#dragonglassandgold

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I know it's probably never gonna happen but hpw do you think Aemond would react to seeing Baelon reunite with his twin?

There is a witch, and there is a fire, and there is a diamond in Visenya’s hand.

He does not want to be here, this little shack in the woods, with its thatch roof and its painted blue door and the chimney belching smoke with no scent. He does not want to stand here with the twisted tapestries on the walls (women entangled, women turning into beasts, women with bloody hands and bared teeth, women as women would be if men did not tell them they were soft and sweet and good and small so often that they started to believe it) and the herbs dangling from rafters and the jars of odd liquids filling up rickety shelves. He does not want to be under the gaze of this woman who is looking at them like they are meat. Like she wishes to suck their flesh from their bones.

But Visenya wants, and so Aemond does.

"What have you brought me?" asks the woman, gnarled hands appearing from her cloak. Her eyes are blue, though he can swear they were brown just a few moments ago. She smiles with teeth that he thinks are just on this side of too sharp, and he wraps nervous fingers around Visenya's wrist in a silent plea to leave.

"Payment," Visenya said, raising the jewel. She waggles it lightly, drops it into the woman's hand when she reaches out towards it.

"To speak to the dead is an expensive ask, girl," clucks the witch, though she brings the diamond close to her chest. He suspects, if they tried to take it back, she would bite. "More expensive still to speak to the dead as they should be instead of how they are."

"A babe cannot speak," Visenya says. He thinks her foot might be on the verge of stomping. "He must be as he would be if he'd lived, not--not as he was as he died."

"Then, it will cost you more than a jewel."

"Visenya," he murmurs. "Visenya, we brought nothing else, we cannot--"

But Visenya shakes him off, and Visenya takes something from her bag.

"No," Aemond snarls.

"Yes," hisses the witch, reaching greedy hands for the remains of Vyper's egg. Black eggshells tinged with green, jagged shards worn smooth from how often Visenya has stroked her fingers over them, something precious, something magic. "Oh, yes, yes, that will do."

"Are you mad?" he snarls, but the answer is yes, and he watches in horror when his sister spills the remnants of a dragon egg into a witch's crooked hands.

"If you do not do what you say you can do," Visenya warns, "I will burn this place and take the payment back from your corpse."

"Testy, you dragons," says the witch, eyes rolling. They are green when she blinks, and he is less and less sure that they were ever anything else. "I will do as I said I would do. I will give you back your pretty king."

Visenya tenses, makes a low sound, and he does not understand the way her face flickers.

The witch does. She smiles. "Oh, yes, he whispers. Your pretty king, your pretty fool, your beloved. He hovers, he watches. Sweet dragon, he says, little love, pretty wife, wicked little sister--"

"Stop," Visenya hisses, recoiling, and her hand comes up to clasp at the hand he still has around her wrist. She squeezes hard enough to ache, but her eyes are so wild that he does not try to pull away. "Stop--stop. Just...just let me see him."

The witch sighs, purses her mouth, and then looks at him. Too intensely, studying him coldly, and then she clucks her tongue. "The boy must wait outside."

"Like hell he will," Aemond says, though Visenya looks at him like she wants to kill him a little. He glares back. "I am not leaving you here alone with a crone you found in the woods. She could kill you."

"The old woman?" Visenya asks, flatly.

The old woman's eyes are violet when she laughs, and he knows damn well they weren't before.

"I am not going anywhere," he insists, planting his feet, and the witch hums.

"It is a kindness, prince," she says. "Should you stay, you will bear witness."

He goes rigid, feels Visenya's eyes on his face, and clenches his jaw hard enough to send a flush of pain up through his skull. Bear witness, she says. Bear witness to Baelon, if she tells the truth about what she can do; bear witness to Baelon and Visenya both, his sister seeing him awake as she has never seen him, some ghostly image of the brother she longed for, and he does not think this witch sells anything to mend the hurts of the heart.

Baelon is dead, he thinks, and Visenya is not, and I will stay.

"I will be fine," he says.

