Every Time You Draw Them, A Part Of Me Heals

Every time you draw them, a part of me heals

Winter in King’s Landing:

Jaehaera and Morghul

There probably were some cases but the masters refused to acknowledge it

They were like mmmmm maegor tried to put his dragon on the throne let's not talk about

house targaryen kinda boring u telling me not a single king tried to make his dragon heir? doubt

Roadtrip

A call cuts through the solemn silence of the night, stirring you off the shallow waters of a restless sleep. You take your keys and hit the road, headed to nowhere street.

They said you’d find them beyond the crossroad, a little off to the right side of a ghost town, not too far away from an abandoned gas station. You drive for minutes, hours, days but the starless sky does not leave your side, always watching over your head.

Dust welcomes the soles of your feet on the ruins of a city that barely holds onto its name. One step at a time, you wade closer to the roaming darkness of your heart. You set camp in the middle of an empty road and start digging, for minutes, for hours, for days but the starless sky bears witness to every drop of sweat you shed. A soft breeze whispers at your ears to dig deeper, to lean in closer to the gaping hole you just made ;

it lurks in the inner corners of your mind

it glares from the inside out

it latches onto you

it crawls under your skin

it whispers

it breathes

it whispers

it drums your heart to its own beat.

You lose yourself to the melody till another voice joins it and you get lost in its slurred words and you lean in closer and you fall along with the night and you shoot for the stars and you spin against the world and you swim against the current and you run to the end of the day and you fade into twilight and you wrap your arms around the shadows, enshroud yourself into their veil and you turn your back on dawn, pull the blinds and hide away from sight, from mind, from light.

You wait and wait, till the first rays of sun close in on you ;

you hesitate to say a prayer before you think better of it. You cover your work, turn around without a goodbye, coaxing the memories to follow you back into the car, to haunt your days and nights forevermore.

As you drive back home you can almost feel it, sitting at the passenger seat, switching radio channels and tapping a tune on the board. And you don’t dare turn around for they live at the corner of your eye ; somewhere close enough to itch but far enough from reach.

And you drive away from home away from the city away from the crowd. And you lean onto the stick shift, willing your hand to become its extension. And you stare ahead onto the outstretched road, willing the scenery to snatch your soul. And you glance up at the rearview mirror, willing your reflection to become a stranger.

You drive through cities, old and new, you watch as well-made roads turn askew. You drive through rain and storms and tricky view. And when you catch the deer in the headlights, you run it through. And when it lays on your way, you drag its blood on your trail. And when the fusty smell mixes with petrichor well, you keep on driving with a body in your backseat. You keep on driving with a ghost in your passenger seat. You keep on driving with murder on your mind.

And when it’s time to take a break, you lean back on old days ; you look behind you, you look in front of you. Anywhere your eyes travel, you see the bars of a jail in time, a prison of your own making. And as the darkness seeps out of your eyes and joins the night, as it dances under the streetlights to a silent tune, as it travels over your pores and sprouts weeds that climb up your throat... You look ahead and hit the gas once more.

The ghost next to you, humming to a song you cannot hear. The deer behind you, writhing, giving its last breath. The moon overhead, glaring at you. The stars around it, teasing you. The silence you paid a hefty price for, wrapping itself over your shoulders, putting a blanket of quiet over your head.

Red lights shine blue in front of you. Red flags turn white as sheet, forgetting their color, falling like snow on either side of the road where a thousand names lay forgotten. Bloodshot eyes stare back into yours and offer you a sip. The ghost smiles with all its gleaming teeth ; it’s mouthing something, you think it’s calling you angel. You think it’s asking for a kiss. You think it’s telling you to let go of the wheel.

The ghost smiles with all its gleaming teeth, and you can see yourself trapped between them. And you can feel it as they pick at you, as they peel off your skin. As they hang your wings to the rearview mirror and you dangle into the void. As they call you their lucky charm. As you bleed on their knuckles and drain into the air vents.

The deer in the backseat has stopped fighting, and as your blood dries on their hands, they wash you off their nails and wipe away at the corners of their mouth. They gurgle the taste in their throat with water and take over the wheel.

How good it feels, to let someone else lead the way ; to wash your hands off your own fate and see it unfold as a passenger. You watch as they run you both into a wall. You watch as the curtains of night let in the blinding light. You welcome the concussion and the deafening noise. And when darkness welcomes you into its gaping maw, you trust the fall more than anything you know. And as they pull your body off the wreck, you watch shadows dancing over your head ; their mouths agape in a symphony you cannot recognize, their hands pulling at your limbs, their eyes flashing headlights. You brace yourself for the collision, you wait to join the carcass in the backseat.

It never comes.

So you sit up in bed and watch the ghost hovering around the hours between night and day ; only ever present for the price of your sleep and dreams.

So you sit up in bed and talk to the darkness and ask questions with no answers and tell stories with cliffhangers steep enough to slip back into the peaceful silence of your car on a road to nowhere.

