery, her father didn't experience the same joy as she did. She had more liberties now that her mother stayed in the castle of her brother, in the Vale. She was too sick to go north, and someone had to stay with the younger children. It was a wonder that her mother let her travel with her Lord Father, accompanying her older brothers in their trail of war. She didn't care about how much farther North she was going to end up, she only wanted to be free. Their lord told her about how much land there was up North and how freely she would be riding if she wanted to join them. She was still too young to understand why they were riding North in the first place.
Her father told her that they were returning home, but home for her was South and near the water. She long preferred to walk in the sand, her toes in the cold water looking at the baptism going, carefully praying with the men of the castle too. She didn't really like the look of the white tree bark and red leaves of the Heart trees the Northmen liked so much. They were scary. Even if her friends with the green and grey-ish skin she had made in the forest told her stories about gods and ghost living inside and granting wishes if she prayed hard enough. They tried to sound reassuring, but sometimes, when the night was dark and cold and that animals were walking near the tents, they would come back into her head and haunt her for the night. But when it was Bran, the one her father, her brothers and the other soldiers with them called The Builder that was narrating the stories she liked them better than the ones about her god.
Brandon was truly a builder, for he was making plans to raise a big castle and a wall to stop intruders and Icemen from entering their lands. Her father had shown her where the castle Bran would build was to be on the lowland they were camping on. It was near a forest going from dark brown and green to red and white. It was in the same forest where the snow and the trees were only making one that she found her friends. They would play and run and jump and climb and dance with her when her brothers were to busy for her or when her scepta wasn't paying close attention to her. She would tell them about everything and they would listen and they would tell her tales about the very first king in the North and explain the war when she would run out of conversations. She would also tell them about her fear of her future wedding to their leader.
'' Because he's all ol' an' grey, an' I have yet to bleed see…''
They didn't seem to understand why she had to be bleeding to get married, for they had all see her blood when she would scrap her knees falling. She didn't know either, to be honest, nobody wanted to tell her why. He mother had told her that it was because she would be ready to be married and bear children to life. But she didn't want to bear children to life. She wanted to run and jump and dance and climb all she wanted.
She's nine years old, and her father had already promised her hand to Brandon -The Builder- of the Stark family. He was much older than her, with seven and ten year names days more than she had. He wasn't playing with wood swords and riding poneys anymore like the younger boys would do all day long. He was standing tall, just like her lord father, with his dark brown hair slowly turning grey with the years and the cold. He didn't run much and preferred to talk low with the others when she would come near.
She too, slowly, was starting to change. Her body was forming slowly, her breast was enlarging, so were her hips. But she didn't bleed. Her father refused her to run and jump and climb and dance where he or her septa could not see her anymore. All the friends she had in the encampment were starting to learn about motherhood and embroidery. What she wants to do is ride and walk through the woods and good to her green and grey-ish friends in the forest. She knows that she'll have to stop playing soon and that terrifies her. She doesn't want to grow up and start acting like a lady if it's to be married to Brandon the Builder, who does have a reputation about violence and women, though she's not sure if they go together.
On her tenth names day, she starts to pray. ''My father and brothers are righteous, they go on your calls, Oh Drowned One. Never they asked for something in return or to be graced by something after their actions. I ask for their protection tonight and I dare be selfish and ask for more time. Give me the possibility to live for my own before I start living for another.'' She spends hours at night talking to the Drowned God, and the Old Gods of the Forest, asking them to be kind and listen to what she asking.
The other women pray for Bran, but she doesn't, she never pray for him. She's angry with him, to have to wed him so her father can be at peace. Creating an alliance with the newly found Stark family is the job that her lord father gave her, she hates it. The week following her name days celebration, a letter comes from the Vales announcing the death of her mother. Her father closed himself even more after that and her brother Walton sits her down to talk about the matter. She cries and cries but nothing works. She asks the Drowned God one last time why he would take her so suddenly, while she hasn't seen her mother for months. It's the following month that she starts bleeding. The septa try to reassure her, but it only gives her more thing to panic over. She was frantic about her father knowing her new state. Scared of her father's reaction. She was scared he would want to marry her off in the next weeks.