I’m reblogging this for my future consideration when the next book eventually comes out.
I am so excited for GoT to start up again! Seeing all the screenshots is exciting me!
I don’t even know how to go about reading fanfiction at all. Somehow I missed that memo. I’m always sitting here like “Where are people reading this stuff?! Why am I not reading it?!” I really feel like I’m missing out! Give me some Petyr/Sansa fiction! I need these things in my life. I just don’t know how to go about doing this.
“Help me with my laces, Cat?” Lysa spun away from the mirror with just enough verve to send the skirt of her white linen gown twirling after her. “Your bows always look prettier than mine.”
“Your bows are nothing worth concerning yourself with overmuch,” Catelyn replied, taking the laces in hand all the same. “Maiden’s Day is about the prayers you offer in the sept, not how you look when you offer them.” She gave a short tug to signal her sister to suck her stomach in a little.
“I know that – oof, careful. The gods only know how many times I’ve had to hear Osmynd explain all that.” She looked at herself sideways in the mirror and smoothed a hand over the laces. “You’re lucky this is your last Maiden’s Day.”
“I thought you liked the ceremony.” Catelyn picked off a stray thread that had come unraveled from Lysa’s sleeve, then went to the small chest that had once been their mother’s to find some white ribbon. “It isn’t even that long, and you always say how pretty the hymns are.”
“Oh, yes, they are. But I’d much rather not be a maiden at all anymore.” A heavy sigh filled the pause, and Catelyn allowed herself a smile before she turned back. Lysa sat with a plop on the side of the bed and surrendered the care of her hair to the older girl. “I want to be married. I’m sixteen, that’s more than old enough and everyone would say so. Father’s just stubborn.”
“It scarcely makes sense to complain about marriage when you have no one waiting to marry you.” She glanced at Lysa by way of the mirror to make sure she had parted the hair properly, and saw her sister’s mouth open and promptly shut again. Perhaps she should have chosen her words more carefully. “Of course, you could probably have anyone you showed an interest in, if you would only show an interest. It’s unfortunate that Jaime Lannister has taken the white. Father was thinking of asking Lord Tywin about a match, you should know.”
“I always knew. Everyone knew but Jaime Lannister,” Lysa opined, recalling the unmistakable lack of attention she had endured when he had come to visit the year before last. “It wasn’t I who didn’t try to show an interest. And even if he did, I’m sure I wouldn’t much care.”
Catelyn supposed Lysa couldn’t help the pout that appeared on her small mouth. She stretched the creases out of one length of ribbon and began to braid them into her hair. “Why not? He’s very handsome. More handsome than Brandon,” she had to allow. Surely Lysa could take stock in the fact that their lord father had attempted such a pleasing match in her interest. “And rich enough, for a certainty.”
“That’s his father’s money. Petyr says that the only reason young men need fathers and wives for money is because most of them are too stupid to manage it any other way.”
Catelyn furrowed her brow. A snag in Lysa’s hair had interrupted the motion of her fingers, reminding her to give a gentle reprimand about combing it out every morning. “Everyone inherits. Father did, and his father and his father. Edmure will, one day. A rich husband can see that you’re well taken care of, provided that his money serves his needs and not the other way around. Why would you ask Petyr about such things?” Lysa sat in silence while Catelyn finished. After each braid was tucked up and tied in loops behind Lysa’s ears, she leaned forward to survey her work in the mirror. “Good?”
Lysa stood up and affected a shrug. “All that matters are the prayers I offer, not how I look while offering them.”
“Why you’re quite welcome.” Catelyn stretched out the final ribbon and started weaving it into her hair.
“No, really, Cat. If the Maiden doesn’t care how beautiful we look then why are the only maidens in the stories the beautiful ones?”
“Well …”
“And why should the Maiden be beautiful when the septa tells us that we must seek out something to love in the ugliest of men? I don’t even know what that means. Likely we are to make something up about them entirely.”
Catelyn wondered what her lady mother might have said if she were here to talk to Lysa. “Well, if you are beautiful, men will notice you. And then one may ask for your hand. And you won’t have to live in your father’s castle your whole life and have people talk about you and call you a shriveled up spinster.” She could only speak from theory; she had been betrothed from the age of twelve to Brandon Stark and hadn’t found much cause to dwell on thoughts like these. “It must not be easy to be a homely girl.”
Lysa looked as if she was suddenly seized by terror. “Am I a homely girl?”
“Don’t be a goose, you know very well that you’re not.” Catelyn coiled her braid atop her head and knotted it in place with finality. “Come to think of it, Jaime Lannister’s uncle, Ser Kevan, wed Dorna Swyft last year, and she is not comely.”
“She has no chin,” Lysa giggled.
Catelyn gave her a look. “Men too may learn to see beyond beauty. Beauty simply helps, a little.” She frowned, briefly. “Perhaps more than a little. I know not how much, in truth.”
“Cat? When we are old, when we have spots and lines like that common woman who comes to beg Father for worn out shoes, will our husbands still love us?”
She could not begin to guess what Lady Minisa might have said in answer this time. Mother had not been nine and twenty when she died. “I believe so. I hope so. We will have to love them when they are old men, won’t we?”
Lysa nodded vigorously. “That’s right.”
“Although,” Cat said, smiling slightly to herself – at least, she thought it was to herself – “I think Brandon is like to be as handsome on the day he dies as he is right now.”
Lysa rolled her eyes, but she was laughing. “Come along, Sister, we wouldn’t want to keep the septon waiting.”