Chapter Text
It happened in May. May Day, May Day. My mind was wandering. Unfortunately for me, this time it was a literal thing and I went to sleep knowing exactly who I was and where, and when, and woke up somewhere completely else.
I think I was lucky, as far as these kinds of things go, not that I have anybody else to compare notes with. I could have switched in public or something, with witnesses, in a place of very great danger while I was vulnerable from the disorientation. I’ve consumed enough media to know the so called rules of dimension swapping. It’s probably even codified, except I no longer have access to the internet to check. I didn’t even know how screwed up the stakes were, not until weeks after the jump.
I envied the sci-fi end of the spectrum in cases like these. Like in Trek. Ridiculously unstable Empire that espouses stabbings for military promotion purposes aside, at least they had computers.
Here? I nearly made myself sicker by using up valuable recooperation energy fighting off some robed guy trying to stick leeches on me.
In the process, I found that my body was way smaller than I remembered, weaker not just because I was sick from what felt like a serious flu, and that I was probably not going to get out of this place with the aplomb of Dorothy from the Land of Oz. Or Alice from Wonderland. Or Wendy from Neverland.
My name is Selyse Florent. And I am a ten year old girl in the Reach, of Westeros.
My convalescence gave me time to think. I allowed myself to wallow about being a woman in Westeros. I was going to get into panicking about Night King: The Freezening 2.0 later, because as far as I can remember from the TV series alone, I’ll have 99 problems and my vagina was one of them. Literally so, as my fertility was my fortune and StorySelyse had some shitty rolls of the dice. Metaphorically so, because here a woman basically hoped that she could be a widow of a Great House like Olenna or Cersei and then people paid attention to what they had to say and you could field armies in your name. Only, to hope that your own Lord Husband croaked after you gain the requisite heirs and spares was gauche and unladylike, so you didn’t actually say so.
The other method of power was dragons and that was out of reach for me.
I also spent a couple minutes pounding my little fists against the mattress at my sides when I realized that this meant that I would be going through puberty. Again.
I punched ineffectually some more when I remembered that I’d be getting a moustache and I was the wrong gender for that to be acceptable. I’d have to invent waxing. For my face. When my only experience with such methods was cringelaughing while watching the relevant scene from 40-Year-Old Virgin.
After Maester Bryan judged that I made a full recovery and I was presented to my mother for inspection, I set about with a will. Was I absolutely sure I’d end up as Mrs. Stannis the Mannis? No. But given what I know, I might as well prepare because as the Starks say, Winter is Coming.
I didn’t even know how old I was to be before getting married. The show didn’t go there. The wiki didn’t go there. I didn’t enjoy not having actual deadlines to measure my progress against, so I hustled.
I obtained a blank notebook from Maester Bryan and started a bullet journal. I had habits to track and in the future this low tech method would be as accurate as I could get with predicting my menstrual cycle. I needed the journal for peace of mind; the idea that I was actually going to be a good player in the Game, good enough to last longer than StorySelyse. So in addition to mundane habits like making sure I had my vegetables because I didn’t want to perish from scurvy, brushing my teeth after getting a brush especially crafted for me as well as daily flossing with lengths of leftover sewing thread (I may not be pretty, but I sure as heck was going to have all my teeth), and fighting for the right to take baths once a week (daily was seen as unacceptable weirdness as well as wasting servants’ time and resources), I laid out a curriculum for survival as a lady in Westeros. I followed it like my life depended on it, of course.
I faced the facts. I was not going to beautiful or pretty or anything but big-eared and mustachioed. And tall. I paid attention to my grown relatives in Brightwater Keep and as far as I could expect, I was going to be on the wrong side of yet another Westerosi beauty standard for women. So I must be learned and sensible so that I could be the Kevin to Stannis’ Captain Holt. It didn’t help that I’ve been told that I’m more a Gina Linetti type. So not appropriate for Westeros.
I didn’t remember precisely the ridiculous list of accomplishments that Caroline Bingley insisted made a true lady in Pride and Prejudice, but things were not so far off from Regency standards to current Westerosi standards. So in addition to a new routine of walking the outside perimeter of Brightwater Keep’s curtain wall as one of the few acceptable activities for ladies that had anything to do with developing some cardiovascular strength, (because as foolish as that was, I held out hope that maybe, this crapsack world would give me a break and I’d be Elizabeth and Stannis could end up being a sort of Darcy. Hah. With the way expectations go to shit in this world, he’ll probably be an emotionally constipated Mr. Rochester type. Or a completely inaccessible Captain Ahab.) I practiced the heck out of dancing. I was even able to pass off doing squats, pilates, and various other calisthenics as leg strengthening exercises in service to said new obsession with dancing. I was going to be graceful as fuck in any dance and nobody, not even Cersei Lannister, was going to do anything but say that I showed well on the floor.
I took up music lessons. Singing and playing the harp and mountain dulcimer. I used the excuse of needing to increase lung capacity and strengthening my diaphragm to take up a routine of jogging from one bailey to another within Brightwater Keep, belting out scales as I went. Every so often I would amuse the guards by asking if they’d noticed or not if this time I could hold a note longer. Fortunately, I wasn’t tone deaf. I sounded pretty good, actually.
