[center][h1]ADDISON[/h1][/center] [hr] “Sorry about the rabbit,” Alyx huffed. Finally. “It’s fine,” Addison huffed in return, keeping her frown even as a sense of satisfaction bloomed in her chest and urged her to smile at this small victory. It was the first words they had spoken to each other in days, and Addison was pleased she was not first to break the tense silence that had fallen between them. After speaking with her mother those few days back, Addison and her uncle had tracked down her lord father’s hunting party, where they found them just finished and making ready the prizes they’d taken from the woods. Alyx had taken a rabbit herself, shooting it through with an arrow from horseback. It was all the talk of the party as they made ready to return to the procession, and Addison, mindful of her lady mother’s request to make a lady out of her sister, had thought it the wrong message. She scolded Alyx. Hunting was unladylike, and handling a dead animal was doubly so and also disgusting, she instructed. Alyx, who had slung the dead rabbit over the back of her horse as one would a deer, seized it up and thrust the dead thing in Addison’s face. Addison screamed, Alyx laughed, Addison called Alyx a cunt, Alyx told Addison that such language was unladylike, and Addison would have slapped that stupid smile off Alyx's face if their father hadn’t seized her by the wrist and led her away for an undeserved scolding of her own. It would have ended there, if Alyx had not slipped the dead rabbit under Addison’s pillow later that evening. “I’m sorry too,” Addison said, even though she wasn’t. The rabbit’s blood had soaked through the pillow and ruined it, and it had been her favorite. “For what?” Alyx asked. “For calling you that word.” “What word?” Addison exhaled sharply. Alyx was always teasing and ever difficult. “You know what word,” she urged, loathe to repeat it. It was an unladylike word to call someone, as Alyx had said, even if she’d only said it to make fun of her. “No, I don’t.” “Yes, you do,” Addison said, feeling suddenly hot around the collar. Then, after a long moment, she said very quietly, “[i]cunt[/i].” “Oh. That word.” As if Alyx hadn’t known it all along. Addison said nothing and folded her arms deeper than they already were folded. She made an effort to change the topic, after a moment. Take control of the conversation. That was how it was done. “Who are they?” she asked, nodding to the odd collection of travelers who had made their encampment just south of House Tarbeck’s tents. House Tarbeck had arrived at Summerhall yesterday, and their lord father and his men had set up the tented encampment they would call home during the tourney in the midst of those of the other Westerland houses. They had raised the Tarbeck colors and greeted their fellow Lannister bannerman with good humor. It was a pleasure to see many of those lords again for the first time in months, if not years. But this morning they found themselves joined by a newly arrived and curious collection of neighbors. “I’m not sure,” Alyx answered, considering the banner fluttering above the largest tent. A blue bird on silver, a falcon or a hawk of some kind, Addison thought. She knew her heraldry, could name any house in the Westerlands, but this wasn’t a Westerlands house that she knew of, even if they had set up camp in their midst. And then there were the people making camp there, who were an odder sight still than the hooded bird on the banner. Dark and olive skinned, shouting at and calling to each other in a language Addison didn’t understand, if it even was a single language. Were they from the Free Cities then? She saw that one of them, an older man with a full moustache and a colorful waist-length cape, wore a long, slender blade at his hip, a sword like nothing Addison had seen before. But the two men he spoke to looked not just like Westerlanders, but like Lannisters, one with golden blonde hair, the other sandy. They weren’t Westerlanders, though, she could tell. They had rougher, sharper features, and one looked like he’d spent half a year on the docks baking in the sun. He had a wiry scrabble of sandy facial hair, not a well maintained and styled beard but rough and coarse. His eyes were fair and gentle, his jaw was sharp and hard, and he was tall as anything, taller than any man in her father’s court, she thought. He was listening attentively to Slender Sword with an intensely thoughtful look to his face, lean arms folded. Corded muscle worked under the skin of a forearm as he flexed idly through the conversation’s course. “You’re [i]staring[/i], Addison Tarbeck,” Alyx interrupted with an accusatory jeer, and the tingle in Addison’s cheeks turned hot. “And who are you to blame her, Alyx Tarbeck?” It was a crisp interjection, and the two sisters turned around in time with one another to find their lady mother, hands on her hips and wearing an all-too-satisfied smirk on her face. “I suppose I now know just the sort of thing that brings you two to talking again,” she observed, eyes flitting in the direction of the two blonde men. “I apologized,” Alyx defended herself. “I did too,” Addison defended herself harder, not to be outdone. “Always