Girl with Penguins

"Look, Daddy, it's like I'm holding his hand. But penguins don't really have hands, of course. Right, Mommy?"

Selyse nods.

The penguins look like they are marching in step with Shireen. "Where are you taking them?" Stannis asks.

"To penguin kindergarten," Shireen declares. "They don't like to take naps, though. They close their eyes and close their eyes, but they can't sleep because it's not night and they're not in their own beds and their mommy and daddy haven't kissed them goodnight and can we do something else now please?"

"Well, next year when you go to a real school, there won't be nap times anymore," Selyse says. "You might miss it."

"No, I won't," Shireen says, shaking her head vigorously.

Stannis studies the picture. When Shireen is smiling like this, you could almost fool yourself into thinking that the scar running down her cheek is not really there. The man who did it had been screaming payback when he slashed Shireen's cheek. Stannis was the prosecutor who sent his daughter to prison. Life without parole, for killing her ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend. Unlike penguins, most people don't mate for life.

"Will Shireen blame me?"he asks Selyse, as they watch their daughter's sleeping face.

"You know she doesn't blame you."

"Not now. She's only five, too young to understand. But later, when she is old enough, perhaps -"

"She's our daughter. I'm sure she will be smart enough to recognize where the blame truly lies. With that monster, with that wretched, evil man." Selyse still could not bring herself to say the name.

"Do you blame me?"

"Of course not. You were only doing your job. No one blames you, Stannis. It's time you stop blaming yourself."

It's not your fault. You are not to blame. Everyone keeps trying to convince him of this.

But back when people thought that the slasher was someone with a grudge against Selyse, because of something she wrote in one of her articles, in her capacity as a hard-hitting, take-no-prisoner investigative journalist, the reaction had been different. What kind of mother would put her child in that kind of danger? This is yet another cautionary tale about how women can't have it all. And on and on it goes.

"People treat mothers and fathers differently. The expectations are very different," Selyse says.

"Even in this day and age?"

"Even in this day and age. All the things we recognize as a double standard when it comes to men and women in general … somehow that recognition is thrown out the window when the men and women in question are fathers and mothers. It's almost like mothers belong to a completely different species than women in general."

"Where is the justice in that?"

"Where indeed?"

"Will it be different, by the time our daughter is old enough to be a mother?"

"I have to believe that it will be," Selyse says, vehemently.

It is a leap of faith, having children, his mother had said, a long time ago. But what if you never had any faith to begin with, faith that the world will be as it should be?

You go on anyway, his wife would say. Because when the child is no longer an abstraction, no longer a hypothetical notion, you do not have the luxury of complete and total disillusionment. You have to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that.

Grumpy Baby Penguin is Grumpy

Uncle Renly laughs. "Do you know who this looks like, Shireen?"

"Who?"

"Your father, of course."

Shireen stares at Uncle Renly's phone. "That's a baby penguin."

"A grumpy baby penguin."

"It doesn't look like Daddy at all."

Uncle Renly touches the screen a few times, and then a slide show starts. A slide show with lots and lots of photos of Daddy. But Daddy has the same expression in all of them, with the upside down smile. "No, Daddy, you have to smile the other way around," Shireen would always say, when Daddy smiles like that.

"Do you see the resemblance now?" Uncle Renly asks, when the slide show is done.

Shireen shakes her head. "Nope."

"Not even a little bit?"

"No."

"Not even a teensy tiny little bit?"

"Weeeell, maaaaaaybe a little bit," Shireen admits.

"He's cute though, isn't he, the grumpy baby penguin?"

"Very cute," Shireen replies.

"Your father looks cute too, sometimes, when he's grumpy."

"I don't think Daddy will like it if you call him cute, Uncle Renly."

"Well then, we won't tell him. It will be our little secret," Uncle Renly whispers.

Valentine Penguins

"Have you seen this, Mom?"

It still feels strange, this 'Mom' and 'Dad' business. "Mommy and Daddy are for little girls," Shireen had declared, the day after her seventh birthday. "I'm a big girl now."

"What's next, Father and Mother when she turns eight?" Stannis had grumbled.

"Didn't you call your parents Father and Mother?" Selyse had pointed out.

But he was a very different kind of kid. As was Selyse herself. Where does it come from, their daughter's sweetness? Certainly not from her parents.

"These penguins have been together for twenty two years. Twenty two!" Shireen exclaims.

Valentine's dinner for penguins. With chocolates and heart-shaped balloons and candles and red-and-white checkered tablecloth. How absurd. But one look at her daughter's rapturous expression tells Selyse that scoffing is absolutely the wrong response here.

"I'm sure they enjoyed their dinner very much," she says instead. Well, at least those penguins were served plain fresh fish, and not some ridiculous overpriced restaurant concoction drenched with truffle oil and god knows what else.

"Do you and Dad have something planned for Valentine's Day?"

"Not really, no."

We don't do Valentine's Day, Stannis would scoff. A commercialized made-up holiday, Selyse would scoff alongside him.

You celebrate Mother's Day and Father's Day, her cousin Delena pointed out, more than once.

That's different. That's for Shireen, not for us.

"Myrcella said her parents never celebrated Valentine's Day either," Shireen says, staring at her hands, not looking at her mother.

Oh. Selyse gets it, finally.

"Your father and I are not getting a divorce."

Shireen still would not look at her mother.

"We're not … well, we're not like your Uncle Robert and Aunt Cersei," Selyse continues.

"Uncle Robert and Aunt Cersei never went anywhere together for Valentine's Day," Shireen says, finally looking up, staring at her mother earnestly.

"That's not why they're getting a divorce."

"I know. I know it's not the reason. But it's a … a symptom, Myrcella said. It's a symptom that there's something wrong with their marriage."

"Every marriage is different, just like every child is different."

Shireen frowns, considering that. "Joffrey is very different from Myrcella, even though they are brother and sister." Leaning closer to her mother, Shireen whispers, "He's so mean to Tommen." Then, smiling shyly, she says, "If I have brothers and sisters, I would never be that mean to them. I will be a good big sister, I promise."

Penguin in Penguin Sweater

"The sweaters keep the penguins warm until they are well enough to be cleaned," Shireen says.

"And it stops them from nibbling oil off their feathers and poisoning themselves," Arya adds. "The oil company doesn't care, of course," she says, feet kicking the front legs of the chair she is sitting on. "They don't care that their oil spills are destroying so many lives."

"We have ten volunteers so far," Shireen continues.

"Where do you get the yarn? Do you buy them?" Devan asks.

"Oh no, we don't buy them. We reuse wool from old sweaters that people donate," Shireen replies. "They're not old sweaters, really," she amends. "Most of them are Christmas gifts that people never got around to wearing. We need volunteers to unravel the donated sweaters and to knit the sweaters for the penguins."

"Shireen does the design, she's very good at that. And she does the knitting and unraveling too, of course, alongside the other volunteers. I'm in charge of logistics – collecting the old sweaters, sending the finished penguin sweaters, making sure we have all the necessary equipment and material and so on," Arya says. "And if you think you're going to be in charge of logistics just because you're a boy, then think again," she warns Devan.

"I can unravel. And knit too," Devan says. "My mother has a store on Etsy. I help her with some of the orders sometimes."

"Does she sell sweaters?" Shiren asks.

"No, she makes dolls for characters from movies and tv shows," Devan replies.

"Like what?" Arya and Shireen asks, in unison.

"Characters from Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are very popular," Devan says. He looks through the designs for the penguin sweaters, his solemn face breaking into the sunniest smile. "Penguin on penguin. How perfect."

"That's my favorite too," Shireen says.