Page 210: Rebuilding Efforts
Rebuilding Efforts
Summary: The Terrick Rivers pays the broken sept a visit, and he and the septon chat some.
Date: 12/02/2012
Related Logs: None in particular
Players:
Jarod Josse 
Sept of the Seven — Terrick's Roost
The Sept of Terrick's Roost was never a grand spectacle, but has been hit especially hard by the occupation. the doorframe is vacant, with a large portion of the front wall dismantled. The seven niches where once life-sized statues of the Seven Gods stood are now empty, having been famously broken into pieces and fired out of Greyjoy catapults. At the very head of the Sept is a large window that faces out across the water, colored glass broken into pieces, with the altar- one of the only stone too big to be removes- rising in front of it. A few surviving pews sit toward the front of the room, leaving standing room at the back of the chamber. In that area the floor is lain out with a bright seven-pointed star in representation of the Gods, defaced by hammer and chisel.
Sun Feb 12, 289

Ser Jarod Rivers has found his way to the Sept of the Seven this day. Such as it remains, at least. It's passed from afternoon into early evening, though the sky is still light enough to see by. Rain pelted the Roost during the earlier part of the day, but it's clear now. And the knight is out for a walk among the holy ruins. Perhaps he's looking for something, or someone, though he has the appearance of someone just wandering.

A small part of the sept has a makeshift roof on it, enough at least to house some souls still too injured or destitute to leave. A few voices and coughing from back there are audible in the once-dignified altar hall, which now is little more than a blasted out wreck. It does look a little better than it did immediately after the occupation, hands having pitched in tirelessly to clear the absolute worst away, but the devastation is still heartbreaking. Despite the front wall being ripped apart and boarded holes in the side walls, an absense of statues, and barely anywhere to sit, there are still signs that people have been here to pray. A few candles. Offerings to broken effigies.

Knelt on the floor in a corner of this large room is Josse in his gray robes, his right arm held fast and careful in a makeshift sling of burlap. In his left a small brush, which he's using to diligently scrub at something on the grime-ridden floor.

"Small brush for so much work, Septon," Jarod observes as he steps closer to where Josse's working. Not that his approach should be surprising. The knight's footfalls are ever heavy and somewhat clomping. "What happened to the arm?"

"One has to get into the cracks…pride is in the details." There is some faint irony in Josse's humorless tone, and his back cracks softly as he sits back to look up. It's been a little while since the speton's managed to get ahold of a shaving blade, a mild shadow of facial hair adding a jarring sort of maturity to his young face. "Oh it's nothing. Casualty of chaos. It's good to see you, Jarod."

"Good to see you, too, Jos," Jarod replies with a half smile. If the expression isn't as boyish as it once might've been…well, it hasn't been for several months now. The Rivers knight is more of a grown-up these days, and the war's only been one part of that. "There anything I can do to help with…whatever it is you're doing?"

Josse chuckles under his breath. "I think you deserve at least a little rest, Jarod." He picks up an errant, large piece of broken glass from the floor and tosses it into a bucket nearby. It clinks against many like it. "Sit down. I think…" His thumb scratches his chin and then he points to the pew beside him. "This one's sturdy, least it was a few hours ago."

"I've taken a bit of rest," Jarod says, striding over to the pew and giving it a nudge. It doesn't collapse immediately, so he lowers himself into it. "I'm on liberty until the armies are called back, though I'm trying to get a few odds and ends settled before that happens. Not sure where they'll send us, save that it'll be to the Iron Islands. Talk's turned to invasion now that we've driven them from the River coast, and the Westerlands."

"Mmhm." Josse makes an acknowledging sound, eyes are back down on picking at glass. Both his hands have crisscrosses of small cuts all over them, in many different stages of healing. "I heard…just bare mention the last night or so. And how do you feel about it?"

"Matters little how I feel. I'm but one man in an army of thousands," Jarod says. Though he doesn't just leave it at that. "I feel…the Greyjoys need to pay for what they've done. To Westeros. To the Roost. To this place." His eyes travel around the battered remains of the sept. "And I feel…it won't just be Marron Greyjoy who suffers, of course. Just like it wasn't just the men-at-arms of the Roost who suffered here. Everybody pays the iron price, weak as well as strong."

Josse doesn't look like he's going to press the matter one bit when Jarod starts talking. Though as the words keep coming he gradually pauses in his collection of glass wreckage, wiping a tiny smear of blood off on his knee. "Such as it is. And we will do it anyway. Again and again." His soft-spoken isn't particularly negative, simply stating as it is. "Were you injured at all at Seagard? And what of Rowan?"

