𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕹𝖔𝖗𝖙𝖍 𝕭𝖊𝖑𝖔𝖓𝖌𝖊𝖗

𝕿𝖍𝖗𝖊𝖊

𝐑𝐎𝐒𝐋𝐈𝐍

The Twins.
The apple gave a nice crunch as Roslin went to bite its last leftovers. She then threw it away, somewhere in the garden laying beneath the window seal she was currently staring out of. Her hand automatically reached for another one, in the now almost empy basket one servant had brought her under request: that had to be her fourth one, yet she still felt empty. She tasted the crisp surface of the fruit, and found it just as helplessy tasteless as the others. Still, she kept eating.

Everything she layed her eyes on, felt wrong. Wrong and unjust. And what was worse – there was nothing she could do to help herself, nor someone she could talk to to ease her pain. She had been left alone, just as she'd always feared.

Alone. Her thoughts immediately shifted – as thousand times throughout the long, dull days – first to her brother, Olyvar: he'd been the one to leave first, towards south, as the new squire to Robb Stark.

"Goodbye for now, Rosie", he'd told her, the day of his departure, wearing his proudest smile and looking so soft he could've been mistaken for a child. "I'll come back, soon. I promise".

Still to that day, almost a couple fortnights after, those words had the taste of mockery. Soon: how could one possibly pronounce that word, while preparing to go to war? The grief she'd felt in that moment, and that had accompanied her ever since, made Olyvar one of reasons why Roslin had suddenly lost all her charm and cheerfulness.

Alone. Her younger sister, Elise, was the one who came to mind secondly – and second to Olyvar, perharps because this allowed Roslin to linger on her more, and drown longer in her sorrow.

The lucky wench. Roslin did not think she'd ever hated someone half as much as she was hating on her sister now. Just at the slightest mention of her name, her body grew so stiff she barely remembered to breathe.

Her relatives at The Twins thought it sadness. Sadness and melancholy. Roslin knew better than telling them how mistaken they were. Better seem sorry than hateful, she would tell herself when she happened to overhear similar-styled conversations. None would want to know what I am really feeling.

Truth be told, she had always felt rather envious of the younger sister, ever since their early years: Elise was naturally talented at learning, and had had the blessing to be gifted with intelligence.

Roslin had not had that luck. The many memories of them learning with their Septa – and occasionally with their Maester – always carried a bitter taste with them. The girl could still picture clearly all the times she'd had to ask for things to be explained again and more slowly (and sometimes that had not been enough either), while Elise had already grasped the essence of them from the very first sentences.

All the other skills her sister daily enhanced, furthermore, were an additional dose of envy being shoved up right at Roslin's face: it happened all the time; when she was knitting with her many cousins, nieces or step-sisters, for example, and Elise was out in the gardens taking long walks with their Maester, Brenett, discussing and learning all the same.

"She can't do that", would protest Roslin at times. "She's to sit and knit as all of us!"

"Lady Elise can do whatever she pleases, 's long as our good Maester Brenett allows it. He enjoys talking to her, or so he has told me. Besides, your Lord Father has not risen any objection" would calmly reply the Septa, who as everybody else seemed to be very fond of the girl.

Yeah, and why would he? Roslin would think. Often her knitwork would end up unpleasant and unfinished, for the focus she was putting into stalking her little sister from the chambers she would spend her time in, knitting or chatting, often was more intense than that she should've put into sewing. But never a time had she left to join them.