403FIERCE FIGHTS AND SWIFTER FLIGHTS
PART III
Early 295 AC: Lemonwood, Planky Town
Rhaenys P.O.V
The Greenblood was like no other river in the whole of Westeros. Formed by the convergence of the Vaith and the Scourge near Godsgrace, it slew east and into the yawning Summer Sea. Planky Town lied at the Greenblood's mouth on the ocean, the Lemonwood stretching along the coast near the southern shore infusing the breeze with citric delight.
It was here twelve-year-old Rhaenys swam that fateful evening, ducking dark seashell peppered braids below the swelling green tide, copper skin burnished to honey by the heavy Dornish sun. Her gaze was murky in the thick emerald waters, hand stretching in the wells. Fingertips brushed the lattice of a crude fishing net. Her blind grip wound and tightened, and with a heave, a splash, and a triumphant gasp of breath, Rhaenys broke the surface and she flung the small fishing net up the shore and into the bed of devilgrass watered by old canals. The Whiskerfish inside flopped and floundered, bubbling in their confined net, as the young girl followed her prize onto land, using just a dash of water magic to help her vault up onto the land with a soft push of the waves below, beaming and stripped down to her smallclothes.
"See? All it took was a bit of patience!"
Of course Calarel, Cal for short, a name meaning sunset in the Rhoynish tongue Helyna had once told Rhaenys, did not answer her with so much as words, but he did raise up from his tightly scaled belly in the devilgrass of the alcove they had cornered off as their own that afternoon, away from any onlookers, glimmering under the hefty sun with his blood orange and glossy gold scales, and-
And flapped his long, spined tail like a dog might perhaps wag their own when happy or excited.
Rhaenys chuckled, bending down to her pile of clothes, snatching up the small filleting dagger hooked on her discarded belt, and plucked a Whiskerfish free from the net, killing it quickly before throwing it up into the air.
Cal bounced for it, sharp, keen venomous teeth clapping in a snap, gulping down the fish in one fell swoop.
Rhaenys frowned, and threw another fish his way.
"You're going to need more than trawl scraps soon."
Cal had grown over the last year of his life, still a baby in dragon terms, but even so, he was the size of a large horse already. From the books she had read before-
Before, and from that sparse conversation she had with Hagrid once, Ridgebacks grew… big. Perhaps not as big as a Ukrainian Ironbelly, the largest breed of dragon in the Wizarding world, but soon enough, sooner than Rhaenys would like, she would need more than long devilgrass and tributaries to hide Cal from sight.
A lot more.
Ridgebacks only stopped growing in their fiftieth year of life. Cal was barely one, and, by his odd gold and orange scales compared to a typical Ridgeback's black, was a fusion of another dragon breed too.
Maybe even an Ironbelly.
Spotting the sinking sun over the tree tops of the Lemonwoods at their back, Rhaenys swiftly and decisively decided that was a problem for future Rhaenys.
She was late.
Again.
Scrabbling for the net, and the small pile of honeycomb paper secreted in a river reed wicker basket, Rhaenys began carting off her catch that evening, wrapping them snugly in the almost translucent waxy strips of cotton before tying it off with corded ship rope, stashing them down into the bed of the beaded carrier. Shirking on her clothes, a long skirt made from snippets and fragments of coloured scarfs, handcrafted by Helyna herself, and a linen tunic Illor had sacrificed from his own clothes to hem down to her size, and fastening her cord belt cosily around her waist, Rhaenys was left looking at the flattened patch of empty devilgrass.
Again?!
"Did you kick my boots off into the river, Cal?"
Cal's head cocked at her, amber-fire gaze blinking in a mismatched pattern, looking entirely too innocent for a mounted dragon of his size.
"This is the third set! You-"
Rhaenys shook her head, splattering water down her shoulders with the movement.
No time.
The sun was setting. Helyna and Illor would be on the poleboat by now, surely hungry, as was Rhaenys, and she had a nice fat fish with their name on it in the bottom of her basket in honeycomb papers.
"Come on, in you go."
Cal slithered onto his belly at her prompt, uncannily understanding of her cues, hindlegs pushing, and with a leap and a great spray of river froth, he dived into the green streams of the waterway.
"Keep your head down. You nearly got us both caught last time."
