+ ENTRANCEWAY TEST DRIVE MEME +

[vitaelamorte]

HAS THIS EVER HAPPENED TO YOU?!

Your mind is a car, a car in the vastness of the universe, slowly going down the road which connects thought upon thought and you glance at your hands as they grasp the steering wheel, wondering if you are fit to master the curves of creativity, to weather the rocky roads of prose, to order a cool glass of beer at the roadhouse of inspiration no wait a second you can't order a beer you're driving you're test driving your mind car drunk what have you done WHAT HAVE YOU DONE THIS IS THE MIND POLICE SLOW DOWN AND PULL OVER IMMEDIATELY YOU ARE UNDER ARREST I SAID SLOW DOWN THIS IS--



♥ ENTRANCEWAY ♥
TEST DRIVE MEME

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Comments

[fatherlesskind]

[Alistair stops walking as Jon tells his story, looking at him in surprise.]

You- [He shakes his head and laughs quietly.] Huh. Well, that's funny.

[He should maybe explain what exactly is so funny before Jon thinks he's laughing at him though. The subject clearly isn't an easy one for him to talk about - a feeling Alistair knows all too well. It makes it easy to answer when the question is turned back on him, without feeling the need to omit certain facts he ordinarily wouldn't share with someone he's just met.]

I was recruited into the Wardens from the abbey where I was sent as a boy. I grew up in the household of one of the nobles in my home too. As a bastard. [He grins at Jon, hoping the man will find as much amusement in the coincidence as he does.] His wife believed the rumours I was his and wanted me gone so off I was packed. I was lucky to become a Warden, the life they had planned for me at the Chantry - the abbey - wasn't something I wanted. Or would have been any good at.

[And in his own way he'd wanted to make a name for himself too. Rather than being seen just as someone's unwanted bastard - or, worse, the bastard prince to those who knew his parentage - the Wardens had seen him as just Alistair, just another Warden. It had been the first time he'd been given any choice in his life and the first time anyone had cared what he wanted. Even the price of joining the Wardens had been worth that. They'd been his family and even now, months after the fact, their loss still hurts.]

[fourthson]

[ Jon doesn't take that laugh the wrong way, mainly because he recognizes for what it is: a laugh of commiseration.

That's proved when Alistair goes on to explain his own background. It's disconcerting how similar their stories are, almost to the point that Jon wonders if Alistair's making this all up simply to find a common ground with him, but he comes across as completely sincere.

Remembering how Catelyn Stark had felt about him, Jon's heart goes out to Alistair. They've found themselves in very similar positions, and it's not often that Jon finds someone who he can relate to so closely.

Having also paused in their walk, Jon shakes his head to himself in disbelief. ] Now I have to wonder if this Wonderland is interested in abducting bastards or if this is simply a startling coincidence. [ He hasn't met enough other people here to know if this is a trend, but he's actually relieved that he opened up to Alistair about his parentage. ]

[fatherlesskind]

Collecting bastards, now that's an interesting hobby. I can't imagine why though - I'm not worth much ransom, I don't know about you.

[Even with the suggestion he take the kingship as the last of the Theirin royal bloodline, his home country has much bigger problems to deal with than getting back one person. And from everything he's seen of Wonderland it's not going to be as simple as that.]

But you're the only other bastard I've met here so I think we're just lucky. Or unlucky maybe.

[Unlucky in birth that is. Meeting Jon hasn't been a bad thing at all. It's a welcome change to meet someone who understands what it can be like growing up as they did.]

[fourthson]

[ Jon doesn't imagine he'd be worth much in a ransom. The whole point of being a Black Brother is that you're expendable. The only person who might have paid for his life is Eddard Stark, and he's dead. After only a moment of thought, Jon shakes his head. ]

Unlucky, from what I can tell so far.

[ Maybe this Wonderland seems a kinder place than Castle Black, but Jon's already antsy, feeling that he's been away from his duties for too long.

He sets forth again, but after only a few paces he gets the distinct sense that he's been here before. A quick look around reveals to him a tree that's bent in a specific way, its trunk crooked like the bent back of an old man. ]

... We're going around in circles.

[ He should be ashamed of himself. He thought he'd been paying attention, and he's navigated woods far more treacherous than these. ]

[fatherlesskind]

That is not my fault.

[No, he hadn't been paying much attention to where they were going and his sense of direction wasn't always the best when he was surrounded by seemingly identical trees but he was sure he hadn't been steering them around in circles. Mostly sure.]

I'd ask if you have the map but being as there isn't one...

[And he doubts they'd both manage to so completely lose track of where they were going that they'd loop back. On his own Alistair imagines he might but with two of them it seems unlikely even if they were distracted.]

...It could be magic. I was in a forest back home once where if it didn't want you to go somewhere it just turned you right around. You ended up back where you started. Really annoying.

[fourthson]

[ It hadn't been Jon's intention to assign any blame, and he shakes his head when Alistair becomes defensive. He comes to more or less the same conclusion: unfamiliar as these woods may be, it's hard to imagine that both of them would have lost track when they have experience traveling through terrain such as this.

Something else is afoot, and Alistair jumps to that conclusion just as quickly. Jon's heard similar stories of the Haunted Forest. Many of the Brothers had written it off as the panicked stories of nervous rangers, but he'd always wondered. While he's never experienced this strange effect himself, he doesn't find the idea to be particularly preposterous. ]

You may be right. Which means that if we continue trying to explore further, we'll only end up more lost.

[ With a frustrated sigh, Jon has to admit that they're better off returning back to the mansion for now. They can gather more information from those who have been here longer, to see if there's any trick to navigating this forest.

But there's one more loose end that needs to be tied off. ]

I need to see if I can find my horse, if nothing else.

[ He'd found the animal in the stables here, which means he has no real attachment to it, but Jon isn't willing to just leave it either. ]