"Pretty fool," mocks the golden-eyed witch, and Visenya trembles.

He stands with Visenya, clinging to him still, as the witch begins. She plucks jars from the shelves and herbs from the rafters, mumbling nastily under her breath all the while in a language he does not know. The herbs are ground or torn or chewed, sprinkled or thrown or spit into the pot over her fire; the liquid in the jars is swirled or stirred or swilled in her mouth, poured or dripped or drooled into the pot atop the leaves. She comes to them, still muttering nastily, and a knife comes from nowhere in her robes.

He jerks forward, shoves Visenya behind him, but the witch and his sister both cluck at him in disapproval and move towards each other again. The witch cuts open Visenya's palm, watches with keen eyes as the blood pools, and then pricks her own finger and allows a single drop of her blood to fall into it.

It sizzles.

He does not think that is normal.

She takes a lock of Visenya's hair next, cuts it close to the root--stuffs it into her mouth and then drags it out, dips it into the blood until silver turns red, and then casts it into the pot with the rest.

She gestured, and Visenya moves--holds her hand above the pot, lets the blood fall into it.

The witch's eyes are black.

Aemond realizes, quite suddenly, that he is praying.

There is an energy building in the room that feels not unlike the moment before a dragon spits their fire, something deep and heavy. It lays over his skin, slick and unnatural, and he works his way through the Seven with all the care of someone pretending they are not terrified.

"Call his name," says the witch. "You've only a few minutes."

"Baelon," Visenya says, once and then twice and then as a spilling chant, begging the air, and the fire goes out.

The room smells of blood suddenly. Not the smell of Visenya's blood in her hand, not the smell of the witch's pricked finger, but blood. Too much blood, lifeblood spilled, and he cannot say for sure how he knows it is Aemma Arryn's blood except that it is.

Visenya staggers, so he knows she smells it, too. Her eyes squeeze shut when she cries out, and so she does not see when the witch lashes a foot out and sends the pot spilling over on its side. Does not see when the liquid and herbs and hair and blood come rushing out over her floor, and she does not see the smoke that becomes a man.

Aemond does.

The smoke sees him, too.

Baelon Targaryen looks at him with his brow furrowed for a moment, but then it clears. He grins, only halfway, a curl to his mouth and a twitch of his nose, and says, "Rytsas, valonqar."

He always...he thought all his life that she must be exaggerating. They are only half-brothers, he and Baelon, and they are not twins. It is wishful thinking on her part, latching onto small similarities and making them bigger than they are. Surely. Surely.

But no.

He is covered in blood, granted. Dried in his hair, dripping down his face. He is naked and so clearly unembarassed about it that it is a little horrifying, and he is almost translucent. Made of smoke, made of magic and herbs and Visenya's bloody desire.

But he has Aemond's face beneath it.

Oh, not--his brows are thicker, he thinks, and his eyes perhaps a little wider. His short hair curls a little, more wave than anything, the way Aemond's only does when soaked straight through. He is broader in the shoulders, more muscular in his legs, shorter if only by an inch. He has scars Aemond does not have, stubble Aemond never allows to grow, and his voice is a shade deeper than Aemond's is.

But it is his face. His voice. Him, a near perfect mirror image.

"Rytsas, lēkia," he manages past his too thick tongue, and the brother who died before he ever lived grins again.

"Baelon?"

In front of Aemond's eye, Baelon forgets he exists.

He snaps around as if yanked by a hook, gaze gone so blisteringly intense that Aemond blanches. He does not walk, he only...becomes. One moment there and the next moment gone, and Aemond turns his head to find him stood in front of Visenya with both hands raised to try to cup her face.

She is shaking so hard Aemond thinks her knees will go out. Her eyes are wide as saucers, her lips parted, and there are tears spilling so thick down her cheeks that he doesn't know how she can see. She reaches for Baelon, tries to touch his cheek, but the twins find at the same moment that their hands only pass straight through.