My singing kept us ladies entertained during the mandatory sewing portion of the day. Unlike Arya, I wasn’t mad about it. Because here was another area where I knew there was an advantage I needed to exploit on my own behalf. Actual couture sewing can do wonders for a body. If my squats and jogging up and down bailey tower stairs didn’t end up giving me a booty (who knows how my breasts were going to come in) then I’d just have to make dresses that implied I had a booty. I would ruche, I would pleat, I would drape, I would color block, I would princess seam, I would bias cut the shit out of fabric. Sequins were not a thing in Westeros, so I could not pray for inspiration from RuPaul as I marshalled my chubby little child fingers to give me even stitches. So with every well hemmed handkerchief, not lopsided button hole, and successfully set in sleeve, I was giving thanks to the fashion goddess Chanel. I would’ve included Versace in the mix, but I was aiming to impress Stannis in the future, not give him an aneurysm.
I managed to get Maester Bryan to actually explain some historical geopolitical background while I was rote-learning the heraldry, Houses, and locations of major keeps and cities. I stubbornly slogged through Valyrian lessons because who is to say I wouldn’t need to beg Daenerys for my life in the future. I didn’t need any math more complicated than multiplication and division in order to do housekeeping accounting as judged acceptable for ladies, but I managed to build a reputation for being such a precocious learner that Maester Bryan ceased to be too resistant or disbelieving once I started attempting algebraic proofs. It wasn’t like as a girl I would be allowed to learn anything like actual classical Logic. (Incidentally, Logic as a topic did not even truly exist for the Maesters. Fuck. Guess I’m going to have to introduce the Scientific Method and have Maester Bryan take credit.) So the logic of math it is. Can’t be having Stannis dismissing me for being too emotional in my decision making, after all.
I think over time I began to imagine Stannis as a more pissy, bitter Vulcan.
It took a bit of detective work and proof before Lord Alester Florent, my uncle, saw that I was not a common girl by fourteen. I was allowed to investigate the housekeeping records because my mother was gratified and glad that I (unlike my other girl cousins) was dutifully interested in the business of being a useful wife to a future husband. I transcribed a past year’s records into double entry bookkeeping and discovered that the dry goods merchant that the Florents worked with was shorting us on sugar and other spices by weight.
Between the housekeeper and head cook not micromanaging and a number of servant girls who learned early to not ask questions at the risk of getting hit by a wooden spoon on the wrists or their ears, nobody wondered why certain sacks or boxes came in with actual stones inside. The servants unpacking the dry goods merely disposed of the rocks by habit instead of bothering the head cook and with many being so young as to have never served in any other keep before, all was well in their point of view. They of course had no idea that the merchant charged by the pound and we were paying for useless rocks.
I gathered up the evidence and wrote out a report of conclusions, on how the merchant was cheating us and depended on multiple servants not knowing what was what in a shipment of dry goods in addition to general illiteracy.
Lord Florent questioned me harshly, not believing that a girl could discern what grown adults could not. I countered that cunning is as cunning does and conmen always depended on lords and ladies to not trouble themselves over the details of trade.
“Cons are safer than outright theft. At no risk of bloodshed, this man has taken Dragons worth from our House. Other Houses blinded by honor may trust whomever they like. I say, trust, but verify.”
Lord Florent drummed his fingers, repeating my last sentence to himself.
“You did well, Selyse,” he finally said. “It was clever of you.”
I curtsied, smiled in what I hoped was a winsome manner, and quipped that as We Dare With Craft, it behooves us to warn others that they must not dare against us. I worked to have Lord Florent approve of me since my own father died of a horse riding accident very shortly after my youngest brother Erren was born and I had no memory of him.
The merchant was horsewhipped and sent to the Wall. Double entry bookkeeping was instituted for the accounts of Brightwater Keep from then on and Maester Bryan wrote up a treatise and instruction text on the subject and sent it off to the Citadel. In case it was ignored, he sent copies to some of his other maester friends from his studies directly. I took the time to teach all of my cousins who were old enough to comprehend and the importance it. Serendipitously, Uncle Axell did not need to have much prodding by Lord Florent before embarking on a big auditing of accounts. Maybe he would be castellan of Dragonstone again. Maybe not. But I saw it useful to me to have the man gain years of practical experience beforehand.
As for the servants, this incident made it so that it made sense to start instituting a system of checks. Major servants were taught at minimum to be able to read the numbers and names of the most common supplies and goods that would be coming into the keep and to use the weights on the scales and balances kept in the kitchen. Goods coming in would be weighed and measured, opened and sifted through, and undergo another weighing and measuring before acceptance. Discrepancies must be brought to the attention of the merchant and any severe conflicts would be brought to the attention of the steward. And woe betide the merchant who gained the attention of Lord Florent himself for attempted cheating. Weekly inventory would be done, with younger servants made to follow a more experienced servant to learn how to properly do the counts and writing for it.