"Took a minor hurt, nothing that couldn't just be patched and have me upon the field again a day later," Jarod replies. "Rowan took a rather bad one when we were with the infantry. Gut wound. Those're never pretty. Healed clean, though. Clean enough to fight with us at the breaking of the siege at Seagard castle. Accounted well for herself on the field, much as any squire present. I shall knight her when the war is done." He sounds as much resigned to it as anything else.

"Good. I would have rather disliked it if either of you hadn't returned." The dignified understating hasn't changed a bit, underneath the grime and scruff. Josse picks up the brush again but doesn't start with it quite yet, moving over a few inches to sit on some fallen stone. "Does she know of your plans?"

"Yes, we've talked about it," Jarod replies, as to that last. "I told her I would when I took her back to squire for me again, if she earned it. She did. Not sure there's anything else to say. Do I think it'll grant her what she dreams it will? No. But it's the thing she wants and I can give it to her. And something inside her seems to…need it. To see this done. So that's that."

"That is that," Josse agrees mildly. "Are you two still, um…" He makes a vague motion that doesn't clearly indicate anything.

Jarod shrugs at the gesture. "I'm not bedding her, if that's what that's supposed to mean." He smirks. "I love her, and I've told her so. She says the same. I am trying very hard, Jos, to do this…right. And I'd like to be able to swear honestly that she wasn't my bed-warmer while she was my squire. Most won't believe me. I think men who know me might, if I put my oath on it. My lord father will, I hope. What I'll be to my family, and what she and I will be, at the end of this…I've no idea."

Josse smiles a little at Jarod's interpretation, dragging up the dreadfully premature lines at the corners of his eyes. He spreads his hands as Jarod finishes. "You know who you are. What you are to each other. I will marry you two in the dark if need be." He chuckles, a very muted sound. "It at least sounds as though the minor squabbles ending the world stage is over with, I do hope."

"I would like to marry her," Jarod says. "Whether she would be willing to be that to me. Be my wife. Give me a name that isn't Rivers. Perhaps children one day, if I'm blessed so…I don't know. Her dream is the knighthood, and it's been the one constant for her. What I am to that…I do not know. I know, because of her, I am no longer willing to accept less from people than I give them. Including my Mire rose. We'll see how it all plays."

"Indeed. Once one goal that has so long overpowered all others is in hand, our perspectives change. Hers may. But there is always tomorrow before that, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and they will add up as they will," is Josse's soft-spoken reply. "It has occured to me that some part of her simply wants to be what she perceives as your equal, before she can really let go."

"And tomorrow we could all die in battle with the squids, so little point in worrying about the rest until we're at it," Jarod says with an almost glib shrug. "I don't know what she wants, though she says I am part of it. I think that's true now. Don't know if it'll be true tomorrow. I hope I still will be, when all this is said and done, and it'll be in the same fashion that I want her. No way to really know one's there, really. Anyhow. I didn't come here to go on like a bloody girl about that. I mourn for what's become of the sept, Jos."

Josse emits a chuckle that actually sounds kind of real. "You can go on like a bloody girl anytime you want, Jarod. I shan't tell anyone." The change in topic makes his eyes flicker away. "Yes, well. As I said…tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, they will add up. Even here." He tilts the brush in his hand.

"I was thinking…have you written to the septon at Riverrun, or the high septon even, in King's Landing?" Jarod asks. "Or the other septs in the Riverlands, even. My family can give little to rebuild this as it should be, at present. Most of the treasury's going to be devoted to buying food, I fear. Staving off famine. If we can." He sounds by no means sure they'll be able to. "But this…it shouldn't be like this, Jos. My father's always taken such comfort from the faith of the Seven. Took it, I think, when precious little else in this world gave him any sort of comfort. I'd like this to be something of what it used to be again one day. For him, and for the folk here."

"Yes, I know it shouldn't." Josse's voice has a flicker of defensiveness in it. He clears his throat, turning the brush over in his dirty hands. "I hadn't thought to ask outside. Which is ridiculous, I should have. It might be an option."

"My family can as well, though I somehow think it'd have more weight coming from a fellow holy man," Jarod says. "And it wouldn't seem so…I don't know. This should be about the sept and the faith, not the Terricks, I figured. Your fellows in Stonebridge and the Mire might even be willing to give a little for it. Anyhow, you're welcome to use our ravens and parchment and anything else you need, if you decide to send out something for it."

"Thank you, I shall keep that in mind." Josse looks down at the bucket of water as he talks, dunking the brush back into it.

Jarod stands, idly stretching his arms. "Anyhow, I should be getting on. Thanks for the ear, Jos." Though as the septon returns to his bucket, the knight's head tilts. "Something wrong?"

"Mm-mmm." The sound is negative, following by the sweep of the wet brush over caked scum. Josse moves his foot on the floor so he can put some force into it. "Tell Rowan to be in touch should she need anything."

"All right. I'll tell her. Good talking with you, my friend." Jarod takes his leave, with that.