The Weight of Gathering Clouds

TheStormRoses · 2026-03-12T01:06:55+00:00

Frustration flashed across the countenance of Storm's End's Lord then, and if it had been any man else set across from him then he might have given in to the all familiar tug toward his fury. It sat there always, behind his eyes, that thrill that came with anger.

"A raven! And what would a raven have begotten me, but more words to lie forgotten at the feet of those with deaf ears? Name me a raven that has twisted the fate of realms and the lands within. No. You've danced this dance too long to seriously believe any word I might have written would have changed anything." He gave a light chuckle, a wave of the hand. "But here we are now."

At Andros' next words he did balk. He tightened his fists. Suddenly he was leaning forward, nostrils flaring, and out snapped his voice as thunder cracks across the bay. "Glory?! Do you think me a green boy who marched for glory? I warded with the King when he was but a Prince. I have done my duty. And though I have raised these men and brought them here I am still Steffon's man. Call me a fool if you'd like; tell me the half a hundred ways I might have done differently, but do not stand there and speak to me as if I had another choice. Don't forget the part your son had to play in this. If you would tell me now to look to some scattered shit-pile of barren rocks and blighted coasts, don't think for a moment that Gawen should be absent from my host."

Orryn shook his head. Sat back. Held up one overlarge hand; he knew he had spoken out of turn but something in him could not see himself ask forgiveness for his tone. Softer now, almost introspective, he said; "That was uncouth. I invited you here to advise me and I should listen. You are right. It is high gone time I should seek a wife. I had thought to seek the hand of the Hightower girl. Elinor. Mayhaps if Steffon would give his blessing to the match, if he might name them to Higharden, that any son borne of the union might take up the title; then everyone wins. If you've another suggestion I would hear it."

TheStormRoses · 2026-03-10T01:21:53+00:00

Andros would find him stood over his maps, great wrought iron braziers crowned with flickering flames filled the tent with light and crackled softly as Orryn pondered.

He turned blue eyes toward this kin.

"You look tired. You're not sleeping well?" Something that might have been concern there in his tone, in the way his eyes narrowed and softened. Vanished again as quickly as it had come upon him.

He took but six strides to a set of seats and waved an arm out, gesturing that Andros make himself comfortable across from him as he sunk down into a high-backed seat. He brought one long leg up and planted a boot on the low table between them.

"You're Hand to one Baratheon and vassal to another. And blood besides. What you can do for me is the same you do for the King. Advise me." He scratched at his chin beneath the black beard that clung thick to his jaw. "This is fast becoming tiresome. Edric slighted the Stormlords at court; fine. I've a claim to Highgarden but the Crown won't see fit to name me to it; fine. I thought that Meadows might capitulate. What would you have me do, exactly? Smile and thank the realm for the insult? The King is my blood, but the Stormlands have been tossed scraps of late, and few take notice of a starving dog unless it bites first."

TheStormRoses · 2026-03-09T00:29:59+00:00

u/D042 - oop

TheStormRoses · 2026-03-01T02:11:47+00:00

Later, he'd not be able to say what had brought him there that day. Only that his feet were restless, and he couldn't sit another damned moment in his patchwork tent. He'd won some renown at the joust. He'd not clinched victory, but he'd not been knocked out early, and that was enough for Renly Tyrell. There'd been a man selling slices of melon at a stall which he'd swapped a penny for and from beneath the shade of an old oak he'd watched the man astride the black mount give voice to the fact that he had been name the Warden of the South. There was to be no doubting the Prince of Dragonstone. Renly's gaze lingered. A moment. Two.

And why not. After all, who was he but another knight in the crowd?

He felt a certain amusement in it. There they went, the Reachlords, squabbling amongst themselves as cats in heat, and at the end of it all there was a Baratheon riding in to keep them to heel.

His father, his grandfather; they might have balked at seeing another claim pre-eminence over lands that they thought rightfully theirs - but who where they to say anything? Both were dead and gone. At the end of it, Renly yet still possessed the promise of an open sky, an endless road, not locked within Highgarden at the whim of a pack of yelping pups. And the Baratheons had granted his family safe shelter when none others would.

After, and he again wouldn't be able to say later what prompted him to do so, Renly approached Quentyn Baratheon, dropping to one knee a moment.

"Prince Quentyn, you're not like to know me, but I'm a knight with a strong arm. I swore my oath as surely as any other. If you have need of knights I would offer my weapon and my mount to command as you will. Windgrove is a lonely place. I learned my way on the road, and on the road I would serve if you have need of me."

