Chapter Text
Stannis + mythology (Durran/Elenei)
There was a story his mother told him, long ago, one that existed nowhere in the songs and legends, nowhere in the pages of history; one that came entirely from her, of her own imagining.
“She went to the sea, Elenei, one dark and stormy night, when it seemed like Durran’s seventh castle would suffer the same fate as the last six.”
”To plead with her mother and father to spare her husband, the castle, and the stormlands?”
“To bargain with them. To bargain with the gods.”
“Did she offer to leave Durran? To leave her mortal husband and to be the immortal daughter of the gods once again?”
“No. She was mortal already, you see, after she chose Durran. There was no going back from that.”
“Then what was the bargain?”
“She told them – ‘I will drown myself in these stormy waters unless you cease your acts of vengeance, unless you promise to leave us be from this day forward.’”
“She loved Durran that much?”
“That wasn’t the point. She knew they loved her too much to allow her to die, her mother and father. That was the point.”
He had tried that, bargaining with the gods, the night before the bodies were washed ashore.
Take me. You can have me, if only you would return them alive from these stormy waters, my mother and father.
But why would they want him at all? Second son, second best.
He tried what Elenei tried – ran to the sea, waded into the waves.
I will -
But why would they care if he live or die? His gods were not Elenei’s gods. His gods were not the loving mother and father who could not bear to watch their daughter perish. His gods were the cruel monsters who had no trouble drowning a pair of loving mother and father while their sons stood watching.
His gods were no longer any god of his, he vowed, when the bodies were finally washed ashore.