30 DAY CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT MEME;;
DAY TWELVE (x)
Describe their best and worst memories from childhood.
Lyanna’s best memories from childhood tend to be nonspecific. They are more like moments, small snapshots of her past in Winterfell. Her mother teaching her about how to grow things the garden, the first time she saw winter roses bloom. Old Nan brushing out the tangles in her hair or helping her to get a soil stain out of her skirts before her mother noticed. Playing knights in the wilderness with her brothers, or pretending to protect her friends from dragons or wildlings. Cold winter nights when Benjen would fall asleep sitting on her bed listening to stories with her, the two of them snuggled under layers of fur to keep them both warm. Her mother taking her into the godswood to pray together, how quiet it was, the sound of the leaves and the birds somehow hushed as though even nature itself understood the holiness there. The way snow tasted on the tongue, the way it floated down from heaven and blanketed the earth in sparkling white.
Her worst memories are far more particular. The day her father pulled a wooden sword from her hand and told her she couldn’t learn to fight with her brothers, or any time he caught her practicing with them anyways and yelled. Any time her mother told her she was such a pretty girl and she didn’t understand why Lyanna insisted on being such a strong-willed child when she could be such a fine lady and make any man a good wife. Any time Brandon told her she couldn’t play with him and Ned, or she shouldn’t practice swords with them, or that she’d better not hold his sword lest their father see (Lyanna liked Brandon’s sword best because it looked the most like Ice). By far, the worst memory of her childhood was when her grandmother died. It was the only time she had ever seen her parents cry, the only time she’d even seen someone dead. It was one of the most terrifying things for a child to understand that life was limited, that there was an end to all things, and that her parents were not all-powerful, but instead were only human themselves. It was the worst day.