Picking up her basket, watching the misty outline of Cal swimming below the surface of the river, a shadow that would appear to be a rather large sea mammal if someone uninformed were to see it, not such a peculiar thing to witness in the Greenblood at the mouth of the Summer Sea, Rhaenys kept close to the shore, Cal never liked it when she drifted too far from him often times diving out the rivers if he couldn't sense her there, and made way for Planky Town sitting crookedly on the horizon. Her anklet tinkled with every other step, and It didn't take long before the grass below her feet was replaced with the warm wooden planks of the town on the river.
Everything here was so bright, so warm, so unlike Scotland-
"Hello there little Nys, good waters today?"
Rhaenys beamed at the old women enveloped in shawls and scarfs, so many her small, grey head appeared more like a withered walnut than a skull behind the fruit stall, hand dipping into basket to retrieve a wrapped package.
Below the planks and her feet, Cal's silhouette shimmered.
"Whiskerfish today, Arlenna."
The woman smacked her lips with a gummy grin, taking the fish, wincing as she bent down behind her stall, coming back up with a bundle of something swathed in leftover yarn.
Arlenna's son had died not five years ago to some sort of sweating sickness, and her husband a decade before in a bar brawl. Old age had made her joints sore and stiff, and fishing was now out of the question for the woman who had spent her entire life on this very river.
Rhaenys liked to help where and when she could, even if it was only a little, even if it was but a spare fish here or there. Since that night, since she had hatched Calarel and the Ministry had turned up with their wands and their anger and that awful, terrible potion-
Since Before, This place, this river, this sun, it was-
It was Rhaenys's home.
She doesn't remember much of the day she hatched Cal. Only the bad things, the painful things, the fear on the faces of those who knew what she had done, even Hagrid, dark magic they had said, black magic, necromancy-
Dragons were dying out. The egg, Cal's egg, that Hagrid had shown her to lighten her mood by the hearth of his hut-
It should have been dead. It had been laid a thousand odd years ago. Whatever was inside the scaled shell should have been petrified. Fossilized. Rhaenys had somehow brought it back. Rhaenys's blood had brought it back. A nick on her thumb when she had held it by the fire and-
Necromancy was bad. Very bad. They couldn't allow someone, anyone, to practice such dark, bad things and so… So they had given her a potion, and had tried to kill Cal, and she had been so sick, so very sick so very quickly-
The great run she had done, delirious, into the forest, to the Black Lake-
Whatever water magic Rhaenys had, whatever that potion they had given her to terminate whatever dark magic was in her blood that could resurrect dead things, it had nearly killed her, and it had… lashed out that evening.
Hagrid's hut had burst into flames.
Cal in her arms, half out her mind from that potion and covered in soot, running for the only safety Rhaenys had ever know, water, away from the Ministry officials and their spells, she had fallen into the Black Lake, and somehow, someway, Helyna and Illor had hooked her out this river's shores at dawn face down in the river reeds. Drenched, dying, a mewling, crying Cal curled around her neck and her mother's necklace.
Helyna had nursed her back to health slowly but surely. It had taken months, whatever that potion was it had been strong, it had been touch and go for a long, long while and Rhaenys herself had not made it easy in the beginning.
She had been scared and confused. She would have tried to run away again if she had the strength too. Thankfully, she didn't. That first month on the poleboat, Rhaenys had barely been able to lift her head from a pillow, and Helyna and Illor-
They took her in, and they made her this skirt, and this shirt, and the fishing net over her shoulder. Helyna weaved seashells into her braids, and knotted a string of them for her ankle, as Illor taught her how to fish and shell an oyster, pointed out the best spots on the Greenblood which held the very best rockpools, and exactly how to climb a lemon tree for the best lemons on top, and they gave her boots she kept loosing, and kisses on her flushed cheek, and-
And this was Rhaenys's home.
It's the Rhoynish way, Rhaenys. We give as the river gives. You cannot make a river out of a dewdrop. We must stick together. Only then are we strong.
After Illor had told her that, Rhaenys had stopped being weary so much. She was here, she was alive, Cal was alive, she had Helyna and Illor, this mismatched crooked town, all the lemons she could ever want, and-
She was safe.
For once in her short, sharp life, Rhaenys felt safe.
She took her prize from the old woman.
"You're a river-gift, my girl. I do not know what I would do without you. For my favourite fish, in return, your favourite."
Rhaenys chuckled, peeking in the makeshift bag. Her smile nearly split her cheeks in half when she spotted what was inside.
"Blood oranges? I thought they were out of season?"
