Chapter Text
Pearls & Pomegranates
Aislinn leaned out of the casement, elbows akimbo in their billowing jade velvet sleeves. Septa Merdew sniffed pointedly but Aislinn did not heed her, keeping her green gaze determinedly fixed upon the far horizon. It was too warm for velvet anyways and there was nobody to observe her inelegant posture so it did not matter whether she sat slumped or hunched her shoulders. Sometimes she simply tired of being on display. To appear as flawless as emeralds.
In the wake of her first flowering, Aislinn had been brought forth by her father, leading the smallfolk to loudly pronounce her the Emerald of Oldtown. Such titles tightened like a leash around her throat. Often she would glance at Bethany’s spoiled pet spaniel with its pearl encrusted collar and feel a strange melancholy kinship with it. But such fantastical train of thought never failed to make her suddenly laugh, startling everyone in her midst and then Septa Merdew would admonish her for lack of decorum.
She wistfully trailed a hand through the faint breeze that carried the ghost of moonblooms on its wings. In the gardens far below, they thickly filled the air with perfume that was almost decadent in its pungency. She never dared to pick a bouquet of their blossoms unless her father was far outwith their reach. The aroma did not agree with him, as he was oft heard to declare. Nor did he consider them suitable ornaments for a chaste maiden, pronouncing them as promiscuous, much to Bethany and Aislinn’s smothered amusement. Once Daeron had presented her with a pomegranate freshly picked by his own fingers from the branch, arils arrayed like rubies across the golden platter. She had frigidly thanked him for his thoughtfulness before pointedly sharing the fruit with Bethany before him, a subtle warning they were no longer children despite their youth.
Aislinn exhaled sharply at the memory, her gaze travelling across the labyrinth of cobbled crookback streets and wynds that lay beyond the bay, where the Honeywine bled into Whispering Sound. She knew Daeron did not mean to be importunate but such gestures could be mistook for more, especially since she suspected her father had expectations for Daeron and herself. Daeron did not seem to realise Lord Ormund Hightower harboured such ambitions. He still acted as if they were innocents racing each other up the winding staircases and stealing marchpane from the kitchens, the confection sculpted into the shape of watchtowers. They had long been allies in their unhappiness, but she had learned to hide it from her father’s view. As had Daeron, almost fooling Ormund, but unlike Aislinn, he would give himself away in unguarded moments.
She glanced up at the cerulean skies, wondering if Daeron had finally dared to go abroad on Tessarion as he oft threatened to behind Ormund’s back. Her father was away being feasted by House Tarly who were rumoured to be raising their gaze to House Hightower in the hopes Ormund would agree to a union with one of their daughters. Her father had long forbidden Daeron from ascending the heavens on dragonback, arguing Tessarion was not yet large enough to bear his weight or Daeron was too ham-fisted to fly such a high-spirited beast. Aislinn knew her father’s words were not wind but she also suspected his reticence lay more in the direction of his dislike of dragons. He simply did not want reminded of Daeron’s tainted Targaryen heritage. For was he not always expounding House Hightower’s history of virtues across the cyvasse board or rumpling Daeron’s dark auburn tresses in a way designed to draw the eye?
Ormund had inherited his mother's fair coloring, his blonde hair darkening to ash through age, bequeathing his children the same shades. Only Aislinn alone had her own late mother’s distinctive bright green gaze, whilst her siblings all shared Ormund’s winter blue eyes. But he did not delight in such marked resemblance. He seemed desirous of his cousins’ coloring that clearly marked them out as of House Hightower in a way his own didn’t. But Aislinn did not understand his obsession with such appearance for where not the shades of their House flattering to both sides regardless if they were amber or fair of hair? She herself looked just as well in green as she did in her favorite gowns of ivory, often remarking so, causing Septa Merdew to scold her for vanity.
“Aislinn!” Bethany declaimed as she swept into the solar, deliberately dragging her sage damask skirts through the dust to irk Septa Merdew. “You will never guess!”
“Lady Bethany, would you please refrain from ruining your new gown so?” Septa Merdew said sternly, rising to her feet. “Your lord father would not appreciate such a display of costly carelessness” –
“Spare me talk of Father’s much vaunted frugality,” Bethany retorted, throwing herself down upon the settle. “He could order a thousand gowns in the finest fabrics and his purse strings would only feel the slightest flutter” –
“I would never guess what exactly?” Aislinn interrupted, turning away from the casement.
Bethany smiled archly, wide blue eyes dancing with merriment. All of Ormund’s offspring possessed a streak of wildness beneath their studied piety, Bethany perhaps more so than anyone else. She was younger than Aislinn, with dark gold ringlets that fell to her waist caught in place by a caul studded with pearls, framing her plain features. But character lent her face charm which beauty could never buy and many a young nobleman had begun to take notice of her humorous glance and crooked smile. “Maester Alfador caught Lyonel kissing a kitchen wench,” she said salaciously, ignoring Septa Merdew’s exaggerated gasp of outrage. “He all but had an apoplexy!”
Aislinn rolled her eyes. “Lyonel is always kissing girls,” she said dismissively, whilst Martyn is always kissing squires and stable boys, she added silently. The only difference between her elder brothers was that Martyn was a master in discretion and Lyonel not. But Martyn was now serving Lord Redwyne as his squire at the Arbor whilst their little brother, Garmund, was a page and cupbearer at Highgarden. Lyonel should have been long since married but he had refused all the brides Ormund had offered so far, much to their father’s fury. “You know very well Father will just have his feet whipped again,” she shrugged, plucking a sprig of jasmine from its vase, “and admonish him to amend his licentious ways.”
“ ‘You must be more like Daeron, Lyonel’,” Bethany grunted, parodying their father, “repressed, stunted, dull” –
“Lady Bethany, that is enough” –
“Do not speak so of Daeron,” Bethany snapped, hushing Septa Merdew with a beringed hand. “He is learned and devout, but he is not dull nor” -
“Pray, I do not wish to hear you extol Daeron’s virtues,” Bethany yawned, “I hear enough of that from Father. No doubt he wishes our cousin sprang from his loins than Viserys’s.”