The Humiliation of Lyanna Mormont

Old Cobb One-Eye completed his tale and seemed to shrink into his cup as if he had used up the last of his vigor. Normally, when an orator finished a story in the Honeyed Den, they were greeted with cheers and applause, but no one stirred as Cobb’s haunting tale drew to a close. How else could you respond to such a sad story? How were the Bear Islanders meant to react to the news that their beloved lady didn't die heroically, but instead perished in an agonizing manner, screaming and shitting herself while being impaled alive?

The elderly soldier felt old tears welling up in his one good eye and was about to begin sobbing into his cup when he finally saw her. His cloudy, grey eye shot towards the corner of the room where the ghostly apparition of Lyanna Mormont appeared to him once again. She was smiling at him like she always did, her ghostly luminance only enhancing beauty. A coiling tide of mist surrounded her lower half, covering up the horrific wounds that had caused her death. She didn't appear naked, like she was when she died, and instead of wearing a fine dress the likes of which she never would have worn when she was alive. Cobb always preferred it when girls wore dresses, perhaps she wore it for him?

“Ah, my lovely Lady of Mormont!” Cobb suddenly cried out, causing all the men within earshot to jump up with a start. Of course, they couldn’t see Lyanna. Only he could, and only when he was so drunk that his vision had begun to grow blurry. But she was a welcome sight every time. Cobb felt his spirits reunited as the apparition nodded at him and slowly melted away into the wall.

“To Lyanna Mormont!” he cried at the top of his lungs, raising his mug in the air, “The toughest damn she-bear to ever be born on this damn rock!”

The crowd of revelers and drunks cheered and raised their own glasses, toasting to the long-lost lady. Soon the drinking hall was awash with laughter and murmuring once again, for let it never be said that the inhabitants of Bear Island were given to sorrow and gloom.