Arlenna tapped a gnarled finger against the end of her wrinkled nose.
"I have my ways. Now off you go. The sun is setting. Helyna will be waiting for you, and I am sure you have a few stops left yet."
Arlenna leant conspiratorially close over the stall with a wink, little walnut head peeking out between the squashes and the round fat red things that looked like tomatoes but tasted like kiwis.
"I heard that Ellion just pulled into dock from Essos this morn, bringing back a whole crate of dragon peppers. He still owes you for fixing that break in his keel, doesn't he?"
Rhaenys was gone before Arlenna could finish speaking, barefoot thudding on the planks, anklet tinkling along with the old woman's laughter following her.
"Ulin Mar'vek lumelar vu!"
May the river guide you home.
"You too, Arlenna!"
Rhaenys got her dragon peppers in the end, in exchange for a Whiskerfish Ellion had tried refusing before he realised a twelve-year-old Rhaenys was infinitely more stubborn than a seafaring man thrice her age and twice her experience. She also managed to swap a fish for some Snake sauce from Jasline, the good kind in the clay jar and not from the big communal pot, and a handful of mustard seeds for a blood orange from Dylar. Lerris had even given her a corked bottle of Dornish red for her help the other day weaving rope when his anchor for his own poleboat had fallen off, and even though Rhaenys didn't like the dark red drink, so sour, Illor laughing at the face she had pulled over the meal he had let her have a sip, with a basket full of food, peppers, oranges and wine, she was feeling pretty damn good.
The best she had felt since-
Since perhaps ever… and then she turned the corner onto the wharf where Helyna and Illor's poleboat was berthed.
Rhaenys didn't know what was wrong when she crossed the corner lined with crates from the new trade with Essos, she couldn't see the end of the curving Planky town jetty from where she stopped near a stack of barrels, but the waters, the Greenblood waters, were silent.
No song, no hymn, no whispers.
A warning to listen.
Cal twisted below in the river, wafting up little white lipped waves as his muzzle broke the surface, clearly sensing her sudden unease. Rhaenys slowly and gently placed her basket on the top of a brass tacked barrel, suddenly and unexpectedly thankful she was wearing no boots to louden her steps. She glanced down to the shadow in the waters below her feet, peering through the laths in the timbers of the quay.
"Shhh."
Cal lulled, sinking back down into the deep, and sluggishly, silently, crouched and stooped, Rhaenys dipped and darted between the stacks of casks and rope and baskets dotting the wharf, down to where, at the very end, she knew Helyna and Illor's poleboat was moored.
She spotted the cause of the silent water while hunkered behind a basket of red spice two boats out.
Seven men stood on the landing outside Helyna and Illor's bobbing poleboat, chest and legs in bronzed armour, round metal shields strapped on forearms, spears buckled to back with hips lined with short throwing lances. One had a double-curved bow slung over his shoulder.
In the heart of the gathering stood two men.
Well, one stood, the other, a soft, almost shapeless man, sat in an open sided palanquin left on the dock under the thick shade of the orange taffeta over the rickshaw, the flash of copper hands swollen and reddened as they were braced over his covered knees, his legs and feet shielded in a red satin blanket.
The man before him, hissing in quiet tones Rhaenys could not hear, couldn't appear any more different, and yet somehow the same. Tall, slender, graceful, the man who stood had a saturnine face with thin brows, black, deep eyes, and a sharp nose, his hair a crop of lustrous black tresses with a sliver of silver streaks flecking his temples. Not like Rhaenys's own streak of silver-blond, but a speckle of on-creeping age.
Brothers.
For a moment, a terrible, dreadful moment, Rhaenys thought they were wizards, the Ministry men, finally here, finally found her, finally back to finish what they couldn't before Hagrid's hut roof had fallen down and Rhaenys had crawled out the smoke and fire.
Her body seizes in fright, fear, cold-dread, slogging through her abruptly thick veins. A thud from below snapped her out of it, Cal whipping his tail at the boards under her feet to break her out the panic before it could truly wrap its frigid, thorny hands around her and take hold.
The noise also made the men outside Helyna and Illor's poleboat glance her way. Rhaenys ducked behind the red spice basket just in time.
No.
Not Wizards.
She hadn't spotted a single Wand, and no self-aggrandizing Wizard would 'lower' themselves to use muggle weapons.
So who-
Did it matter?