"I cannot touch you," Baelon says, agonized. "I cannot--I cannot touch you, dōna zaldrīzes, dōna mirre, byka jorrāelagon--"

"I see you, though," she says, laughing through her tears, "I see you, I see you, you have no idea how I've missed you--"

"I know," he says, this ghost of a ghost, "I know, I know--"

They are still trying to touch each other. Pressing their hands as close as they can get, hovering them over each other's skin, mimicking it as best they can, and the witch begins to chant again but neither of them even turn their heads.

He thinks he should have left when she told him to leave.

They are whispering now, too low to hear, Visenya's eyes soaking him in and her mouth moving too quickly for him to even attempt to read it. He has never seen her look at anything like this before, not even Vyper--like Baelon is something holy, something sacred, like he is all that matters now and then and always. Baelon is just the same, reverent and worshipful and crying; his tears are blood, which goes almost unnoticed on the mess of his cheeks.

He should not be watching this.

It is not...for him. This is not for him to see.

He does not want to see it.

He does not want to see Visenya looking like this, loving like this, because she has never looked at him this way. She will not ever look at him this way. And it is not fair, it isn't, having to play second to a man who died before he was born, who died before Visenya was any more than a babe, a man who had his life and his chance already. Baelon has had his turn. He's had his life. It is not fair that he gets this one, too.

Something bitter is in the back of his throat, a heat in his limbs that does not dissipate, and he looks to the witch.

She smiles.

"No," Baelon says, sudden, stricken, loud, "wait, wait, no--"

But then he's gone. The smoke of him, the ghost of him, and Visenya's hands are stretched out to grasp nothing, and Aemond only barely moves fast enough to catch her when she falls.

She's warm against him, all of her weight draped over him when his arm curls around her waist, and she's screaming so loud that he winces, that he thinks it must hurt. Her nails are scrabbling at his arms, and she's sobbing so hard she shakes, sputtering out "no, no, wait, a little longer, give him back--"

The witch blinks pale gray eyes, almost sympathetic. "I cannot give you any more than I have already given."

Visenya's eyes squeeze shut, and she keens like she's dying, like she's lost something she would have rathered die than give up. She said this would make it hurt less, but he does not think it worked. He does not think this took any pain away, only widened a wound that had already refused to close over.

Aemond croons nonsensically, holds her up, presses his mouth to the top of her head.

I am glad that he's dead, he thinks. It is not the first time he's thought it, not the first time the dark thought whipped through him, but it is the first time he doesn't shy away from it. The first time he doesn't feel guilty, the first time he doesn't chide himself for wishing her hurt like this. He has had his life already, he has done it all already, and she is alive, and I am here, and I am glad that he's dead.

(That night, when he dreams, it is of a prince with both eyes and a bloody face, a dragon who presses his thumbs to Aemond's cheeks and calls him little brother.)

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i promise you that either a completely new chapter will be posted by new year’s or edits will be finished by new year’s.

this is the deadline i have made for myself

scout’s honor

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if i could draw and/or had the money to pay people to draw the things in my head it would be OVER for EVERYONE

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snippet please!

behold, the Green children acting like six year olds

i know i haven't updated in awhile, guys, my bad! school's been busy, i'll hopefully get something out soon.

Helaena looked up at him, lips pressed together and her brow furrowed deeply, and he paused half-hovering in his chair. “Good morning?” he said, cautiously and half a question, and her furrowed brow turned into an alarmingly black glower right before she sniffed and turned her face sharply away from him.

“She is not speaking to you,” Aegon informed him.

Aegon’s presence was more surprising than Visenya’s absence. Awake well before noon, looking only half-dead, his legs spread improperly in his chair and his head dipped back against the back of his chair. Arm tossed over his brow, purple moons beneath his closed eyes, still smelling faintly of wine.

(You smell like liquor, he’d said the night before, and her teeth latched light and playful to the cord of his throat—)

He sank the rest of the way into his chair, squinted. “What have I done?”

She’d been fine at dinner, if a little quiet, and he certainly hadn’t done anything to her afterwards—too busy roaming the halls impatiently, waiting for Visenya to come back.

Helaena scoffed.

