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CHAPTER FIVE. ━━━━━━━━━ The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep.
ROBERT FROST ━━━━━━━━━
FIRE.
SMOKE.
SCREAMING.
THROUGH THE HAZE, I see a slip of a girl with blue eyes and chestnut hair. Her gaze is fixed on something in the blood red sky. I look up. A shadow swoops towards me; I feel a blast of hot air, and the buffeting of enormous wings.
Clarysse awakes with a start and is covered in a clammy cold sweat. Her heart races.
The morning sounds of the awakening city greet her through billowing silk curtains, the scents of the bays carried to her on the breeze; but the fresh air does little to dispel her unease. The linked traces of her dream fill her mind: the red-streaked horizon, the girl, the creature in the sky. The girl looked so eerily familiar, that it unsettles Clarysse. Was the girl meant to be her? Or Margaery? Someone else entirely?
Clarysse takes a deep, shaky breath as she submerges her hands into the cool waters of the basin. She splashes some water onto her face, allowing herself to be distracted by the feeling, and sits on the low chair by the basin.
She scarcely recognises herself in the looking glass, hanging above the basin. Her eyes are granite, her mouth is steel, and Clarysse cannot remember the girl who drank and laughed and danced in the Great Hall of Highgarden in her youth. Surely, she decides, that must have been someone else, and not myself.
Surely, she wonders, she was never that happy.
After breaking her fast on the balcony, her grandmother invites to the gardens for tea and cake.
People call Olenna Tyrell frail because of her old age. People are fools, Clarysse thinks, for her grandmother is the most wicked of them all.
Margaery and Clarysse sit around her, skirts spread like pressed flowers on the swept marble floor. Clarysse breathes deeply, appreciating the fragrant smells of the rows of flowers that the gardeners have managed against all odds to cultivate all through winter. She sits primly on the marble bench, very still, with her hands folded in her lap, as if she is sitting for a portrait.
It is quiet, save the distant sound of many voices from the the Keep where an impromptu council is being held.
Her grandmothers eyes rove over Clarysse's form, assessing. "I've no doubt that you've made an impression with the boy, my dear," Olenna says idly. "Unless he is blind or more interested in your brother."
