Send a 👀 and I will describe how my muse sees yours / what they think of when they look at them.
Maron. When they first met he terrified her. He was nothing like Theon, he was a true Ironborn, the kind that stalked the nightmares of the western coast — and herself. He smells of sea and salt. His eyes are a clear ocean blue, and he is as treacherous as the waters he sails. Like some living avatar of their drowned god. Terrible and pure evil. Only marginally better than the stories of his uncle Euron but not from lack of trying, only for lack of opportunity. She loathed the reminder of the ocean, her one embarrassing phobia, because what business does someone who lives in a landlocked place being so scared of open waters and the people mad enough to love them? She would rather put them all to the sword and be done with it. But the ironborn have ships and the North has none. They both want independence and to get that concessions will need to be made and deals made with demons.
Frequent exposure forces one to cope, to learn and experience and shift. To survive one has to understand one's enemies, one's fears. Maron is not a god. Not a supernatural force or her nightmares made flesh. He's a man. An intelligent, infuriating man. He is dangerous yes, but he is not gleefully cruel. He can be reasoned with. He has loved ones and foods he doesn't like. He's no different than her sworn sword Yrre. Simply a violent man with a good mind. If anyone had told her she'd be on an ironborn ship she would've assumed it would've been as the spoils of a raid — perhaps in some ways that's still true. But as it is she's spent more time with them in their own world than probably any other northman has outside of being chained up in a ship's hold and she has begun to see the reality behind Old Nan's stories.
He is like Father and Jory and Ser Rodrick and Robb and Jon and every other proud northmen she knows. It should not shock her so much, go far enough back and the northmen and the ironborn share a common cultural ancestry as first men, but it does. And now she cannot unsee it, in him, in his crew. They are like us. He proud and strong and steeped in the ways of his people that so many others scorn. She thinks of Cersei in the wheelhouse making not so subtle jabs at the headscarf her mother had made for her. Her mother who was alien to the North as well but took it as her own. She thinks of how they mocked Balon's declaration of kingship. How King Robert had spoke of the first Greyjoy Rebellion. Maron lost everything then, a brother, his family his home, his body for a time. They took those from me too, these soft southern lords. They share a mutual outrage, a shared wound.
He is a man. And a handsome one at that. She can only imagine he was not married yet because he was held by Stannis. Even if greenlander lords would hesitate to marry their daughters to an ironborn, even a Greyjoy, there would have to girls on the islands throwing themselves at the chance to be his lady. But then again, he is proud. Likely a minor lords second daughter would be beneath his consideration. I am the first born daughter of a Great House, we're of a kind, and a better match for each other than I would be for Lord Wilas no matter how kind I hear he is. The thought is shocking, terrifying even, a sudden wave nearly capsizing her ship. She tries to banish it but the damage is done. She can't stop thinking about fine blue eyes, clever words, a fierce laugh, board shoulders and large rough hands.
She is falling in love with him. She knows it with the certainty of death. With death's inevitability. She respects him too much not to love him, admires him too much to want anyone else. It sets a new fear in her. She has no experience with this really, she spent so long trying to avoid this aspect of life she doesn't know how to handle wanting it. Isn't sure he'd want her even and has no interest in making a fool of herself finding out. He can have anyone he wants — and likely has. It doesn't bother her really, the expectations for men and women are different but it does leave her feeling at a disadvantage. She doesn't even know to begin with a courtship, especially with a man who would laugh in the face of the customs does she know. It's easier to try and ignore it, to run like a coward from her own attractions like always. She's not Robb. She sacrificed all her recklessness long ago, too scared of consequences to take risks ever again. Hopefully this madness will pass. She just has to weather the storm.
She loves him. It's as painful as a deep inhalation of sharp winter air, collapsing her lungs inside her with the power of it. He's tall, strong, handsome, traditional — everything she wanted in a man without realizing it. She loves his voice, loves it more when he speaks his own tongue, so alien to her. She loves his kindness and his brutality. Hands that have buried axes in flesh have cupped her own so gently. He's ironborn and she knows what that means, there's maybe one in twenty customs of their she does not hate. But she cannot begrudge him any of it, though that makes her complicit in his crimes. For all his evil she cannot condemn him. Not when he has held her as she wept bitter tears over all she'd lost. Not when he'd let her follow her own customs to carry out the sentences on the traitors who'd stolen everything. Not when he'd breathed life back into her, given her a reason to keep living.
Maron was not just a man, he was a force of nature. When he stood on the deck of his ship or with axe in hand the Gods looked on him with favor. You could see it in those terrible blue eyes.