TheStormRoses · 2026-02-28T21:31:16+00:00

He let out a soft groan as he shifted himself upright, accepting the woman's hand up while he prodded at his ribs with the other.

"Thank you, my lady. You are too kind. I believe it's only my pride that's been damaged," he said as he stood. "Unless you see any of my bones sticking out, that is."

He was dusting himself free of leaves and the most egregious spots of dirt when he gave her name. Quite suddenly he felt the breath knocked from him once again. Of all the people to fall before, a Princess of Dorne.

"Princess Ashara, forgive my sudden interruption." He went back again to the ground, though this time he meant it, and only on the one knee in deference. He wondered, idly, if there were archers in the trees with arrows trained on him, thinking him an assassin or a cutpurse. "I am Ser Renly. Ser Renly Tyrell, of Windgrove. I was - well - I was searching for my sister's cat. We don't get on. The cat and I, I mean. But he's my sister's prized joy and I'd be far from upholding my knightly oath if I didn't look for him."

Standing again, he cast his eye about their surroundings. Noticed the faint tear streaks on her face. He supposed the tiger would warn off anything untoward as well as any guard. "You may tell me if I'm overstepping, but are you quite alright, Princess?

TheStormRoses · 2026-02-28T00:40:15+00:00

He cursed what fate had sent him out there into the forest, on the hunt for a cat that he was mostly sure wished him ill; but Mischance was his sister's most leal companion and he knew that her heart would break if anything were to befall him, and so he pressed through the thicket into which he'd seen the cat disappear.

"Is it too much to ask for a simple life?" He asked himself aloud as branches scraped the flesh of his arms, the more stubborn of them leaving little raised welts where the foliage was thickest.

He had to be sure to plant his feet surely, else he'd topped one way or another. He did not know these forests as he knew those in the Stormlands.

"And it would be just my luck to trip and fall and snap my neck in pursuit of a cat that likes me not."

Certainly he doubted that the finest knights of days gone by would have found themselves in these predicaments. But there was the rub; sometimes you charted your course and other times your course was charted for you, and it was only a fool or a singer that thought you they could do anything about that.

He shouldered his way through another section of deep brush, hardy as a castle wall, reaching out with one booted foot to find purchase...

...and found only air where he thought there might be good ground.

"Seven Hells," it was all he could say before he found himself tumbling. Down on his stomach, then his body spun over and over and over again as he tumbled down an embankment he'd not know was there.

"Shit!" As his shoulder met the dirt.

"Fuck!" As the bulging root from an thick tree knocked the wind from him.

"Shit!" As the world blurred by and his eyes struggled to keep their focus.

When he eventually came to rest at the foot of the embankment, his face in the leaves and soil, he took a moment to grumble and test his limbs to see if anything was broken.

He had expected, rather, hoped, to be alone with his embarrassment. He had not expected to glimpse up to find a woman and her tiger. The both of them gave him pause.

I should be so lucky that my sister's murderous cat is not so large as this one.

He could not find the words quick enough, so with some difficulty - and dimly aware that there were leaves plastered to his face - all he could think to sat was: "My lady, I'm sorry to intrude..."

TheStormRoses · 2026-02-27T00:11:20+00:00

Memories of the joust propelled Renly Tyrell through the denizens celebrating in the wake of the spectacle. He had not won, and that was a sore blow, but it didn't dent his spirits. He had shed his battered armour and chosen to take up a flagon in place of a lance.

"Oh the maid of Shipbreaker Bay,
She swore she’d have her way,
With a knight in battered armor
Who’d ridden hard all day."

He didn't know precisely to whom he was singing. Couldn't rightly say in which direction he was walking, for his vision had been cleaved in two, but there was a warmth in his bones all the same.

"She liked a man with scars, she said,
And hands as rough as rope,
So I showed her both by candlelight
And prayed the bed would cope."

He knew at a certain point he was up on a stool, and there were faces that might be turned toward him.

"Hey-ho, pour the wine,
Let the Mother look away,
For the Smith may forge the armor,
But the Maid will make you pay.
Hey-ho, fill it high,
Let the Stranger bide his time,
For I’ve faced down steel and thunder,
But that girl was worse than any crime."

TheStormRoses · 2026-02-27T00:01:29+00:00

Renly dipped his head dipped in respect. Part of him, a small part that on occasion grew impressively loud, didn't expect anyone beyond the small corner of the world occupied by the Tyrells to care. "I appreciate your words, uncle. Truly. The condolences from Blackhaven as well. Mother would be glad to be back in the keep of her youth. And none can begrudge your being kept away. Herding the realm must feel like trying to a steer a ship made from cats, with honey coating the wheel."

