MOTHER, alicent hightower

Mother

My mother is the most beautiful lady in all of the Seven Kingdoms.

And I say this with no faint of heart. No man or woman can deny the radiance that beams off of her elegance and grace. Maybe that is why father married her, because she was simply too beautiful to let any other have her.

Her hair. It was shiny and always up in intricate designs that were held by jewels and bedazzled pins that reflected in the sunlight. It made her hair all the more colorful than just the auburn brown that created the thick curls. Sometimes she would have a bit more and wear a headdress, the veil covering its entirety besides her bangs. I thought the various hairstyles were pretty, but I found mothers hair all the most alluring when it was free of its constraints. The thick curls that had a slight frizz to them and would always tickle my nose when I would lay my head on her soft yet firm shoulders. It smelled of beeswax candles from always going to pray to the Seven in the Sept with a hint of rose oil along with sage. With her hair down, she would look the most relaxed even when she was upset with me for always interrupting her night with my constant and annoying night terrors. It was like she was being the girl she was at five and ten that she always told me and my siblings about, reading books from the library and wandering these very halls of Kingslanding with a friend she knew long ago. I sometimes think that my mother misses those times in the past. When she used to braid my silver hair that I had inherited from my father, every morn, she would often just stroke my head. I thought it was strange at first, but I let her do it. It was comforting to have her run her hands through my hair. I once told mother that I wished I had her hair; the thick curls and brown strands that would shine a deep red in the sunlight. But she had yelled at me, saying that any part of me resembling her too much would draw unnecessary gaze and pull wasteless rumors of my place in court. I never once uttered another word about wishing my hair was like hers after that.

Her hands. They were a bit rough because of her senseless picking and biting, but they were still soft when she would guide me hand in hand down the hall to fathers chambers to wish him good morrow. They were gentle when she would comb my hair free of knots, smooth the waves of my tresses, and tuck away loose strands. Graceful when she had shown me how to write my name with the feathered quill on the sheet of drawing paper. They held the most jewelry in terms of rings that would encircle each of her thin fingers. Ones that she would playfully let me wear, but my grandsire, Otto Hightower, had said that it would make me too greedy to wear such jewelry at my age. So at some point, mother had stopped giving me the rings to play with. Her hands were one of the most gentle parts of her, but I knew that they were also harsh and brutal when it would come to it. I remember the first time she had struck me was out of anger and mostly just fright. Mother was convinced that she was out of line for striking her own child and prayed to the Seven to forgive her, but I know it was purely an accident. She had come to sit with me in my chambers as I rattled on about my day and how I spent it with Helaena digging through the dirt of the garden to find a certain insect she so desired to see after my daily lessons. Mother seemed antsy, tense, and a bit jumpy even. From the way her nails picked and prodded at the flesh around her short nails to how her leg kept bouncing under the skirts of her green dress showed telltale signs of terrible anxiety and stress. Her eyes were focused on the fire that rested on the pile of coals in the pit of the brick wall and I had foolishly thrown myself onto her to divert her attention. At first, she simply pushed me off; startled to have her own child jump into her lap. Then, as if she had become mad in the head, striked me across the face. Sometimes, if I concentrate long enough, I could still feel the silver rings on her fingers slicing through the tender flesh of my childish face. She had scolded me to never do it again, then swiftly apologized and stuffed my tear soaked, and blood stained, face into the crook of her neck and shoulder. Repeatedly apologizing.