Helyna and Illor had armed men outside their boat, and they were nowhere in sight, and that-
That never ended well, did it?
Footsteps rang out along the harbour, a slick, accented voice accompanying the thump of steps and the frantic beat of her heart.
"Rhaenys?"
And nothing good, nothing at all, ever came from someone knowing her name.
Oh no.
Rhaenys's hand snatched up to the basket, grabbing a handful of red spice just as the man the steps belonged to came around the turn.
Oberyn Martell's P.O.V
"They're packing as we speak."
Doran, shadowed under his palanquin, nodded at Oberyn's assertion.
"And we are sure their Rhaenys is the same as ours?"
Oberyn rolled his jaw, glancing over his shoulder to the poleboat behind, where, in the lower bowels of the squat lopsided ship, Helyna and Illor were readying their things for the trip to Sunspear after an hour of conversation.
An hour of talk that had seen Oberyn dispatch word to Doran for his immediate presence in Planky Town.
"She washed up a year hence in the river bed. Helyna and Illor fished her out the reeds and took her in. According to them, the girl has spoken very little of what her life was before, and all attempts Illor has made to dig further sees the child lap to silence. She was not-… she was not in the best shape when they found her. Thin, sick, she barely survived the first moon tide."
Doran cocked a dark brow.
"That does not answer my question, brother."
Oberyn scowled back.
"Does it not? Perhaps then the fact that she is ten and two, bares a streak of silver hair at her temple, lilac eyes, and a necklace of a sun and spear at her chest just might."
That stalled Doran's suspicions.
"She has Elia's necklace?"
Oberyn nodded.
"By what I have been told of how it appears, yes. Helyna and Illor were very forthcoming once I informed them of why my interest was piqued, and told them I would not be taking the child from their care completely."
Doran turned to the green waters out far, face washing empty, voice low.
"Could she have been here, truly? All this time… Right here?"
Oberyn knew what his brother was feeling. He was feeling it too. A rapid, unforeseen drop of-
Failure.
"For a year, at least. Before then… we will have to ask her once she arrives back. Helyna said she was due an hour ago, but has a practice of being late. She should arrive soon."
Doran smiled at this, a delicate and painful thing, gaze still lingering on the green.
"You were always late."
Oberyn found his own gaze drifting out to the placid waters.
"That's not all."
Doran hummed in question.
"Helyna and Illor… when I asked why they did not try to find the child's family, they told me they thought it best for her protection. They thought word might get back to the Baratheon King of their inquiries, no matter how small and subtle they tried to make them."
Doran's dark gaze slimmed, pin-point, alert. Always the keenest of the Martell siblings.
"And why would they believe the child would be in need of protection against the Baratheon King if they did not know themselves, as you have thus told me, the child's lineage?"
Oberyn's thumb hooked into the lapel of his belt. Here came the difficult part, for Oberyn barely believed what he was told himself, and now must convince his stout brother of its authenticity.
"They thought her a Targaryen bastard, and not for the silver streak in her hair or the lilac hue of her eye. Doran-"
Oberyn peered to his brother, sidling closer, quiet.
"She was not alone in the riverbed when they found her. She came with a beast."
"Beast?"
"A babe of a drago-"
From the corner of Oberyn's eye, he saw a flash of movement behind an open top barrel, and he turned to face the newcomer scarcely in time to see the hint of a dark crown ducking down.
"Brother?"
Doran asked lightly as Oberyn's attention swiftly swung towards the stack of crates not so far away, but Oberyn does not answer, he walked, strolling over the wharf towards the barrel.
"Rhaenys?"
He queried over the hum of the river below, as gentle as he could, softly, as a copper hand appeared as fast as it disappeared again over the top of the barrel, and he followed it, stepped around the crate and found-
A child.
A child in patched skirts and chipped seashells crouching down hard in the shade of the crates. She was a small thing, barely there underneath her thick braids of black curls striped with silver at her left temple, face a fine show of delicate features and wide-wild lilac eyes, and Oberyn is struck silent.
She appeared simply like Elia, just as he remembered her once upon a time from a memory he did not know he still had of his sister at all. She'd fallen from a lemon tree, skimmed her knee in the palace gardens, and Oberyn had laughed at her, and she had glared back, threw a fruit at his head with a chuckle which had devolved further into petty but good-natured squabbling. There was Rhaegar in there too, in the cattish, Valerian slip of her eye, in the lack of a top cupids bow, in the regal sweep of a chin.
