Devotion (GOT Fanfic)

Chapter XIV

Act II of Devotion: Endurance

Chapter XIV: Caerys

  'I thought I would be over Harrenhal when peace returned to me and my family and of the whole of the realm. I thought that if that was all that happened then I might have forgiven my father. Children, even in their youth as they do not understand, are more than willing to forgive faults. They don't know the depth of the pain nor the misery any adult had caused.

But that was not all that happened and as I grew up, I realized that I hated anyone who harmed those who don't deserve harm. The elder children of the crown which included me, whom my mother decided to retort as the 'shepherds of the young sheep', were angry with our father as the years passed and I think some of my siblings never forgave our father or gave him no chance to prove to them that he is a good man. The younger children of our family, the young sheep, knew nothing of it. It was better that way we supposed. That way they didn't know about what our mother's sufferings were in the aftermath of Harrenhal.

Our mother suffered the most heartbreaking thing for any woman, especially one that is a mother.

And that was to losing her child.

 The white queen visited the crypts a lot, of course there was no body. Only ash in a small coffin in the sept of Baelor, transported to Casterly Rock if I recall. I had after all visited it only a handful of times. My sister Caerys was cremated like the rest of the kin and mother barely spoke of her. Until she miscarried again, a son in her later years. When we all gathered, she told us the story with tears and joy and sorrow swelling into her.  It was a girl, we were told. Of course when we were children, we never spoke about it but as we grew up, we found out more. Our uncle Oberyn had named her Caerys, which in  high Valyrian means 'burning memory'. My mother took a long time to open up about our sister, knowing it was something you don't easily forget. But when she described the babe to us years later, a longing look and a sorrowful smile was all she gave and said: 

 "Caerys, your sister. She would have been the most beautiful girl one would have seen. I could feel her entire head in the whole palm of my hand, with her silver hair all about her head like a crown. Her hair would have been the envy of the realm, my children. They were the crowns gifted by the gods. She had my nose and my ears and her eyes, the maester opened them and told me that she had the most beautiful purple eyes in the world, like a beautiful piece of the rarest diamonds. It was incomparable to anything I had ever seen. 

She had lashes already as well, the most beautifully curled lashes in the entire world. They too were silver. She had this light to her, like the breaking of morning. She would have been so beautiful and she was taken away from me. I wouldn't have seen her had your uncle Oberyn fought everyone about it. He said I deserved to know my daughter, so I wouldn't have to imagine what she looked like. I blamed your father for a long time. I blamed him for so much and I was just so angry at him. But I knew he blamed himself too. We made our peace about it a long time ago, knowing your sister is in a better place and is not suffering. But Caerys, your sister...she paid the price for the sake of the dream for spring when it was all a lie and that is something I cannot forget no matter how much I forgive."

 But there was so much more to lose than just that. We knew that, all of us know that for the life we lead has always spun around in loss. But no one knew it as well as my mother.  Leila Lannister knew that well as she aged. That is why I suppose, I was gladdened that my mother no longer lived to suffer so much more.'