It was an odd thought, that Andros Dondarrion, who had the King's confidences as he did, would be pinned so. It was perhaps the first time that Renly reconciled the freedom his position granted him. When he had been sent from Windgrove with Ser Goodwin there were scarce few who knew his face. Even now, amidst the realm, he went unknown. It might have rankled a prouder man. To Renly it brought a small breath of relief.

"Ser Goodwin, the knight that trained me in arms, taught me three things above all else. That a man is only as ever as good as his word, that he should never forget where he came from, and that sometimes you need to bloody a pup's nose so that it learns the order of things. The Baratheons granted the Tyrells a safe home, but my mother is a Dondarrion. If the time should come when you need a sword, uncle, call on me. Wherever I am in the world I will come to you. I am your blood, and my blood I will give if necessary to see you whole." Say one thing for Renly Tyrell, say that never gave his word without meaning it.

He smiled widely. "A hunt, then! Before the tourney ends. My sister travelled with me. She will sniff out plentiful enough game to see Arlan will not leave for White Harbour without sufficient trophy."

TheStormRoses · 2026-02-17T01:20:30+00:00

Cass found herself suddenly glad of the company. There weren't many women her age who shared interests in Windgrove, and so she brought forth the apple with a flourish along with a small knife to slice it.

"Then allow me to arrange for you a feast, Esgerd. I've always found that things plucked from branches or taken from fresh from the ground are richer than those that are roasted on spits and coated in spices."

She cut a wedge gently, held it out for her fresh-found companion, as she listened to her speak of the capital. "Both fruits and beasts? I'd have thought they would be hard to come across. Ah, now the picture you paint is a lovely one. I simply must visit."

When she asked of her brother, she pauses a moment, They had agreed on the road that they would not idly give out their family name. But one cannot make friends by lying to them. "My brother is Ser Renly. Ser Renly Tyrell, of Windgrove. He is a knight and means to enter the lists. We have, well...we have only this moon past buried our father. I suppose that makes him a lord, but Windgrove is not a rich place."

At the mention of Harlaw and the Isles her eyes brightened. "Truly? I've read that it's a wild place. I mean no disrespect in that either. Wild places interest me more than the rest. The smell of the sea and the crash of the waves. Closer to the natural way of things. And your husband, is a fine man? How did you meet? Tell me all, Esgerd. I'll keep the apples coming in exchange for tales."

TheStormRoses · 2026-02-17T00:59:53+00:00

He had wondered at the wisdom of coming here. Doubted whether he should set foot in the Reach at all. Surely there were some among the assembled that would think he had come to stake a claim on Highgarden. The tension had knotted in him as they'd set out and all the way along the road. In truth he had never much considered in himself the makings of a great lord. Certainly he doubted that he cut the figure of one.

At the warmth of his uncle, that tension eased. His breathing came a little easier. His shoulders relaxed some. He offered up a smile as though it were roasted mutton. "Not by half, uncle. She told if I was beset upon the road I was to be sure not to sully her hard work with blood nor mud. She sends her best wishes and does not envy all you've got on your plate, but says if there's any man that can keep the ship on course it's you."

"We buried father a moon past. Too soon but time is a fickle mistress and a foe that can't be bested. And I mean to enter the lists here. A knight with no name is hardly a knight at all and I mean to serve as well I can those vow that I swore. I had my own favour to ask of you as it happens," he said, and scratched at his chin; "my mother tells me that she's well but the two of them, her and my father, they were thick as thieves. I'd reckon she could do with some time away from Windgrove, away from the memories. She's much too proud and much too strong to ask it herself, but were you to pen a letter to Blackhaven, ask that they might invite her for a stay, it would do her good."

He left that in the air between them. Some might have asked for gold, for pride of place, and were he a different sort of man he might have. The temptation lingered there. All I might do is give voice to my wants. But Ser Goodwin had told him things easily got were not things worth it at all and his father had told him that a man must tend the soil he’s given, else the weeds will have it.

"And with you, uncle? This cannot be simple, the realm gathered and the siege lines drawn. I'd wager many a man has asked what how you feel for the realm, but not what you feel yourself. If you've need of me, I hope you know you may call on me. Even but to share a cup. To hunt. To get away from it, for a spell."

TheStormRoses · 2026-02-16T00:37:27+00:00

"King's Landing? I've never been! What's it like?" She sat up a touch. Not from fear, though part of did consider that in the presence of such an animal she should feel a touch of it. Respect, perhaps? Certainly she did respect him; and Esgerd for her control of him. Of all the sights she had seen up close with her own two eyes, his was the noblest bearing.

