╰ ☾ ₊ ⸻ @lvscinvs uttered ' sender is found by receiver sleeping in receiver’s bed '
𝐁𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐊, 𝐁𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐊 𝐈𝐒 the night, so late is the hour. By all rights should Helaena be well in bed, for the garish dawn, when it came, would not pity her a bit.
She has resigned herself already to the day’s petty derision. Far be it from the first time she has faced the day with little sleep to bolster her. Helaena’s dreams are spiteful enough to chase her from it most nights. Even worse, tonight the moon is a fattened egg in the sky. She has always been most restless when the moon is set full to burst. It had beckoned from her balcony that she keeps it company.
Helaena stares long at her oldest friend. That great, pocked face drips silvery blue light across all the eye can see. That which it cannot is draped in shadow, marked unimportant by the dark. In truth, Helaena has grown to love the little hours slipped away between the day. The cottony edges and the blurring of her senses — quiet and strange, soft and welcomed. Beneath the moon, she is rendered only an outline of a woman.
White hands clasp the edges of her dark dressing gown together. A chill grows crisper in the air. Though sleep may elude her, her bedsheets are warm.
Helaena rises from her seat, murmuring a farewell to the mute moon. Or does it answer, and she merely too far away to hear? She amuses herself with answers to this riddle as she locks her balcony door: would the moon speak in the language of bells, in sweet and clear chimes? Would age render its voice slow and resonant, as it might do with an old woman telling a story? Maybe it would murmur, or sing, or drone on like the pleasant buzzing of bees.
She turns, still amused by her wonderings. Her eyes land on the indistinct shape on her bed. Despite being unaware of an intruder, she feels no need to be alarmed. There are guards ceaselessly watching the royal apartments. No call had been risen.
Only one person would welcome themselves so blatantly. It is not a favor he has called upon in a long time, but in childhood Aemond had often crept to her rooms to lay beside her. Sometimes she would hold him, curled tightly together and whispering to one another, and others she would sleep away from him, body too electric and strange for touch. Either way, the night must have felt better suited to keep his secrets too.
She sits carefully by his side, the dip of the mattress rolling her towards him. Her hand reaches out to smooth through long hair. Soft as silk, pretty as starlight. The harsh angles of his face are gentled, here. How rare it is to see him relaxed.
“I saw a soft and seemly sight. A blissful bird, a blossom bright,” the lullaby comes unbidden to her. She forgets the words of the next line, so hums it instead. As low and faint as the voice of the moon.