There's a child of ghosts stooped before him in rags and tags and shattered shells, and Oberyn is struck.
The child, however, was not so.
She sprang up like a nocked arrow, rose her fist, unfurled her fingers, a pile of red powder in her palm, and blew. The rusted dust drove right into Oberyn's face, and it burned, the tangy scent of red pepper stinging his nose, and he stumbled back from the shock, the bite, heel caught on plank, and he careened backwards, falling.
Madness broke free.
Rhaenys P.O.V
With the strange man now on his arse and scrabbling to wipe off the red pepper spice from his face, Rhaenys took her chance to run.
It was not much of a chance, as it turned out.
One of the armoured guards must have followed the man with the widow's peak, she hadn't seen him behind the barrel, and as the man went down choking on the spice momentarily blinding him, the guard took his own chance to dive over the barrel, seizing at Rhaenys's collared tunic and yanking her out from the safety the boxes offered. Her feet left the planks of the dock with a mighty tug, a skittered yelp torn from her throat as she was heaved into the air like a kitten plucked up by an irate mother cat by the scruff of their neck.
Her feet swung carelessly as the troll of a man, the biggest of the lot, drew her higher yet.
Rhaenys struggled against the hold, kicked barefoot at chest plate and punched at the arm by her shoulder, frantically trying to get the guard to drop her back down so she could run.
Where, she did not know. Perhaps to the poleboat, what little good that would do surrounded as it was. Perhaps to Helyna and Illor, wherever they are, her desperate, and possibly childish thoughts, thinking if she could just get to them, get to the people who had taken her in and looked after her like no one else ever had since the Potters', maybe everything would be alright.
It was always a year, wasn't it?
Lily and James lived a year with her and then died, now Helyna and Illor-
Maybe these men weren't Wizards, but they could be working with them, with the Ministry, and she needed to get away before they gave her another potion. The whole lot this time before Rhaenys could smack the vial from their grip as they forced it down her throat, they wouldn't fall for the same trick twice, and then she'd die, and Cal would have no one, and who would bring Illor his dinner at the plant garden, or help Helyna mend the boat?
Rhaenys didn't know how her foot caught the fence of the pier, caught the rope holding the tallow lantern up on the high post, the ones lit by nightfall, but it did, and the frayed twine snapped, the glass lantern fell… right on the guards head.
It shattered on impact, the man yelped, tripped, and dropped a still battling Rhaenys. She sank to her knees on the pier with a knock and a shot of hot pain to her shin from a splinter imbedding its way home in her skin.
It did little to slow her down from clawing up and back to her feet, darting for the end of the pier, for freedom-
The other guards, however, were now in startling movement, diving for her, leaping, jumping, a casket of crickets like Arlenna's shaken up to a frenzied stir. Three steps away, Rhaenys got clotheslined by a plated arm, had the wind knocked out her lungs from being barrelled into, got swept up, again, into the air as someone, another guard, tossed her up as she flung and bucked.
The man in the litter was shouting now, calling her name.
"Rhaenys! Wait-"
That was when things truly went downhill.
There was a creak from the fence near Helyna's poleboat, the only warning. None of the guards heard it, not the man in his grand chair or the one on the floor still spitting out spice, but Rhaenys heard it, and she screams.
"Calarel! No!"
But it was too late. He's sensed her distressed, smelled her blood from the splinter in her knee, and the pier broke apart like wet tissue paper as he bursts up onto the wharf with a roar and a rumble. The dock hardly has the room for him, the shattering of the planks makes the whole foundations tremble, a section or two near the end falling into the Greenblood with a splash, and then there's a dragon rearing back, long neck winding up, mouth open-
Flames flickering in the back of his throat.
It wouldn't burn Rhaenys. Fire didn't hurt her-
But the guards and the men and the pier wouldn't be so lucky.
It all happened so very fast after that, snapshots of shouts and change like a parade of butterflies in a meadow that all take to the sky at once. The guard dropped her anew, some turned tail and ran, the man in the litter sat dazed and silent in the face of a rearing Cal, directly in the line of fire, and Rhaenys bolted for her dragon.
She threw herself at him, at his presenting collar, passed his curled wings standing ground at his side, and she could feel the heat burning in his chest as she made contact, rising through his scales to flicker in his mouth with plumes of smoke before he'd spew it out as she used her whole body to push back against him, try to drive them both away.
"Cal! No!"
