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( SUNSPEAR, DORNE ) LATE 284 AC
GWENDYS CURLED AGAINST OBERYN, tugging up the sheets to just below her chin, as she basked in his body heat. His hand ran through her hair, as it was pulled from the tight tangle of braids and caressed away from her heart-shaped face. Men would build cities to honour her in that shape.
Her hip in the soft bend of the mattress beneath her, she was thinking about Dragonstone. The Targaryens. Aerys Targaryen. His voice still rattled between her ears sometimes. She'd never been so afraid of anyone. The Mad King truly lived up to his sobriquet.
"Do you remember the first time we met?" He asked her, diverting Gwendys from wallowing in her thoughts as she nuzzled into the swansdown pillow with a sleepy expression. She turned over to look at him, and his head lolled to the right, towards her.
"Hm? When was that?" She asked, her soft lips grazing his shoulder.
"We met at Elia's wedding, in King's Landing, four years ago. I'd just finished at the Citadel."
She thought of the rumours of Oberyn's exile when he'd fled to the Free Cities, just before he started at the Citadel. Oberyn fought in a duel with Lord Edgar Yronwood. Due to Oberyn's high birth and young age, the two men had agreed to duel until first blood. Both men were injured, but when Oberyn's cuts healed, and Lord Edgar's festered, eventually resulting in his death, it was whispered Oberyn had fought with a poisoned blade.
Memories flooded through her mind, of the time she'd been taken along to the royal wedding as a guest. Her mother had never been so proud as to attend a royal wedding. "I was so afraid — a cockatrice has no place with the dragons and lions and wolves. I'd never left Dorne before."
"I had left Dorne one time, prior. I went to Casterly Rock with Elia when I was a just young boy — it was my ninth nameday, or so — we were there to see the Lannister monster that had just been born. We were expecting some harrowing creature, however, it was only that Tyrion Lannister. It was only a baby. We saw nothing wrong with him, but his sister Cersei already had a kindling hatred for her brother. I wanted to see it all, after that. I knew I never wanted to stay in Dorne forever, but now I'm back, and I never quite want to leave."
"I remember the wedding well."
She also recalled how Oberyn had danced with Ashara Dayne, as she stared at her Cyvasse set that had been placed on a low cedar wood table across the room. How not one man had asked to dance with Gwendys, when her friends were being twirled around all night. How upset and jealous she'd been of their beauty, and how she'd gone to bed early.