“Visenya’s left for Dragonstone,” Aegon answered, cracking one eye.

He pinched the back of his wrist so viciously it left indentions. “She is not due for Dragonstone for months yet.”

Aegon did not answer, but he opened his eyes more fully and looked pointedly towards the empty chair.

“She is late every morning,” he huffed, jutting his chin unapologetically. “You misunderstood her.

“Lae,” Aegon said in the tone of a mystified child, “do you think we misunderstood her?”

Helaena pretended to consider. “I thought tell your mother I am going to Dragonstone early very clear, actually.”

“As did I,” Aegon said, nodding. “Nine words, you know. Very difficult to misunderstand.”

“I,” said Aemond, flat and spiteful, “am so very proud that you have learned to count, brother.”

“Perhaps he thinks us dull,” Helaena said, fixing him with a steely look. It did not look right on her face, an affectation clearly stolen from Visenya herself, but the intent behind it was clear enough to make him twitch in his seat. “Ask him if he thinks us dull, Aegon.”

“Do you think us dull, Aemond?” Aegon demanded immediately.

“Helaena,” he said, laying palms flat on the table, rapidly reaching the end of his tether. “Do not be a child. If you have something to say to me, you may as well say it yourself.”

Helaena stuck out her tongue, and Aemond’s sputter of offense was lost beneath Aegon’s snort of laughter.

“You are a mother and a woman grown, stop behaving as if we are babes.”

Helaena’s tongue wiggled insistently.

“Helaena.”

“Tell him I am still not speaking to him.”

“She is still not speaking to you.”

“Helaena—”

“I said, she is not speaking to you,” Aegon interrupted, eyes narrowing to slits. He tipped his head to the side when Helaena muttered something, then raised it again and obediently tacked on, “idiot.”

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okay i am HOPING to get something posted this weekend. very sorry for the wait, thank you all for the support and the love🩵

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this is how i look trying to figure out how old my own characters are supposed to be

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edits have gotten a little more excessive than I first thought they'd be--again, nothing major plotwise, but I've found that I'm really not happy with a lot of my earlier writing. i'm thinking instead of editing the fic as it exists, I may leave it as it is and create something new for the rewritten? that way the original version is still around and the change in writing style isn't so jarring as I edit lol

also, just throwing out there to all of you who have been with me since the beginning: I genuinely cannot believe you muscled through some of those beginning chapters, I love you all so much, you have no idea how much I appreciate it

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silver and moonstone snippet

Joffrey alone did not ask her why she came early to Dragonstone.

He had more important things on his mind.

“Again,” he said, hands pressed together as if praying, the furrow in his brow deep enough to call a canyon. She looked down at him from her perch on the crook of Vyper’s leg, her brows raised and a smile playing at her mouth. “Have him do it again.”

Visenya clucked her tongue.

Vyper heaved a great sigh of annoyance, then lifted his tail and let it fall back onto the rocks of the beach with enough force to jostle her a little.

“That!” Joffrey cried, pointing as if she’d missed it. “That! How do you do that without speaking?”

“Blood magic,” she said, airily. “He has eaten of my flesh and drunk of my blood, so now we have one mind and one soul to share.”

Joffrey’s eyes went round as saucers, lips parting in childish wonder, and, somewhere to the left, Jace called, “she is jesting, Joff!”

“Are you sure?” she called, cocking her head to listen. A grin grew slow over her face when only silence came back, and, by the time Jace came around Vyper’s head to enter her view, she was barely fighting off a fit of laughter.

He tipped his head back to glare at her; she liked being able to look down on him from this height, short as he was even a fortnight away from seventeen. He made such a deal of the hair of height he had on her that any advantage was more than welcome. Those big brown eyes narrowed, his curls whipping about in his face from the wind; he’d used oils and pastes to straighten them out for ages, but Visenya’s relentless mockery had finally worn him down into letting them loose.

People would whisper he was Harwin’s bastard with or without the curls, after all, and at least this was he did not look so damned foolish.

“I am sure,” he said, not sounding it. “And you should not make such jokes around children!”