He listened, choked, settled the flames sparking through his keen teeth, and the scales pressed to her cheek cooled beneath her skin.
"Rhaenys!"
It wasn't the man on the chair this time calling her name, the voice is softer, worried, lilting with the careless turns of an Orphan's tongue. Peaking around Cal's neck, Rhaenys spotted Helyna and Illor on the poleboat, they must have been in the belly of the ship, staring at her with fixed, frightened expressions.
"You're safe!"
Helyna bellowed as she tumbled from the deck and onto the ruined pier, slipping from her husband's grasp and edging towards Rhaenys who was still trying to catch her breath, still her heart, make sense of the last bloody five seconds.
"They're not here to hurt you."
She said with a smile, with a quick glance to the man still sitting shocked in his chair.
"These are… these are your uncles."
Rhaenys blinked, her grip on Cal slackening, blinked again, frowned, blinked some more, and said the only possible thing she could.
"What?!"
Rhaenys' P.O.V
"Ouch!"
Rhaenys bit as the splinter slipped free from her knee, jolting where she sat on the smooth sands of the Greenblood bank. Illor, hunkered before her at the shore, held up the offending slither of wood as he used his other hand to press the rag into the blood that trickled from torn skin.
Cal, who had remained perched at her side since the dock and had thus far refused to be apart from it, swung his head up from her hip, eyes slitted and dark and aimed on Illor. Rhaenys patted his thorned head.
"None of that. He's helping not hurting me."
Cal huffed a puff of smoke in annoyance, but, nevertheless, rested his chin by her leg once more as Illor threw the splinter away over his shoulder, just as Helyna joined them with a wrap of starched linen that quickly found itself being wound around Rhaenys's injured knee.
Perhaps it had not been just a little splinter after all.
The stretch of sands had been cleared by the guards, those who had not run when Cal had come swooping out the water, and now here Rhaenys sat, with Helyna and Illor and Cal, and across the way, not so far from their side, sat the man in the chair and his guards all wearily eying the beast about to slumber under the setting sun.
The other man, the one Rhaenys had hit with the red spice, came lurching back from the river, face wet from being washed off, eyes bloodshot and irritated.
He was still smiling, however.
Strange man.
"You could have warned be about the possibility of a dragon, Oberyn."
The man in the litter scowled at his brother, Oberyn's, approachment.
"I was about to when I spied Rhaenys behind the barrel and-… Well, you were there, Doran."
Rhaenys shuffled in the sand, wishing it would open up and sink her down somewhere out of prying gazes in her sodden skirts, just as Illor finished off the makeshift bandage with a knot. Instinctually her hand came to rest of Cal's prickly head.
"You can't have him."
She said for the first time since the dock, since the surrounding people, witnesses, had been ushered away under barking orders of armoured guard, to where Rhaenys did not know, and though her voice wavers a little, trembles, her words hold like stone.
"Cal… you can't have him. I hatched him. I've raised him. He's… he's mine. He's all-"
He's all I have left of where I came from.
Rhaenys does not say this, can't truly bring herself to admit it, and the two brothers slowly turned to face her, face her clutching at her dragon, the dragon the Ministry had once tried to take from her, and it's the taller one, Oberyn Rhaenys reminded herself, that moves first.
He came towards her, and Illor hesitantly moved back though he keeps close, etching room on the other side of her for the man in the gold, sun-specked robes to sink down on his haunches until he was eye level with Rhaenys still sitting in the sands.
"We have not come for your dragon, Rhaenys."
His voice was low, lyrical, and it left no room for argument or doubt, it said and so it was. Rhaenys frowned in bewilderment as her hand clutched harder on Cal's spiked brow.
"You haven't?"
If they were not here from the Ministry, and they clearly were not related to her adopted aunt and uncle, the Dursleys though Helyna had called them uncles, and they were not here to take her dragon-
What else could they possibly want from her?
Oberyn smiled at her, smiled at her with a smile as soft as Rhaenys pictured someone cradling a crying babe would feel like, and he must see the confusion on her face and know it for what it was because his eyes seem a little too red to be just from the irritation of the spice she'd blown in them.
"No. We came for you. Helyna tells me you have a necklace? Are you wearing it now?"
Cautiously, glancing to Helyna who nodded in encouragement, Rhaenys slipped a hand under the collar of her now stained tunic, fingers clasping chain, pulling free the necklace she wore underneath her clothes.