God this is amazing

Before any thing English is my third language please if there is any mistake do correct me it will help me improve

In my head I was always like no lyanna isn't choosing rhaegar per say but she is choosing the crown or rather the crowns power the power to get away from a man she despise (happy about toddlers and babys death, sent killers after a berly teen, sleeping with whores will trying to save the "love of his life", the physical violence with cercei, him being a horrible king)

She probably saw him like he really is not that idealistic version that Ned had as a brother and a friend, which isn't an act when he is ned's "brother" he is respectful and nice, his character doesn't change with him until ned is hand of the king AKA his servitor

So I think that lyana loved rhaegar in the same way cercei did,

"Had any man ever been so beautiful? He was more than a man, though. His blood was the blood of old Valyria, the blood of dragons and gods

—thoughts of Cersei Lannister"

They saw the nice soft spoken prince and concluded on the need to tie there future with him, because he is the prince, and both there family's wanted power and what a better position than future queen

Lyana stark didn't want to be "selfish" when she spoke to her family and understood that she was nothing more than a bargaining tool in this situation she just wished to strike a better deal for both her family and more importantly herself

Maybe she loved him or maybe she didn't, she just hopped to gain in the change, what is true is that the mans in westeros played the game with womens life's for centuries starting wars and rebellions for less, had Rickard consulted his daughter instead of his sons maybe he would have gained more.

Lyanna sow a chance for some liberating power that would have offered more to her family than her old betrothal, but like every body who doesn't win at the game of thrones she died.

This is a reply in regards to this post, which highlights the high likelihood that, whether people are fine with the author's choices or not, RxL is written by him with romantic nuance as far as the text goes. @sahtinekryze

And I think this fandom really needs to have a honest analysis of the idea of "selfishness" in narrative choices such as this, which is that when it comes to how the whole "duty vs love" scenarios Martin writes, he does not actually writes it with some wide spectrum ranging from selfish to sacrificial. There are usually no other choices than the two.

Could one define the alleged choice of breaking a noble marriage contract that would have negative political influence at the least, had it been the best case scenario (which one would logically assume the two might have hoped for instead of very lots of people dying including themselves) as 'selfish', which in its very definition is doing something for one's self, though it may not be advantageous for others? Yes.

But as I said, Martin doesn't write a middle ground. There's that, or Lyanna marries an unwanted man and is hence forced to have a non-consensual relationship with him, and forced to carry children out of a noncon relationship, so that her male relatives can reap benefits of political power, as well as her groom through her womb. And as shows inspired by these books love to show us very graphic such cases (like Daenerys in GOT, or the storyline given to show!Sansa, or the changes for show!Alicent in HOTD), I am sure fans should have learnt better about the accusations usually thrown at Lyanna in fandom spaces in regards to being another woman marrying against her will in a society where a woman cannot say no, marital rape isn't recognised, and a husband is "just taking his rights": that "this is just being whiny". (There are many other examples in the books; the author is also not holding back on what unwanted or unsuitable marriages mean to women.)

Against the fanon idea that she is some wild, demanding, conceited girl, she doesn't rage, she doesn't bite. She has a tentative, soft spoken conversation with her brother about it and her reluctance in the matter, and is (nicely) dismissed.

Had she not (allegedly, while all is unconfirmed) fallen for the Crown Prince and he for her, there is no one else powerful enough to extract her from her situation (her male relatives having made up their own minds in the matter), nor anyone else to go from where she cannot be recovered by a powerful and connected family and fiance. No one else she could marry/sleep with that wouldn't be shut down and covered (as seen with Tyrion or Lysa) to preserve the higher price for which her womb can be bartered. Just no other viable choice that wasn't the other end of the scale: a woman being sacrificed by men, for men's uses.

As I said at the start, this is simply how Martin writes these conflicts of "mind and heart". He corners the characters. There is no light at the end of the tunnel that isn't also sort of "selfish" and "dumb" looking on the surface.

This can be applied to more such situations in the text-

Catelyn undoes the already precarious state of her son's campaign by releasing their most valuable captive. She has not even a guarantee that her 'selfish' act for love will work. But there are no options she's given. No one else cares to make it a priority to get her daughters back. The only other choice is to let it be and let 2 girls be sacrificed in marriages of ill intent to use their wombs and discard them, unsure if she will find anything left of them but Lannister named babies when this is over. It is "selfish". It is "dumb". Yet she's cornered.

Jon makes the decision to go fight Ramsay Bolton because he's run out of options and he's cornered. Arya is allegedly in the hands of the family that have viciously killed a number of Starks and taken Winterfell. She is 11 and allegedly married. He is made sick at the thought of what is being done to her. He's tried the "lesser" tactics of getting her rescued without being seen as trespassing the status quo of the NW publicly, by sending others for her. But it was always going to come to this. Ramsay guesses (or finds out) that his escaped bride would make it to the Wall. Keeping "peace" and "doing his duty" instead of "being selfish and dumb" is handing over "Arya" himself if she even makes it to appease the Lord of Winterfell, sacrificing a girl to an unwanted marriage meant to use her for her womb and discard her.

There are no actual choices when there is no actual scale in between "selfish and dumb" and the sacrifice of a girl (or, you know, 2,3, as many as Westeros would swallow as it did for millennia for this or that Lord or King to amass and keep power), whether they are Lannisters trying to get Winterfell, or Starks extinguishing the line of the Warg King.

He tried his best to cheer the innocent baby when he knows himself the catastrophe they’re facing. Ya Allah, please protect the people of Gaza. You know what is best for them. Grant us the imaan, patience and bravery You gifted them

via @/writer_liltash on twitter