❝ [Sansa] remembered a summer’s snow in Winterfell when Arya and Bran had ambushed her as she emerged from the keep one morning. They’d each had a dozen snowballs to hand, and she’d had none. Bran had been perched on the roof of the covered bridge, out of reach, but Sansa had chased Arya through the stables and around the kitchen until both of them were breathless. She might have even caught her, but she’d slipped on some ice. Her sister came back to see if she was hurt. When she said she wasn’t, Arya hit her in the face with another snowball, but Sansa grabbed her leg and pulled her down and was rubbing snow in her hair when Jory came along and pulled them apart, laughing. ❞
—
A Storm of Swords (George R. R. Martin)
the worst thing is how happy they all used to be before this ugh
❝ Then suddenly he understood. Jaime rounded on Hoat. “You gave her a tourney sword.”
The goat brayed laughter, spraying him with wine and spittle. “Of courth.”
”I’ll pay her bloody random. Gold, sapphires, whatever you want. Pull her out of there.”
“You want her? Go get her.”
So he did. ❞
—
A Storm of Swords (George R.R. Martin)
❝ On the morning of the third day, the city gates swung open and a line of slaves began to emerge. Dany mounted her silver to greet them. As they passed, little Missandei told them that they owed their freedom to Daenerys Stormborn, the Unburnt, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and Mother of Dragons.
“Mhysa! a brown-skinned man shouted out at her. He had a child on his shoulder, a little girl, and she screamed out the same word in her thin voice. ”Mhysa! Mhysa!“
Dany looked at Missandei "What are they shouting?”
“It is Ghiscari, the old pure tongue. It means ‘Mother.’”
Dany felt a lightness in her chest. I will never bear a living child, she remembered. Her hand trembled as she raised it. Perhaps she smiled. She must have, because the man grinned at her and shouting again, and the others took up the cry. “Mhysa!” they called. “Mhysa! MHYSA!” They were all smiling at her, reaching for her, kneeling before her. “Maela,” some called her, while others cried “Aelalla or ”Qathei“ or ”Tato,“ but whatever the tongue it all meant the same thing.
Mother. They are calling me Mother.
The chant grew, spread, swelled. It swelled so loud that it frightened her horse, and the mare backed and shook her head and lashed her silver-grey tail. It swelled until it seemed the shake the yellow walls of Yunkai. More slaves were streaming from the gates every moment, and as they came they took up the call. They were running towards her now, pushing, stumbling, wanting to kiss her feet, to stroke her horse’s mane, to kiss her feet. Her poor bloodriders could not keep them all away, and even Strong Belwas grunted and growled in dismay.
Ser Jorah urged her to go, but Dany remembered a dream she had dreamed in the House of the Undying. "They will not hurt me,” she told him. “They are my children, Jorah.” She laughed, but her heels into her house, and rode to them, the bells in her hair ringing sweet victory. she trotted, then cantered, then broke into a gallop, her braid streaming behind. The freed slaves parted before her. “Mother,” they called from a hundred throats, a thousand, ten thousand. “Mother,” they sang, their fingers brushing her legs as the flew by.
“Mother, Mother, Mother!” ❞
—
A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin
