It was the ninth month, two-hundred and seventy-three years since Aegon's Landing, when young and sweethearted Lania Shale came to the Flint's Finger in the back of a potato cart. Her belly was swollen with motherhood, and near on the brink of labor. She was being looked after by a man in smallfolk clothes, though he spoke with a noble's precision and paid with coin for the local midwife to look after the young Lania and her unborn babe. He stayed at her side during the final days of her pregnancy, and what came of it was the petite and squalling daughter that she named Sela.
Wherever the girl and her newborn daughter had come from, they decided to stay in the Flint's lands. Lania had some skill as a seamstress, and she found work in one of the small hamlets outside of the Finger. She was visited every few years by the smallfolk man who had paid for the midwife services, and soon all began to refer to him as Uncle Tristan, just as Sela would come to call him. Sela was a sweet child, though she was constantly picking things up and looking them over with an inquisitive nature. This soon developed into Sela wandering off with other people's belongings — at first it was quite blatant theft, but soon she developed some finesse to swiping the property of others.
As Sela knew nothing of her father, and her mother and uncle would give her little snippets and stories now and then. An active imagination turned these stories into epic tales of heroism and valor, and she would retell them to the other smallfolk children around the hamlet and Finger — each time she told them they would get more and more elaborate. Monsters of great threat, knights, castles, dragons, wildfire. It was Fat Peetin who eventually called her out on her stories, driving her home in tears to be comforted by her young mother who promised that her father was a great man, just not as great as she wished he would be.
Much of Sela's childhood was spent under her mother's care. She learned seamstressing, garden tending, herbalism and healing, and the Old Gods. Whenever Uncle Tristan came to visit, he would take her out into the woods near the Finger and teach her a bit of scholarly knowledge, as well as such things as trapping small mammals and fishing. It was not until she was nine would she find a new set of teachers — thieves.
It was not unheard of for small gangs of kids to rally together to cause mischief, especially in the poorer hamlets. On one of Sela's deliveries for her mother, she crossed paths with a boy named Joreph Mullin — or Quick Jor to his friends. Five years Sela's older, he was exceptionally handsome in her eyes with the dark features of a Northern boy. He had been head of the Fingerlings gang for years, and boasted that he had robbed from a noble carriage when he was eleven. Sela, shy and desperate to make friends with Jor, bragged that she could steal from Master Yarrow, a baker in the Finger's. Promising her entrance into the gang if she could steel five loaves of fresh-baked bread, Sela marched herself into the Finger with the Fingerlings in tow.
The robbery did not go well. Sela had gotten her calloused little hands around one two loaves before the baker caught her. Despite being shocked by his shouts for her to put down those fucking loaves, she snatched them close to her and tried to dart away. She was caught several streets down by Flint guards. The loaves were squashed and mud-bedraggled — hardly worth eating. What was worse, Sela would not muster an apology to the baker for the theft. To her surprise, as Tristan was on one of his scheduled visits, he came to speak on her behalf. To her greater surprise, Tristan suggested full punishment for the girl's crimes. At nine years old, Sela Shale received a thief's brand on the webbing between her right thumb and forefinger. The 'T' would always remind her of her first crime. Tristan had hoped that it would teach the girl a lesson. It only taught her to be a better thief.
Despite her failed mission, the Fingerlings were so moved by her lack of remorse, that Yoe let her in. Over the next six years, Sela engaged in all kinds of thievery from picking pockets to breaking into ill-protected lockboxes. Sela proved to be an excellent sneak, being able to move quietly and unseen through crowded and empty streets alike. She also was nimble and acrobatic, being able to utilize walls and roofs alike to navigate through the Finger and its hamlets. Yoe started "courting" Sela soon after her fourteenth name day.
When Sela was fifteen, she received a disturbing visit from her Uncle Tristan. First of all, he knew she was still thieving her way around the Flint's Finger and its hamlets. It was poor behavior, and her father would be disappointed, he had said. In her rage, she demanded what he knew of her father. Where was he all these years? If he had the balls to be disappointed in her, maybe he should have the balls to actually visit her now and then. She raged at her uncle until finally he broke down in an uproarious shouting match with the young girl. By the end, she was in tears and angry and resentful. Unable to keep the secret much longer, Uncle Tristan asked if she wanted to meet her father. Angrily, she said yes. Fine, he had told her, his name is Garett — he is a knight, and he will be waiting for her at the Terrick's Roost in the Riverlands.
It would do her good, Tristan promised her mother, to get away from this place — away from Jor and the gang. Perhaps Garett Westerling would serve as a good change for her, a good place of grounding. Lania wished she di dnot have to see her daughter off, but what it was all said and done. So, Ser Tristan Slate — a man who squired with Garett at the Crag and saw to it that his bastard daughter was always kept safe and hidden — escorted the girl to Seagard to finally meet her father.
