Arthur 59 294 AC

Lady Mellario was many things.

She was clearly fairly intelligent, She didn't speak the common tongue very well, she was very pretty for her age, and she was also very, very aggravating.

Not in the capacity of her actual actions, but more in regards to the fact that she insisted on following me absolutely everywhere as I prepared the island for my departure.

Going to the docks to oversee the new Narrow Sea Company Offices? She wanted to come too.

Going on a last tour of the island to make sure nothing was more on fire than it really ought to be? Have fun doing it with your mother in law judging you from over your shoulder.

Wanted to go to the bathroom in the morning? Well, thankfully that one might be hyperbole.

Needless to say, her constant presence was extremely frustrating, especially in regard to the fact that she was Arianne's mother and I had no idea how much Arianne liked her.

I knew that if it had been her father I would have given him the boot at some point. I would have done it politely, but I would have done it nonetheless.

But I also knew that she didn't like her father that much. The same might not necessarily be true here, and it wasn't like she was doing anything to actively hamper me, or even being that impolite beyond perhaps imposing a tad too much on her host.

Either way, it prompted me to make the executive decision, six days after my father and uncle left, that I would be departing to deliver the signed marriage contract early.

This was a bit of a surprise I think to the men, but one that was nonetheless entirely doable, and thus, on the eighth day of the year, I was back out on the Sword again, sailing with a couple of cutters through the Stepstones towards Sunspear.

It was almost exactly the same course I had taken more than a year ago, with the now named Maiden Fleet, though I had fewer cutters with me now than I did then, and only the Sword itself was still painted the white that I had used to signify my peaceful intent.

'How quickly things change…'

When I had sailed these very same waters last, it had been only the second time I had left Dragonstone, a little Lordling leaving his nest to find a mate. I had found her indeed, but been carried away by Storms, and come back stronger, better for it. With access to power that I still didn't fully understand.

And now, these waters weren't just some wilderness to be explored or conquered. No more did pirates sit in the rocks and prey upon the unwary.

No. Now, these waters were mine, and I and any other could pass them safely enough, without even a tariff, though that wouldn't last too much longer.

I was different now, far stronger than I had been the last two times I had visited Sunspear.

As I saw that distinctive frame of the Sandship rising in the distance, I found myself wondering...

How much more would I change by the next time I saw its shape, and how much had my fiance changed herself?

END Son of Mannis part one. The Great War in Essos.