The face of the bronze medal, the spears of the blazing sun, look eerily similar to the ones on Oberyn's robe Rhaenys now realized with the two so close together. She held it out for the strange man, though she kept the chain safely around her neck.
"This was my mothers."
She whispered as Oberyn gingerly took it, spinning it over to read the inscription on the back. Rhaenys noticed his hands were shaking like her voice had been before, like the pier foundations.
"It's the only thing I have left of her. I always wear it. I was found with it in the arms of a dying woman. She said her name was Daria Sand and that mine was Rhaenys before she… before she… Do you know her?"
It was the only thing she'd known about her possible birth parents, the only thing she was told by a spiteful Petunia who told her this Daria Sand was likely some whore and Rhaenys a misbegotten bastard who'd Lily had taken pity on for a dying woman's last plea.
The laugh that Oberyn gave was a little too loud, a little too incredulous, and a little too wet.
"Daria… I should have known. That woman was hardier and more headstrong than most Ser's I know. If anyone could have-"
His fingers clenched on the medallion.
"Your mother's name wasn't Daria Sand. Daria was her servant."
He said as he handed the necklace back, copper skimming copper, only for the same hand to then delve into the fold of his robe.
"Your mother's name was Elia Martell."
He slipped free a necklace with the same face as the one on her own dangling free around her neck. The same signature stamped into the back.
"She was my sister."
Something heavy and hot lodged into Rhaenys's throat, a tight thing that burned hotter than sunshine or fire.
"Is she…"
She can't finish the sentence, and seemingly, Oberyn can't form a full one either.
"No. Elia is not here. She is…"
Dead.
The word doesn't need to be spoken. It hangs in the air like candle oil, slick and ready to spark.
"You're really my uncle, then?"
There's that smile once more, cradled and soft, as soft and warm as the hand that found its way to Rhaenys's shoulder.
"Yes."
Rhaenys does not know how to feel, only that inside feels jumbled, muddled, as darkly murky as the Greenblood river. Yet, the waters are singing at the shore, playing and chanting on sands, and there's no lie to be found here, now.
Yet Oberyn's jaw clenches, a jump in his cheek muscle as he's gaze slipped to the now sleeping dragon at her side.
"And I need you to come with me. It is not safe for you and… Calarel out here. There are things you do not know, truths you cannot understand yet, and it will be safest for you in Sunspear with the rest of our House-"
Immediately, Rhaenys stiffened and shook her head, shirking off the hand at her shoulder despite how much she didn't want to.
"No. I won't leave Illor and Helyna. I refuse to."
This time Oberyn's smile seemed a little proud.
"Loyalty is an admirable trait, and I would not expect anything less from the blood of Elia. That is why they are coming with us."
Helyna stepped forward, hands wringing before her, teeth a startling white in the nut-brown expanse of her face.
"You did not truly believe I would let you go so easily? Of course we are coming, Rhaenys."
Rhaenys frowned, batting lashes, batting thoughts.
"I still don't understand what's going on exactly or why it isn't safe here-"
Oberyn stood to his full height, nodding to a guard who then turned and began rallying the men around them.
"I will tell you everything you need to know once we are back behind the palace gates."
"But Cal-"
"We will section off the Water Gardens for his temporary use. It should hold one his size for the mean time, and keep him out of curious eyes that might spread whispers back to the Baratheon King."
"Baratheon King? What's a Baratheon-"
A gentle hand was held out to her, palm open, finger's splayed, overhung out from the face of a smiling uncle, which was odder yet than anything else, an uncle that smiled at Rhaenys and didn't hit.
"Come, let us finally get you home."
It's that word that does it.
Home.
An alien, bizarre, aching seed that plants itself in the hollow of Rhaenys's chest.
Home is not a place. It is not the Greenblood or the Lemonwoods or a poleboat or Highland Castle. It is people. It is Helyna and Illor and Cal, and it could be Oberyn and Doran and more.
That was the best thing about a home.
It wasn't constrained by size.
It could be however big or small you wished it to be.
Slowly, gently, Rhaenys took the offered hand, and Oberyn furled his fingers around hers, and helped her to a stand in the setting sun.
