Chapter 16

Your mental State soon began to improve again, and so as to not waste the rest of the Night, you decide to repair a bit of the Infrastructure around your new Property while lying in Bed. For there's something relaxing about mending Stones back together, in Fact if you actually could, you wouldn't mind falling asleep right now, but seeing as you can't, you just focus on the City while wondering if your Mother will be worried about you, or if she will be mad with you instead.

Thinking about it, if your Mother would indeed worry about you, wouldn't that just aggravate Cersei even more with her current Mind Set? Part of why you've gone on this little Expedition of yours was to get some distance between all the small problems that keep coming up, so having it create even more of them wasn't really what you had in Mind, or well, at least you would prefer to not deal with the social kind of problems anymore.

After you repaired everything you could reach, you used some of your remaining time experimenting on your Statue, changing it's size to be even smaller, so that you can explore a bit more without having to leave your Room for it. And while that isn't very efficient, you still chose this way of going about it over doing nothing at all. Thus, you promote your little Companion to be a Spy for the new Ships coming into the Harbor, for however long you will stay in Lannisport.

Your Cub gave you some good Hints as to which Ships were holding onto something interesting, so after the Sun finally rose, you ended up buying yourself some Pocket-watches from a Greyjoy Ship. You don't care too much about where they came from, though that the Greyjoys are such Hypocrites took you by surprise, with how they're always portrayed as People actually caring about the Iron price or so you believe they call stealing stuff on their Islands. Seeing those big and bad Ironborn trade like the common Merchant was kind of underwhelming, like, why is the World refusing to make Sense all the time kind of underwhelming.

You had broadened your View of the World a bit, but you can't place them at all, they give themselves as Wolves with all their ferocity, but then they are proud and a bit insane like Lions, all the while being as spineless and manipulative as Sheep. You've of course seen People giving you the same problem before, but never have you seen a Culture so convoluted, and disgusting. How can someone be a Wolf Today, and a Lion Tomorrow, just to degenerate into a Sheep next Week, is choosing one way to live really that hard for them?

If your first interaction with them didn't get you something so interesting to play with, you would have dismissed them as Fischer's with a Temper, but Fischer's wouldn't be able to create or steal these Pocket-watches, you're sure of it. Mayhaps you could visit their Islands in the future to see for yourself if they make any kind of Sense in their own World, but then wiping out these Pirate King Wannabe's could also quite easily solve whatever issues even the biggest of misunderstandings could create, so you're a bit unsure if it would be worth it.

Considering the Crown's rapid weakening and the Ironborn's Mind Set, you might not even get the chance to visit the Iron Islands, though you won't claim that you of all People know enough about the matter after just meeting your first Ironborn Today, so you can always hope that at least their Leaders have some common Sense. If you were leading the Ironborn you also wouldn't start a Rebellion until the first Year of Winter has passed over the Continent, and for all you know they could be loyal to the Crown as well, not that you actually believe that.

You of course buy more than just the Watches from the good Merchants of the Town, but it's mostly uninteresting and bland, just like the Town itself, hence you weren't as disappointed about it as you were Yesterday. And with three more Caskets of Gems exchanged, you also have the Resources to better your House's Capital a little, thus you send out your Knights again to buy you some Shops and Inn's to expand upon. For you have forbidden yourself to use your Ability in the open, so helping out your Subjects will take more time than you have.

You doubt that anything that you could do at the moment would be able to do more than stop the bleeding, but if that's the only thing you can do for the Smallfolk, then you would still prefer to make it one amazing Bandage. And what would be a more amazing Tool in creating absurd amounts of work than a Festival with but a single Day used for the Preparation-phase? With several Shops and Inn's at your disposal you have enough Places to distribute the work to, and seeing as Festivals are good for Sales the Merchants will have to get themselves some Helpers as well if they want to make their Profit.

What Humans can do when under the pressure of time is truly astonishing, and your improvised Plan makes good progress, with a Population of two-hundred thousand People living in Lannisport, helping out all of them becomes a ridiculous Task. But if you were to say that they can live with four Copper Pennies a Day that could be managed quite easily, for all you needed to do is give a good enough reason to pay them some Silver so as to show them the Wealth of your Family, or at least you will go with that excuse if someone asked.

It's actually the same as with your Father's struggles to pay in the effort of making up for the shortcomings of his Vassals, so you instead chose to just pay your Workers five Silver Stags a Day and be done with it. For you're sure that once the Gold and Silver starts flowing the rest of the Population of Lannisport will be able to find a way to benefit themselves just fine, and once everyone is finally invested into getting themselves a better Chance of surviving the Winter your little Capital will become a decent Place once again, mayhaps the City will be even strong enough to lessen the Population Control a bit, though the only thing that matters is that you give each Human the freedom to decide what he wants to live as in this World.