“I said far worse things around you when you were eight, and you turned out fine.”

“That’s not what she means to say,” Luke said, sidling into view on Jace’s heels with a smirk pasted on his face and a snicker already falling from his mouth. He tossed an arm over his elder brother’s shoulder, leaned in close with comically wide eyes, and said, “what she means is: pry the stick from your arse, Jacaerys.”

Thirteen now, but he still looked a babe to her. It did not matter that the baby fat was slowly leaving his face, that he was rapidly approaching matching her and Jace in height, that the maesters suspected he would be as tall as Harwin Strong before all was said and done. Little, little Luke, her little god, with her ring still worn around his finger and fingertip callouses from drawing the bow she’d given him.

Jace shoved him off with a huff, and Luke allowed himself to be thrown. He draped himself over Joffrey instead, arm curling around his neck as he pulled him into a loose headlock. “You’ll have to feed Tyraxes bits and pieces if you ever want him to heed you,” he teased. “A goblet of blood should do for the first flight, no, Enya?”

“Oh, more than enough. Little boy’s blood is sweet as can be, anymore will give him a stomachache.”

“I gave Arrax a nibble from my arm,” Luke said, somberly, drawing away to briefly flap one arm up and down. “Why do you think I am always wearing clothes with long sleeves?”

“Lucerys!” Jace barked, and Luke ducked quickly to whisper something in Joffrey’s ear that turned him white as a sheet. His little eyes blinked furiously a few times, and he turned a horrified look to Jace just as Luke darted away from his brothers and hauled himself up Vyper’s leg to perch beside Visenya.

“Too bold on a dragon not yours,” she said, and he rolled his eyes and shoved her until she twisted her legs about to give him more room.

“What’s yours is mine,” he said, ever a prince, and, with all the maturity of a princess of twenty, she stuck out her tongue.

“They are only teasing, Joff,” Jace said, exasperated, and Visenya and Luke peered back down at the sand. “You’ll not have to give him anything for a first flight, nor to make him heed you without speaking. It comes with practice, is all.”

Joffrey’s shoulders slumped with relief, and he turned his look of childish innocence up towards his eldest brother. “So Vermax did not bite off your cock before she let you fly?”

Jace’s face went through several emotions in a very short period of time, but Visenya fell so quickly into hysterics that she did not catch a single one.

“No,” he finally squawked, face flaming, and then he spun on them with an outraged, “Luke!”

“The stick,” Luke said, his own cackles warping his words to the point that she only barely understood then. “Take it out, Jace!”

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okay! so!

at some point in the next few days, I will be posting the first chapter of "sapphires and steel".

this post is just my way of letting you know that

sapphires and steel will most likely have major spoilers for silver and moonstone, so, if you do intend to read both stories, keep that in mind and maybe wait until silver and moonstone is finished to read sapphires and steel--I will try to remember to add into the chapter notes when there will be a spoiler so people can skip over it, but I am dumb and will most likely forget at least once

the divergence begins at the aemond interlude chapter in silver and moonstone, but the major plot point changes will most likely happen later on. in the beginning especially, many chapters of silver and moonstone/sapphires and steel will be mostly the same or even have reused scenes simply told in Aemond's POV instead of Visenya's

the fic is primarily in Aemond's POV, but each of the Green siblings will have their own interlude at some point

i am going to catch sapphires and steel up to silver and moonstone, and then i will try to post the chapters for both stories simultaneously or least alternate between them depending on time

sapphires and steel will have a happy ending: visenya and aemond end up together, every one lives, etc

silver and moonstone does not have that at all: they are almost all going to die, and aemond and visenya are not coming out of the other end together

please, please keep this in mind when you're deciding which end you want to read--or, if you intend to read both, which order you want to read it in.

as always, thank you for your support! if you have any questions about something i forgot to address, please let me know :)

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the devil on my shoulder is advocating real hard for an aemond pov interlude

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someone asked me if s&m versions of any of rhaenyra and daemon’s kids from dg&g (other than aegon and viserys) will ever come into play but my inbox ate it, so here is your answer:

five of the ten will be present in silver and moonstone.

