Oghenevwogaga

Chapter 16.1- The Seadragon's Roar

Added 2025-08-03 11:53:03 +0000 UTC

The Targaryen’s burned their dead. It was fitting of a house with dragons on their sigil, and dragons as their mints. We, Velaryons however, cast ours into the sea. It was not just a matter of casting the body into the sea though, there was a process that we followed for our honored dead. It could be as simple or as complicated as you wanted it to be. Of course, the simpler you went, the graver the insult you were seen to be paying to the diseased. Someone who had died ignobly would probably just be buried in the earth. That was the greatest insult of them all. A step up was tying their body to driftwood and then pushing them into the sea. Above that was using an already made boat. One of the highest was to cast the body into the sea tied to a full ship.

But even that was not the highest honour that could be paid to our dead. That was what Laena, Rhaenys, and I did now. I strained and chopped the plank of wood into two before moving it towards the machine that would help me bend it just the way it needed to be. For the greatest of our dead, their direct family would build a boat during the week of mourning. That boat would be pushed from shore by the heir, and then it was expected to make the straight journey to the deceased’s personal ship he had captained when he was alive. And then said heir would be expected to nail both ships with arrows to set them alight from a distance and the funeral celebrations would not end until the fire had run its course.

“We shouldn’t burn him here. He deserved to burned off the coast of Driftmark like his ancestors” Laena said even as she held two planks together for mother to hammer them together.

“Your father did not want a retreat. He was adamant that we not abandon this. Even leaving to mourn him would be a setback he wouldn’t have countenanced.”

“He’s dead. Dead people can’t countenance anything”

“That is why it is even more important that we do his will.” Mother pushed, and that was that.