a competition, the two of you. I would tell the both of you to settle it at the tilts if I wasn’t half-scared you might give it an honest try,” Lady Jeyne answered, and Addison felt the tension melt away into an honest smile she very much didn’t want to show her sister. “But I am glad to hear it. I need a word with your sister, Alyx. Run along and find something to make yourself useful, and keep away from the pillows in my absence.” Alyx did so with a haughty huff, and Addison was left alone with her mother. Alone was maybe not the word for it. High noon in the shadow of Summerhall was busy as a city to Addison’s eyes. The sheer number of people going about their days was astonishing. Addison had gone with her father to Lannisport a few times, and King’s Landing once when she was a girl, but much of her time and more was spent in the country. Tarbeck Hall had its residents, and the largest towns that fell within her father’s fief were no small affairs, but Addison was surely not used to such crowded company. Alyx was like to find it exciting, but it filled Addison with a constant, harrying sense of unease, almost as though the milieu was like to a wasp hovering by her ear. “Walk with me, darling.” Lady Jeyne offered her hands to Addison, palms facing up. Addison took them and allowed herself to be led. “What is it, mother?” Addison asked as they walked. Lady Jeyne was leading her away from the Tarbecks’ queer new neighbors and toward Summerhall, and Addison’s eyes were everywhere but her mother, even as she spoke to her. All around them the crowds continued to press. There was ever someone selling something, someone calling for someone, one child chasing another, a man with wandering eyes, a distant relation with whom she wished to avoid speaking, and more, all of them less than a stride or two away, if not in arm’s length. And as she looked up she found even the sky to be crowded. Everywhere were the banners, the lion of Lannister, the boar of Crakehall, that yellow point the Leffords intended to be a mountain but which Addison thought looked more like a triangle than anything. She was vaguely aware her mother was saying something even as her thoughts wandered. “…and there’s the Lefford boy, just a few years your senior. I saw him this morning when I spoke with Lord Lefford, and if you liked the look of that Dornishman I think you might take kindly to him.” “A Dornishman?” Addison asked, interests suddenly piqued. She’d never met a Dornishman. She’d met her mother’s maidservant Sarella, of course, who was Dornish, but she wasn’t from Dorne in the proper sense, merely born of a distant Tarbeck cousin who’d made some unladylike decisions while touring the Stormlands. Lady Jeyne pursed her lips, but Addison saw a hint of a smile in it. “Addison Tarbeck,” she said, using Addison’s full name as she was wont to do in the course of a reproachment, “I am overjoyed that Dorne has joined the Seven Kingdoms and I am confident Lord Fowler and his kin are loyal subjects of the crown, but please do not expect to marry one of them until I am long dead and buried.” “That is not what I meant, mother,” Addison answered, but she wasn’t sure what she did or didn’t mean, if she were honest. “I was just curious.” “And why can you never be curious about what I have on offer? You are my daughter and my dearest friend, Addison, and I can tell whenever we discuss it the prospects barely interest you.” They walked on in silence, and Addison looked down for a change, rather than all around all at once as she was wont. She could hear the frustration in her mother’s voice, and it was not the frustrated note of an exasperated mother, but of a person. Of someone not unlike herself. She felt a wave of self-consciousness roll through her then. It must be hard, she imagined, being a mother. Especially being a mother to one girl who shoots rabbits from horseback and another who takes no interest in her marriage prospects. She felt suddenly small. “I am sorry, mother. You must think me ungrateful.” “No, not ungrateful.” Addison’s mother sighed, and a pregnant pause settled between them as she seemed to find the words. “I daresay” she continued, the words coming slow as that bawdy smile crept back onto her face, “you will understand it better when you are the one trying to convince your daughter to marry the ugly son of a bloody idiot like Jon Lefford.” “[i]Mother![/i]” Addison said, a note of mirthful shock in her voice, and she leaned in close to her lady mother Tarbeck. “What?” Addison’s mother asked, all innocence as she drew Addison in with an arm and kissed her forehead. “What kind of mother lies to her daughter? As if Lord Lefford’s son looks half so good as that Dornishman, I’m ashamed I even suggested it. The boy looks like Alyx’s rabbit.” They were both laughing then. “I promise,” Lady Jeyne said, “we will find you a match that suits you. Truly.” [hider=Summary] Teenaged Tarbeck sisters Addison and Alyx continue their ongoing feud. They take notice of an odd assortment of Dornishmen making camp by House Tarbeck’s tourney ground encampment. Lady Jeyne Tarbeck counsels her daughter on her marital prospects, but makes little headway there.[/hider]