Next Chapter: Rhaenys listens to a tale about a pale Prince and a sun gold Princess and a wintery she-wolf that ended in the deaths of hundreds, a surprise visit from someone a little 'blue' comes to Sunspear, and Cal is Cal, a good boy…
A.N: Just a quick bit of house-keeping. Some reviewers have asked how exactly this is a crossover if the Fem!Harry left Hogwarts and England so soon, has different magic and different blood, and why didn't I just write an OC? I will say that I didn't do this because the themes of Harry Potter and their type of magic do eventually come into play, as do some of the characters, and similarly, while Rhaenys has left Hogwarts, that doesn't mean she doesn't face some of the things she/Harry did in canon, just with a particular Game of Thrones twists I've added. Hence why this is a crossover.
Rhaenys hasn't done any proper water magic yet beyond a few little charms and tricks, but that is coming up and I will say she has good reason for hiding it so far.
I decided instead of having Rhaenys quick to use magic/punches to try and fight/get away from Oberyn when they meet that she would instead use her surroundings and pull something crafty like she did with the spice to the eyes. From what I understand, the Martells aren't typically a brute strength sort of fighter, Oberyn has his blades covered in poison after all, and they rely on wits/cunning more than force. The whole fight smarter not harder adage lol. Having Rhaenys pull something similar in the first meeting personally cements her more Martell nature for me, and plus having Oberyn basically pepper sprayed by a barely twelve-year-old was too hilarious to pass up.
As for the important bit of this note about the pairing, I received a lovely review from a reader that really has me debating the pairing choice I've made in general and the direction I want to go with this fic. It read; It's so very rare we get a story about a strong Elia Martell, however briefly she featured. So many people brush Elia aside as easily as her husband did, forgotten, or remembered as little more than the poor wretch raped and murdered by The Mountain on order of Tywin Lannister. Most stories focus so much on the Targaryen family, the Starks, Baratheons, or Lannisters, that we overlook a character so beloved by her brothers and people they still go to war in her name, plot the downfall of entire kingdoms just to see her avenged...Who else could say that? That you were able to here give Elia the last laugh, no matter how badly she might have died, to have her succeed in saving her children is beautiful. You haven't saved the Targaryens- you've saved Elia's children, a part that lives on to carry on her legacy and not the infamous Targaryen madness. It would be for this reason alone that I wouldn't want Elia's two children to end up together. Let, instead, her children conquer and rule two different nations- be greater than any of their forefathers. Let the three headed dragon prophecy end as nothing, nonsense, a part of the usual Targaryen madness, something completely unrelated to anything just the ravings of a demented young man who in the end bet it all and lost it all- for nothing.
I've got to say that I really, really enjoy this outlook. That in the end it isn't the Targaryens, who are arguably the worst thing to happen to Westeros lol, who reclaim anything, but the children of a mother slain needlessly. That all of Rhaegar's scheming and 'prophesizing' of needing three children for three heads of a dragon, mean very little in the end. It's not in Rhaegar's name the throne's reclaimed, but in the woman who everyone else sort of forgot. That said, I do want to eventually include romance for Rhaenys because I'm planning for this fic to be epically long and go through her life, from childhood to death-bed, and romance is a part of growing up and growing old and being human, and will add a realistic dimension to Rhaenys. So I've thought up a few candidates who could work, Willas Tyrell, Sandor Clegane, Robb Stark, Jaime Lannister or Aurane Waters. I will say strongly no romance would happen until Rhaenys is well above age (OUR age of consent not GoT), and it would be relatively slow burn. On the other hand, because I started this fic out as a Jon/Fem!Harry, if you guys really want that then I'll stick to it. Or if you have a better suggestion than ones I've given, please hit me up. So for the mean time I've removed the Jon/Fem!Harry tag and will give it some thought, and obviously listen to anything you guys have to say, and by next chapter I should have either a new pairing listed, or Jon/Fem!Harry back in place if that turns out to be the favourite amongst the consensus.
I decided on being a little more obtuse with the dragon's name instead of going for anything Elia/Lily mixed up, and settled on the Rhoynish word Calarel meaning sunset. Sunsets typically symbolize completion, cycles, rebirth and death. It's the emblem of Elia, and yet when we think of sunsets we picture oranges and ambers, strong hints to Lily.
Lastly, sorry for the long wait for update. Got no real excuse apart from life being tricky. I hope this makes up for at least a few of those long months between chapters lol.
As always thank you so, so much for the follows, favourites and reviews. They mean a lot. If you have a spare moment, don't forget to drop a few words in the review box, and I will hopefully see you all soon. Until then, stay beautiful~ AlwaysEatTheRude21