aegon, already born to daemon and rhaenyra

viserys, already born to daemon and rhaenyra

one will be born to daemon and rhaenyra a second time, in place of show!canon and book!canon’s visenya

one will not be the child of daemon and rhaenyra and has yet to be born, but they will be a Targaryen

one was born outside of House Targaryen all together and will play a larger part later on (hint: in a way, they’ve already briefly been present in s&m)

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Okay, so someone asked about the life where Visenya is Daemon and Rhaenyra’s daughter, but my inbox somehow ate it??? I have no idea, probably my bad, but it was basically just asking for a more in depth description so:

The first major difference is that Rhaenyra and Daemon spend way more time in King’s Landing than they do when both twins live. This is really because Nyra feels more comfortable leaving them behind knowing they have each other, and she doesn’t have that same comfort in lives where one of them is born without the other. Especially because both of the twins are very much pack animals, and they don’t do well by themselves.

Baelon’s lonely without Visenya. He doesn’t mesh well with children outside his family. Nyra can’t just abandon him.

So, they stay. They behave themselves as best as they can. They try to get along with Viserys’s expectations. And when Baelon’s four, instead of having Aegon, they have Visenya.

Baelon is enamored by Visenya. He’s never been around a baby before, and now there’s suddenly this little thing with the biggest eyes and she smiles whenever he pokes his head over her bassinet??? Daemon lets him pick her egg, and it hatches? She learns to walk and then she’s always right on his heels, trying to hold his hand, and her first word is his name (well more like Ba, but she was pointing towards him so he counts it)?? She thinks he’s the best thing ever and she wants Baelon to put her to bed and Baelon to read her a story even though he isn’t very good at reading yet and Baelon to play with her??? He falls asleep next to her bed so often that Nyra starts checking there first whenever they find him out of bed in the middle of the night. Visenya has this child’s entire heart in her pudgy little baby hands.

Everyone thinks it’s adorable right up until Rhaenyra and Daemon start having more kids (when Visenya is five, maybe? we’ll say five)

Because, look, he thinks they’re neat and everything. But Aegon cries all the time, and Viserys doesn’t like any of the games that Baelon played with Visenya when she was that little, and there’s something just not quite the same with any of them as it is with Visenya. He’s okay with being around them, but he prefers it when it’s just him and Visenya wreaking havoc all on their own.

They, however, do not. They much prefer to be right where their big sister is, whether Baelon’s there or not, and he’s just gotta deal with it. And he is blindingly jealous of the fact that she just lets them, that sometimes she’ll go off with them without him at all, because he isn’t her twin brother in this life but he still thinks of himself as hers.

So, yeah, maybe he takes her side a little too zealously whenever she gets into fights with her siblings. Maybe “Aegon stole my toy!” turns into Baelon smacking him in the face, or he bites Daemon back when he bites Visenya’s arm. But he doesn’t see anything wrong with that. She’s his favorite. Of course he’s going to defend her.

It doesn’t matter how many times Nyra and Daemon try to talk to him about it. He doesn’t care. He is in the right as far as he’s concerned and they aren’t changing his mind about it.

It does not get better as they age.

It gets significantly worse.

Because as they age, they’re still thick as thieves! Sure, he’s a little older, but neither of them really think of it. They’re each other’s best friends in the world. They fly together (he cannot count how many times Daemon jumps down his throat about going on late night flights with no chaperone, but he doesn’t see the issue with that either) and they spend most of their time together. He doesn’t think that anything is going to change.

But then she turns fifteen??? And the suitors start coming??? And all of a sudden she is being swarmed by these little pissant lords with their sugary words and their sly eyes, and Daemon is chaperoning walks in the gardens, and Viserys is talking about his eldest granddaughter’s wedding??

He realizes pretty quickly that he just can’t let that fly and that maybe he’s a little bit in love with her. Which he probably should have realized sooner but, hey, Targaryen men aren’t always the brightest or most emotionally in touch.