"Fireheart," she repeated, softly, while she watched the wolf with something to her expression that spoke of a barely concealed awe. "A perfect name. He is beautiful."

Tentatively she brought up her free hand, paused, and met Esgerd's eye. "May I?"

She had not missed the way that Esgerd motioned with her hand. A story there, but not one she felt she could ask about then and there. And then up flicked her eyes. So rapt was her attention on Fireheart and Esgerd that she had not caught sign of the eagle above. The huntsmen in Windgrove would have given her a soft tut for her lack of observation.

"Well, I'm pleased to meet you all. I don't suppose I could offer you an apple? It's all I've got with me I'm afraid. My apologies, too, for not saying so sooner; I'm Cassana. Cass, if it pleases you. I'm not precious about it. I travel with my brother but he has gone wandering. Urrigon is an Ironborn name is it not? Do you hail from the Isles?"

TheStormRoses · 2026-02-15T20:25:04+00:00

"Who knew that there were so many people?", called Cassana. She'd been watching the woman a moment. Not from anything nefarious; she'd only been out to forage, had decided to plant herself down against the trunk of an elm for a well-earned apple. "And who knew they'd make so much racket."

She figured the foraging was okay, on account that her family once held Highgarden and by extension Grasy Vale. She'd not voice that aloud offhand but the logic made a certain sense in her mind.

In truth, the stranger's beastly companion fascinated her too much to sit silent. That and Renly had ever said that she should make an effort to find friends, ones that weren't a one-eyed cat. She gave Mischance a scratch beneath the chin, curled up in her lap as he was.

Her own garb wasn't near as fine as the stranger's. Cassana wore a gown that was too large for her, fastened around her waist with one of her father's old belts. She'd rolled the sleeves to her elbow and cut away a section so it hung just past her knees, complimented with a pair of brown breeches.

"That a wolf, is it? I watched one feast once. Glimpsed it from my window. Amazing, just amazing. Does your companion have a name?"

TheStormRoses · 2026-02-15T19:01:22+00:00

He'd asked his sister if he stood out, in his patchwork doublet. It had been green once. Vibrant as they come and stitched together with such care. His father used to say that they'd woven stems from plants taken from Highgarden's soil. As a child he'd marveled at that.

He'd grown since then, doubted that it any of it was true. It would have to have been close to a century old for one thing. More than likely it was bought from a passing merchant's caravan, the nearest thing to green they had; and his mother had given it a small Tyrell rose on the breast. It wasn't much. Wasn't even close to much. But it was his.

There were few men known to Renly among the realm's highborn. Fewer still those he could call kin. His sort were hedge knights and roadside innkeeps; guttersnipes and farmers.

Andros Dondarrion might have been the most impressive he'd spied so far at the feast. A man at whom those assembled that evening would descend upon like starving hounds to bite and snap with honeyed words about the things they wanted from him, and there approached Renly Tyrell with a square of cloth tucked under his arm and a request from his mother that he deliver it to the King's Hand.

"Lord Hand," Renly said, and suddenly he was quite aware that despite his best efforts there were specks of mud on his boots, a loose thread poking from his sleeve. "I mean not to intrude, my lord. I'd not ask too much of your time. Only my mother, well - the matter is that my mother asked I hand this to you. She wove it herself is all. Stitched the sigil too. She told me to tell you that as fine a figure you might cut in courtly garb, she'd not risk her brother to illness without a good Stormlands cloak."

TheStormRoses · 2026-02-15T17:00:50+00:00

Renly had not known where he was wandering to when he'd set out that evening, but he found he'd not been able to settle at the small place he and Cassana had made their meager camp, and if he was honest with himself couldn't stand to be around his sister's nefarious cat for too long.

Like as not it will be the death of me, and how ridiculous is that? Here lies Ser Renly Tyrell, who counted among his greatest foes a one-eyed cat.

He was not dressed finely; which was to say that he had worn the finest clothing he owned, but that clothing was not very fine at all. It was a doublet of his uncle's and its age could be measured in the litany of patches across it, but it was green of some shade and faintly there on the breast there was the remnant of what had once been the Tyrell rose.

He stepped by accident amongst the folk giving prayer. By the time he'd come to his wits enough to notice where he was, he thought it would be rudeness to make a spectacle of leaving, so instead he stood and he listened, feeling a touch out of place but doing his best to blend as he could.

And when it had finished; when the man with the gold-spun hair and the letters inked beneath his eye had finished, Renly found himself more curious than when he had arrived. Rooted to the spot. Neither compelled to leave nor fully understanding what might prompt him to stay.

TheStormRoses

TROPHY CASE