The Stag and The Frog - (GendryxMeera GOT fanfic) Part 1: Alone

32: Fly little bird

Robin Arryn wasn't supposed to live long enough to become a man. He had been a small and sickly child who looked like he would be taken away from the world at any moment. Just a small and fragile little bird who would never leave the nest.

His father, Jon Arryn, was taken away from him at a young age. Robin could barely remember him. Just a faint memory lingered of a man who had lifted him in his arms and held him. A faint memory of someone who was safe and sound. Because his mother, Lysa Arryn, had not been of sound mind. She breastfed her son way longer than was customary in the kingdom. Way past the time when he had grown all his teeth. She did so until the day she died. Thrown out of her own castle by the man who supposedly loved her, Petyr Baelish.

So the little bird was left all on his own. Way too small and fragile to ever spread his wings and fly. It was assumed that he would perish too, without his mother to hold her wings over him.

But he didn't perish. Instead, he grew stronger and healthier. Robin grew big enough to fly on his own. He flew so much higher than ever expected from him. The little bird somehow grew into a falcon.

Maybe it was the freedom of being out from under his mother's wings. Maybe it was just something that came with age. Maybe it was the fact that his mother medicated daily with milk of the poppy and that he suddenly no longer was exposed to it through her milk.

Robin was now almost a man. He was already taller than most men and his voice carried the depth of a man. He lived longer than he had ever been expected to. But he was also still a child in many ways. When he didn't get his way he got angry and acted out. When he was sad he sometimes still wished his mother was there. And he didn't know much about the world of adults. He knew nothing of romance and love.

But Robin's childhood was over. The last seconds of it were passing by. No matter how childish or immature he was would soon have to be a man. Because he was standing next to a Septon in the High Hall of his castle the Eyrie. Awaiting his bride.

It was cold in the hall. It was always cold in the Eyrie as the castle was located high up on a mountainside. The wind was blowing in through the moon door in the floor. It was still light in the hall, despite it being nighttime, as the white marble of the walls and floors lit up as the moon hit it through the long narrow windows. The whole castle glowed in cold icy tones. From the walls and floors to the flowers that decorated the hall and the blue jacket the groom was wearing.

Everything was icy and cold, except for the red hair of Robin's bride. She was suddenly standing there right in front of him, led in by Lord Royce as her father was currently wrapped up in a war against the crown. Her name was Desmera Redwyne and flaming red hair lit up the whole hall. Her dress was in ivory with red ribbons around the waist and sleeves and over it, she wore a bride's cloak in red, the color of her house. She didn't look like she belonged. She was too colorful, too full of life, too warm. Desmera had grown up in lush vineyards in the Reach, leasuring in sunlight every day. That's where she belonged, not on a cold mountainside. But yet that's where she was. Even younger than the groom she was about to promise to be faithful to forever.

As Desmera smiled at Robin he felt like his heart almost stopped. She was so pretty and he had barely been close to a girl before, certainly not a pretty girl of his own age. When he was younger he had a crush on his cousin Sansa who he had been promised to be married to at one point. But after she left the castle there had been no other girls. Just a lonely boy trying to become a man without any parents guiding him. Lord Royce had been the only person who had been there for him and tried to raise him.

Robin and Desmera took each other's hands. It was the first time they touched each other. It might have been the first time Robin touched a woman at all, at least one that wasn't his mother. It felt like a spark in his hand as it touched hers.