closed. @oflovrs
Summer snows were soft and gentle. They gathered in the morning, and melted into fast streams by the high sun. Arthor had the soldiers and the staff clear up the roads, for the carriages of the southern horses had a tendency to get stuck in the mud and lose time. There were times he would have welcomed a Tyrell delay; but three long years had gone by and for the first time in his life he'd felt a strange nagging of....curiosity. Lady Tyrell was of a noble family, good family. But she was no king, so her arrivals were, for the past many decades, received by the staff. They helped with the horses, the luggage, settled her into her chambers. He could recall a few occasions, in months leading up to her arrival, where he'd stopped in front of those chambers. Just a brief moment, expecting to hear something. Feel something. Now, as the horses pulled in, he was watching from the sidelines. Arthor leaned against the tree, with importance, striking up a conversation with a stonemason who seemed to have stopped his work to indulge his own curiosity. "Last I saw her, she threw tomatoes at me." he said to the man and the other shrugged. "D'you deserve it m'lord?" man asked and Arthor gave him a gentle nudge, crossing arms over his chest. When she climbed out of her carriage, Arthor took a moment of silence to observe. She was much the same. Dark hair, rosy cheeks, striking gaze which pierced right through him as she found him all the way across the yard. He shrunk, a bit, cleared his throat as if caught red-handed doing something he shouldn't. Seems much has changed, too. - He did not approach her upon her arrival. Not even as she caught him; looking. But when the sun began to set, and she was likely already welcomed by the majority of Winterfells finest -- he walked up to that familiar hallway, those familiar empty chambers. And with a hand raised to the door, and a moment of anxious hesitance, he knocked.
Truth be told? The travel to the North often made her sick. The roads leading up to The House of Stark were often slick with mud, the stone pathways bounced the carriage as she arrived. And while it was a smoother arrival than she had remembered in the past, the winter nights often kept her awake. Only now, as her stuff had all been returned to the quarters she had grown used to over the years, her mind wondered. Fingertips gently touched the wood barrister of the bed, smoothed in polish as digits drifted down to the furs. One of which she had wrapped herself in, instead of asking Lady Ashara to have their staff unpack her winter coats. All of which had been gifted to her by the North, over the years. This was different. Her travels intended purpose now, and her mind carefully wondered back to her arrival. When she stepped from the carriage, and irises peered back over stone and gravel, where the heir of The House of Stark— as she had known him— appeared to be.. stronger. Hardened. Less of a boy that she remembered, so eager to hold the weight of the crown.
With the fur blanket still wrapped around her, she moved toward the door, unknown that the same boy was standing on the other side as his knock is half cut off— and she jumps in a startled breath at piercing blues that seemed just as caught off as she had been. In reaction, she drops the candle in her hand and it rolls against the stone corridor, snuffing out the flame as her gasp shifted the small space between them. Her brows pulled into a furrow, confusion lacing her features as dark eyes flickered up. “Were you lingering outside my chambers?” She blinks behind him, then down the empty hallway as her heart stutters and she barks at it to slow. She hadn’t expected him. He never welcomed her. In fact— more often than not, he avoided her until need be.
Standing this close to him, she noticed the difference in stark detail now. His eyes were bright, but they held a certain tiredness on the crinkle of what she and duty must have etched into his features. His shoulders were broader. His hands were rough. In this light, he looks so much like the ruling lord, she nearly blinks to flush away the comparison in her eye.
She doesn’t know why she continues, as if he were going to question where she was going — she pulls the furs a bit, shuffling the blanket that trails a bit behind her. “Yrla mentioned upon my arrival she has left tarts in the kitchen.” Her lips pursed, and she keeps her eyes to meet his. She won’t be the one to look away first. She rarely often was. “Were you… calling upon me?”










