Chapter Text
One-word prompt: Earth
They called Dragonstone bleak and forbidding, these indulged and cosseted Westerosi, who had never known true darkness, never had to fear the real absence of light.
In Asshai, the stones that built the city were all black; black, greedy and rapacious, devouring all light, leaving only gloom and doom in its wake.
Her night fires burned bright and strong, here in Dragonstone.
In Asshai, the earth was barren, sterile, dead.
She walked barefoot along the beach, here in Dragonstone, feeling the earth beneath her feet, alive, alive, alive and kicking.
“I was not born here, in Dragonstone.” His voice came trailing her wake.
She waited. You had to wait, with this man. You could not show him the way by showing him the way, by opening the door wide and beckoning to him, “Here, come to me. Come with me, to the light.”
He would never come, that way. Stubborn, distrustful and suspicious to the last, true to his own nature.
You had to wait for him to believe that he was finding his own way out of the darkness, to search for the crack that let in the light, to break down that door with his own strength, driven by his own conviction.
“Your prophecy. Born amidst salt and smoke. I was born in Storm’s End, in the same room high up the drum tower where my father was born, where my father’s father was born.”
“I know, my king. But there is merely being born - being pulled out of a mother’s belly - and then there is truly being born.”
He scoffed. “Another prophecy? Is there no end to your clever words?”
She opened her fist to show him the glittering sand gathered in her palm. “You scooped this earth with both hands, clenched them so tightly that your fingers bled. That was the day the raven came from King’s Landing with Robert’s command, naming you Lord of Dragonstone, and naming Renly Lord of Storm’s End. That was the day you killed the child, and a man was born in its place, here in Dragonstone, here amidst salt and smoke.”
Eyes narrowed with suspicion, he asked, “How would you know that?”
“The flame knows many things, Stannis.”
And a wife, a wife remembered even more.
And Melisandre, Melisandre of Asshai-by-the-Shadow, who had known true darkness, who knew what it was to mourn for the light, to grieve for its absence, would forget nothing in her wake.