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Cat, Dog, Bird by dwellingondreams
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
26 Oct 2025
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Summary
Her father did odd jobs around the village and farmed, poorly. He was mostly good at tending his garden and fixing broken tools. Sometimes he shoed a horse. Sometimes he went to the mudflats to fish. Sometimes he drank too much and couldn’t stand up. Sometimes he screamed and cursed in the night, and sounded like another man entirely, and Cat would wriggle into her mother’s arms and bury her head in her mother’s chest and sing loudly with her until the screaming stopped.
Mother always sang while she worked. She sang while she swept out the hut, she sang while she washed their clothes in the stream, she sang while she baked, she sang while she hunted for mushrooms and berries, she sang while she fished, she sang while she helped another woman through labor pains, she sang Cat to sleep and Father to wake and she sang with their bird while the bird still lived.
Now the bird was dead. Cat prodded at it sadly with a grubby finger, through the twisted bars of its cage. Father had built the cage for the bird at Mother’s request. She’d found it with a broken wing; it would never fly truly again, so it was best to keep it nice and safe in the cage where at least it could cheer everyone up with its singing.