Future Meme!
Until recently Eddara had never understood the complaints she'd heard from older island residents about the bookshelf and the jukebox and the clothing box. She'd lived with them her entire life and you could generally get what you wanted if you asked nicely enough, Eddara always asked nicely. It was only polite after all and to her mother's dismay she was slightly less picky about clothing anyway. But then the shelf had given her those books, she'd known about the stories in theory, someone at school had mentioned them and Eddara had never concerned herself with them, it wasn't as if the shelf could produce the tale of her life before the island. She had never considered what it could produce though. At first she'd merely been thrilled to find tales of Westeros, all she knew of it she'd heard from Mother who could always be relied on for a child's tale or rhyme but very rarely for a tale of what her homeland had been like. She hadn't read all of them, in the end but her growing horror had her searching through the chapters for any mention of her family. She'd wished she could put them down and after almost casting aside the first book at the death of her grandfather, she'd scanned enough of the books to learn that her mother's lack of desire to speak on her homeland was more than understandable.
The next time she'd seen her Uncle Robb, that passage had come back to her and overwhelmed with nausea she'd fled to be sick. Mother had worried after her then until Eddara has snapped at her. "I'm not you, Mother!" Her Mother had coloured and looked hurt but only for a brief moment and you had to be watching to see it. Then she'd patted Eddara's hair and murmured relieved. "No, of course you aren't." It only made Eddara feel more guilty, as did the fact she could not seem to rid herself of the books, she hid them in the woods and read more details until she made herself feel sick and angry. Sometimes when it got too much she took the bow and arrows Aunt Susan had made her (and that Father and Aunt Susan had both taught her to use) and shot at targets until her arms ached. Of course there was only so much sneaking off you could do on the island and Eddara was pulling arrows out of the targets when she noticed she was being watched. It was Father and Lady and she gave the direwolf a betrayed look before at least smiling at her father in greeting. He wasn't to know she wanted to be alone with her thoughts. At first he did not say anything just kissed her forehead and then helping himself to her bow they held a shooting contest. Eddara wins despite the ache of effort in her arm before they even started it and she think he might have let her even though the reach on her bow is all wrong for him.
"You have something on your mind," Father says to her. Eddara had been thinking back to the day he married Mother. She'd been very small and remembers very little, one of a thousand childhood admonishments to mind her dress, a pillow she'd carried with rings sewn to it. Mother and Father beaming at each other and afterwards playing hide and seek with the cloak with the direwolf on it until Mother had taken it away. It's very different to the other wedding she'd read about and no wonder Mother doesn't speak on it.
"I found some books," she said in the compound, she's belatedly wondering how much of this Father knows. Eddara would never have considered that her parents would lie to each other but as of where she is now in her reading Mother seems to be the only blood kin who survived and it's because she's a better liar than Eddara could ever imagine.
"Ah," said Father and when Eddara looks at him he looks almost guilty? It's not a look she's familiar with and when it comes out that he knew about those books that he'd read them and that Mother did not know about them. Eddara wonders if she knows either of her parents at all. There is a long silence and finally he speaks again. "The things that happen in those books, your mother has told me about in time, but it would shame her to know that anyone could read of them." Eddara knows this is true, Mother is very particular about what people think.
"And when did she plan to tell me?" she asks though she knows the answer, she never would have known any of this if not for the books. Maybe that would be better, she is not exactly happy to know it now. His look is answer enough. "I just want to know," she tells him, "where I came from." Uncle Moril will tell of her Dalemark and Hannart and the man she's never met who fathered her. Father, Aunt Susan and Aunt Lucy will speak of Narnia with very little prompting at all. Though really that is Susan and Cornelius's heritage rather than Eddara's but Father has never made distinction between her and the children of his own blood.
"We have talked about it," he tells her honestly, suddenly seeming much more the father she knows and loves. "Your mother fears that to tell you of Westeros is to give you reason to know." Eddara nods, her mother's morbid fear of disappearances makes more sense now she knows. "She will speak of it though," he says thoughtfully, "ask her to describe Winterfell, or feasts held for harvest, or your uncles as children. Things that aren't painful for her to think on." Eddara nods. The knowledge still weighs on her but she understands her Mother better as well as several
island incidents.
"I will," she tells him, "and I'll get rid of the books." Cornelius is too young to read yet but Eddara knows Susan would not keep quiet if she were to come across them, her sister says what she likes when she likes and has never cared who it bothers. She has other things on her mind as well, her Father has managed to scare off every boy she's ever liked and she's finally found one who she thinks might not be and she daren't bring him home just because his name is Greyjoy. She can at least now see why but it's not Urri's fault who his father is. Theon Greyjoy had disappeared when he was barely old enough to remember him. It was something they had in common. She pushes the thought aside, she'll cross that bridge when she comes to it. For now she's going to take Father's advice and see if she can get Mother to speak of Westeros.