He realizes this in the middle of almost killing one of her suitors, actually, and he only stops because one of the Kingsguard is dragging him off, and he looks up to see her on the dais overlooking the training yard and she’s grinning. He just beat the crap out of one of the men she might marry in the training yard, and she’s looking at him like he just hung the moon, and he knows.

He’s hers, and she’s his, and he’s banging on Rhaenyra and Daemon’s door before the blood is dry on his hands.

After that, things go basically the same. They get married, they have kids, they’re gross and feral and very them. It’s a mostly happy life.

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the way i think of dragonglass and gold visenya and silver and moonstone visenya is kind of like really really jealous sisters.

like they’re standing back to back. they’re holding each other up.

but dg!visenya is looking up at Baelon because he’s hers! and she’s got one hand in s!visenya’s and the other reaching backwards and stretching past this other version of herself. she can’t see what she’s reaching for but she knows it’s there. the dragon. the independence. this modicum of freedom.

but s!visenya is looking up at Vyper because he’s hers! and she’s got one hand in dg!visenya’s and the other reaching backwards and stretching past this other version of herself. she can’t see what she’s reaching for but she knows it’s there. Baelon. her children. this life of careless joy.

they love each other and they hate each other and they are each other and they both have what the other one wants more than anything and GOD sometimes i forget i made these people up in my head

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dragonglass and gold snippet

my youngers are home :)

The Youngers looked more like men when they came home than when they left. Both a little taller, broader in the shoulders, stubble on their jaws and their hair grown long. Viserys had a scar across his neck, some ghastly crooked thing that had obviously gone in deep and healed ugly, and Baelon did not want to hear the story of how he’d gotten it; Daemon had burn scars traveling up his right arm, which could not have come from dragon fire—else he would not still have the arm—but still made Baelon’s brows raise anyway. But they were whole. Hale. Smiling.

“The Knights of the Ashes come home again,” Daemon sang as soon as the door opened, sat on the edge of Baelon’s desk, and he flung his arms out wide as if basking in silent applause. “They did not give you such a pretty name, Baelon.”

“Your Grace,” Viserys reminded him, leaned on the desk beside him, and he swayed to bump his shoulder into Daemon’s side fondly. “He is a king now, remember.”

“And I rather think King of the Seven Kingdoms is pretty enough,” Baelon said with a sniff, but he was smiling when he pulled the door shut behind him. “You come home and break into my office before you tell anyone hello? Have you no manners? A few years at war and you become feral beasts?”

“Ah, uncle,” Viserys said, grin lopsided, “we must greet the king before we can greet any other! He the highest power in all the realm!”

Both boys rocked off the desk and dropped into sweeping, dramatic bows with great flourishes of their arms. Their heads tilted up from the floor after a moment, and, when they saw the look on his face, they fell into each other with pealing laughter.

“I see becoming killers has not changed you,” he observed. “Annoying little twats.”

[simplynotcapable]

new chapter seven scene

I am adding a new scene to chapter seven between Visenya and Laenor; several new smaller snippets are going to be added, but this is the only big chunk of new content in the chapter

i'm posting it here for anyone who doesn't want to reread the whole chapter but still would like a glimpse into enya and laenor's dynamic

"You are so frightfully dramatic," Laenor said with a snort, and Visenya buried her face deeper into the cushion with an indignant noise. Her entire body ached with a bone-deep sort of soreness; her thigh was still smarting from the smack he'd laid across it with the flat of the practice blade, and the dull headache throbbing in her temples threatened to worsen into agony with every pulse of her heart; she did not think it dramatic to take refuge on her sister's sofa. "I did not run you so hard as that."

"Harwin never makes me swing fire pokers," she mumbled without raising her head. 

"Wooden swords do not build your arm strength," Laenor said, dismissively. "And Harwin does not because he knows I do it. You might give up the practice if it bothers you so."

"You are cruel," she moaned in answer, groaning as she used her arms to shove herself up. "A cruel, wicked, vindictive monster, and I wish Nyra never would have—" She finally looked towards him and froze when she noticed a fat, leatherbound book dangling from his fingertips. "What is that?"

"You must not," he said, sternly, "tell your sister."

Pain and soreness forgotten, she scrambled to her feet and dashed across the room to where he stood beside the other sofa. He immediately raised his arm, keeping the book out of her reach even as she rose onto the tips of her toes and stretched her arms to their limit, trying to snag it from him. "What is it?"

"Swear to me that you will not tell your sister," Laenor said, stretching his arm even further out of reach when she gave a frantic little hop and started yanking at his shoulder. "I will not have her cross with me because you cannot keep your lips together."

"What is it, Laenor?" she demanded again, lunging for it once more, and he hissed when she stomped on his foot. "Show it to me!"

"You must swear," he crooned, dancing backward. "I promised the boys I would attend their lesson today, and I am already late; swear it to me quickly, hāedus, or I shan't give it to you!"

"I swear I will not tell Nyra!" she cried, and he swung his arm down with a laugh and allowed her to yank it greedily from his grasp. He tugged her braid as she twisted to the side and fell backward onto the couch, dragging the book up to her face to examine it and leaving her legs dangling loosely over the arm. "Will you not tell me what it is now?"

It was old; she knew that much from the worn leather of the binding, the feel of the paper, the smell—she adored the smell of old books, voracious for them in this life as she hadn't been in the first one. When she opened it, though, she knew it was more than old; the faded ink curled itself into the shape of High Valyrian.

"Where did you get this?" she asked, near reverently, drawing it close to her chest in case he tried to take it away. "Nyra forbade me from reading of the blood rituals; she says I am too young."

Perhaps she would be correct if Visenya was any other girl of twelve, a child in all ways instead of only parts, but such was not her lot in life. Her mind twisted in on itself, little girl and woman grown warring for purchase, things she should not know mixed with things she still could not remember. Such a text would be too complicated for her to translate if she did not have another lifetime's memories of speaking Valyrian with Baelon; such a text would be too…much for her if she did not have the steadiness of someone who remembered birth and death and blood in truth.

Valyrian blood rituals, after all, were not kept to slitting the bellies of goats or the palms of soldiers or even the throats of virgin maidens. Dark magic, twisted magic of flame and fear. Children broken, men tortured, women brutalized. Even those that hadn't required death and soul-corroding sorts of sin were not anything fit for a child's eyes, rooted in sex and shadow and secrets.

Really, now that she thought about it, giving her the book was very irresponsible on Laenor's part. He knew nothing of the complexities of her head; to him, she was only a girl of twelve.

"I wrote to Laena," Laenor said, almost sheepish, and he pointed at her threateningly. "You swore to me, so you must not tell your sister; I will not have her cross with me. If she discovers you have it, you must say you found it on your own somehow."

"Are you teaching a child to lie, lēkȳs?"

"You already know how to lie, Enya," he answered, drily. "Better than most men and women grown, I suspect. You need no lessons from me."

"Slander," she muttered, beginning to carefully turn the pages, and then she grinned at him. "Thank you."

"Anything for our Enya, of course," he said, smile dimpling as he dipped into a bow with a weaving flourish of his arm. He paused when he drew out of it, then stared at her thoughtfully for a moment. Looking at her with vague concern, lips pursing and eyes narrowing, he ventured, "You must not try to replicate any of them. They tell you so little of the process that you will accomplish nothing anyway, and—"

"You should have extracted more promises before you gave it to me," she said, burrowing deeper into the couch and burying her nose into the book. "As it is now in my hands, you have no bargaining power. Furthermore, I am considering your giving it to me as volunteering yourself for any and all experiments; I do thank you for your service."

"You cannot have my blood, Enya," Laenor said, in the tone of one who has little hope of being heeded, and he tapped her leg in farewell before turning to head for the door. 

Visenya grinned at the book and, without looking up, called, "We all must sleep sometime, lēkȳs."

*&*&*

Laenor got no chance to attend the boys' lesson; by the time he left, Harwin Strong and Criston Cole had already ended it.