(Untitled)

[onceaqueen]

"Rickon, stop that!"

Rickon was crawling around as fast as he could after Eddara, who was bouncing about the rec room banging on her drum and singing at the top of her lungs. Rickon couldn't quite keep up, and after a few minutes he sat on his backside and grrrrred at her, wolf-style. "Mine!" said Eddara, and growled right back

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[lifeisnotasong]

Eddara carefully slid her drum onto the table where Sansa was futilely attempting to note the lyrics of a new song. Whatever thoughts Sansa had had regarding it were practically gone now. Drummed out of her head by Eddara's efforts. She watched Eddara toddle over to Rickon as Susan scolded him futilely. "Play nice," she told Eddara firmly.

Eddara just looked and pulled a book from above Rickon's head and sat next to him turning the pages of her clearly superior book. "Tea," she said smugly, pointing at the page. "Horse, mine. ICK."

[onceaqueen]

Susan shook her head. "I don't know what we're going to do with them," she said fondly, watching them. Rickon tried to take Eddara's book from her, because it was clearly very interesting, but Susan pulled him away and distracted him with a board-book copy of The Very Grouchy Ladybug. Rickon growled, but the bright colors caught his eye and he flipped through it, finding the ladybug on each page and smacking it, and growling at any animal that looked even vaguely like a wolf.

[queeninthenorth]

"I don't know how Reynald can sleep through that," Jeyne said, looking over her needlework at her sleeping son. It was a blessing that he was not easily disturbed by his cousins' antics, but sometimes Jeyne wondered if something was amiss with his hearing. "But when he's hungry, he'll wake right up." She knotted the thread, slid the knot under the fabric, and snipped it, threading her needle with a new colour. A dark green, for an area of the leaves; she was making an embroidered family tree.

[lifeisnotasong]

"Try harder to convince them that they aren't wolves mayhaps." Sansa suggested - though gods knew how. Reynald was another story all together and Sansa smiled at her sleeping nephew - he was remarkably hard to disturb. "Perhaps he knows if he wakes they might pay him some attention," she jested. Eddara had been a terror for poking at Rickon if she could when he had been Reynald's age, not that Rickon had been put off his cousin by this. Nor by her habit of refusing to share and calling him Ick when she could say Rickon when she really tried. Eddara made a rude noise at her mother's suggestion but fixed her blue gaze on the book Susan had denied Rickon looking innocent.

[piratekingswann]

Elizabeth had expected there to be children in the rec room when she stepped in. (She could hear them,) she hadn't cared who they were particularly only meaning to collect some books and leave. She found herself slightly startled though when she saw Jeyne Stark sitting sewing with a basket full of baby beside her chair

[queeninthenorth]

"Yes, this is Reynald," said Jeyne, looking up from her needlework. Then she smiled. "Somehow, he's managed to sleep through it all. I don't know how, as loud as his cousins are being right now." Rickon yelled as Susan pulled him away from Eddara's book again. "I wish I could sleep that peacefully."

[piratekingswann]

"Oh," said Elizabeth, "well I suppose that's good though." She'd really got the impression that most infants did nothing but shriek. Like Reynald's cousins were as they squabbled over a book - which when she glanced over wasn't even a children's book. "He's very small," she said thoughtlessly, her own dread at having the idea someone that tiny dependent on her making her even less guarded with her words than she might have been anyway.

[queeninthenorth]

Jeyne nodded. "He was even smaller when he was born," she said. "He came a bit early, but healthy for all that. I feared he might not be growing as he ought, but Dr. Keller says he is healthy and strong, so I should not worry."

OTA

[lt_blade]

In a place housing as many people as the compound, Sonya was used to there being kids in the rec room. It was one of the details about the place that kept her stable. The compound with it's military like appearance, housing actual families instead of just soldiers, helped remind Sonya as to why she became a soldier in the first place.

She was sitting at one end of the couch, a text on organic chemistry in her lap, but keeping half an eye on the two kids playing around in the rec room. Between the kid seemingly bent on causing mischief, and the red headed girl and her drum, Sonya had to wonder if there was any real difference between raising a child and training rookies.

'Maybe the wolf helps keep them in line' She allows a faint smirk to show on her face.

[onceaqueen]

Perhaps Susan's nerves were overly frayed from Eddara and Rickon's constant stream of banging and shouting and growling, but she didn't take well to the stranger's smirk, nor to what she felt was a condescending remark. "Maybe," she replied shortly, scooping up Rickon and moving him away from Eddara and her "reading". "Here, darling, I've found a much better book for you, one with pictures, see?" She opened The Grouchy Ladybug and began to read to him.

At five o'clock in the morning the sun came up.
A friendly ladybug flew in from the left. It saw a leaf with many aphids on it, and decided to have them for breakfast.
But just then a grouchy ladybug flew in from the right.
It too saw the aphids and wanted them for breakfast.

[lt_blade]

Sonya cringed when she realized she said it out loud, 'Damn' She thought. 'I usually have better control over that.'

"I apologize, I was referring to my men back home, not the children. Back home, the new recruits always seem to think that they're Rambo and can destroy things at will."

"I was remarking that if I had a wolf with me during training, they might take the initiative."

[onceaqueen]

"Oh," said Susan, when she'd come to a place in the book where where the pages were different sizes and Rickon liked flipping them back and forth to find the little red ladybug. She didn't quite know what to say to that, as dealing with a cranky baby had made her somewhat less poised than she was used to being. "Well, to be honest, sometimes the wolves can be just as destructive as the children are. It just depends."

For Jeyne

[theonionknight]

Davos didn't spend too much time in the rec room but he didn't like to be too isolated from the general population of the island so he made a point of going there every so often.

This time, he was pleased to see that the room seemed full of mothers and children. He always liked seeing young children around the island. It was a tangible sign of the youth and life that Tabula Rasa seemed to have.

He recognized the wives of both the Lord Commander and Lord Caspian but he knew neither of them well and since they looked busy he didn't try to engage either of them in conversation.

Instead he positioned himself next to a chair of a woman he didn't know, who was doing some needle work while watching her sleeping babe, and gave her a nod of greeting.

[queeninthenorth]

Jeyne gave him a nod of greeting in return, snipping the end of the thread she had been using; and as she did so her scissors slipped from her fingers and slid across the floor to stop under his chair. "I'm so sorry to impose, ser," she said apologetically, "but my scissors seem to have slid under your chair. Might you reach them for me?"

[theonionknight]

"Of course," Davos replied as he reached down to grab them.

"Here," he added as he offered them to her. "Davos, m'lady."

[queeninthenorth]

"Thank you," Jeyne said, accepting the scissors and tucking them into the pocket of her skirt. "Jeyne Stark, and it is a pleasure to meet you." She removed the embroidery from its hoop, smoothing the fabric over her lap. It was an embroidered family tree, no small project considering how sprawling they had become on the island.

[_kinginthenorth]

"And that will be enough of that." Despite having just arrived, Robb can move remarkably quickly when necessary. He crosses the room in two quick strides and plucks the book out of Rickon's hand. "Even the wolves have their paws full, don't they?"

[onceaqueen]

Normally that would have made Rickon yell, but it was Uncle Robb! And that was very exciting. Rickon lost all interest in the book he was happily attempting to shred and held his arms up, bouncing eagerly to be picked up.

[_kinginthenorth]

Robb had rather expected a scream, really, and is quite gratified when it doesn't occur. It's hard--no, maybe impossible--to resist that bouncing smile, and he swings his nephew up onto his shoulders.

[queeninthenorth]

Reynald stirred a little as Rickon babbled happily atop Robb's shoulders. Jeyne lifted him from his basket, patting his back as she settled him against her shoulder. "Your father will let you ride on his shoulders when you are old enough," Jeyne assured him. "But for now you are far too small."