I'm Theon Greyjoy

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***

My head ached terribly. It was splitting in two, making him lose consciousness and then come back to reality. He could hear voices in the periphery of his hearing, but he couldn't make out what they were saying.

Suddenly, something was poured into his mouth. A pleasant, warm liquid.

He could barely swallow it and almost choked on it. After a couple of minutes, which seemed like an eternity to him, he finally lost consciousness and fell asleep.

'''''''''''''''''''''''''"'

Baelon Greyjoy, Lord Reaper of the Iron Islands, looked irritably at his wife, Alannis Harlow, who was sitting beside her son, swaying from side to side and muttering to herself.

Alannis had never been a beauty, but her strong and laughing face had pleased the then young Baylon on the first day they had met under the arches of the Ten Towers.

But lately the unloved, but pleasing to the eye and soul, wife had changed. All her attention had gone to the younger children, and Baelon didn't like it. His children would not be spoilt brats.

The behaviour of his unloved wife made him grit his teeth like one Baratheon.

When one of the servants told him of Theon's accident, Baelon was a little worried - he was not a stranger, but his own son - but when he learnt that he had only a bruise, he calmed down. It was not proper for a lord of the Iron Islands to show weakness. Not even in front of his servants, and especially not in front of his brothers.

And frankly, Old Kraken did not understand his wife's strange behaviour. Only the knowledge that Theon was Alannis' favourite son gave some understanding of what was going on.

With another glance at his wife and Maester Wendamir standing still, Baelon decided to return to the Sea Tower, the personal domain of all the Greyjoys in Pyke. He had some unpleasant letter work ahead of him.

Well, if Theon didn't survive the night... well, Baelon still had many sons. One more, one less.

Cynical, but the old pirate's heart had long since grown calloused.

'''''''''''''''''''''''''"'

Waking up was... unpleasant. The pain in his head was still there, but not as bad as the last time he woke up. A few minutes of just lying there, without any thoughts, and now Theon Greyjoy's new personality opened his eyes and looked around.

It took a few more minutes for the cloudiness in his eyes to go away and allow him to see his surroundings more clearly. He saw a room in a medieval setting. Theon was sure it was medieval-the local scenery made that clear.

Theon lay like that for half an hour, thinking about where he was, what was happening to him, and more. But he was prevented from finishing his thoughts by a man who entered the bedchamber, interrupting his train of thought. He was a tall, slightly stooped man, dressed in an obscure grey robe with many pockets. With every step he took it seemed that something was jingling in the pockets of the unknown man.

'Maester Vendamir.' - came a sudden thought to Theon's mind. An attempt to find out who Maesters were had been unsuccessful. Just the name of the profession and the man's name.

- Is young Lord Theon feeling well? - Vendamir's voice came up after a few seconds of staring.

His attempt to say something only made him wheeze - he was thirsty. He nodded curtly and signalled to the maester that he wanted a drink of water.

Vendamir rushed over and soon had water for the little lord.

Theon tried to say something when he was thirsty:

-'M...Maester Vendamir,' Greyjoy continued, sighing a few times and coughing heavily. - What happened to me?

The question seemed to surprise Vendamir. He moved closer and now examined Theon more closely, paying particular attention to his head. He did not answer the question, but soon realised his mistake and tried to correct it:

- I'm afraid you fell on the stairs of Kitchen Castle, my lord. You hit your head very hard. Your mother was very worried about you,' the maester added the last thing, inexplicably.

The outer silhouette of the Kitchen Castle, and soon the rest of the separate parts of the fortress called Pike, came into my mind. The knowledge of the mother, too, came...

The door opened and a new person entered the room - Theon's mother, Alannis Greyjoy, née Harlow. She had loose light brown hair, a pale, worried face with warm brown eyes and pedigree features.

-Son! - She took a few wide strides to young Theon's bedside and leaned over him, babbling something that even Theon, who was in close proximity, understood little of what she was saying.

Just hysteria, he realised, was his new mother's condition.

Maester Vendamir stood modestly aside and did not interfere. The man seemed like some sort of decoration in the room - so insignificant was he in this room.

Theon sat in his arms for hours with his new mother, unable to decide what line of behaviour to take with her.

Theon's memory threw warm memories associated with Alannis Harlow, washing away the memories of his past life, making them insignificant and blurred in his thoughts.

Soon his mother left him - Theon learnt that he was not the only child in the Greyjoy family. Suddenly, from the remnants of the boy's personality came strong emotions of disappointment and sadness? It turns out that his father, Balon Greyjoy, had never visited him. The imposed emotions soon subsided and the remnants of Theon Greyjoy's personality finally disappeared.

'''''''''''''''''''''''''"'

It took almost a week to recover - the Maester kept putting smelly ointment on the bruise on his head and forcing him to drink a sour, bitter concoction - at least that was the only way Theon could characterise it.

But the bruise went away, leaving only a scar on his head. And Theon was released from his chambers. During his enforced confinement in his bedchamber, young Greyjoy had learned much about the new world - the Iron Islands, his new homeland, whose inhabitants had been plundering the shores of the neighbouring continent called Westeros for thousands of years.

They were proud of it, though Theon saw no reason to be proud, even though the Ironborn had managed to conquer the coastal lands for a time. They were quick to lose them through greed, stupidity, or arrogance.

Westeros, on the other hand, was a more interesting cocktail of different nationalities. First Men, Andals and Rhoynar, divided into Seven Kingdoms, five of which are purely Andalian.

The North is inhabited by the First Men, who managed to defend their right to exist during the Andal invasion.

Dorne, an analogue to Persia or another Eastern Earth culture, is inhabited by the Rhoynarans, as are the Andals with the First Men, who came from Essos after their homeland was ravaged by the Valyrians.

It was a very interesting world for someone living in a man-made world - a century and a half ago, dragons flew in the sky, mythical creatures like the Children of the Forest or the Giants lived on the ground, and krakens and other sea creatures ruled the sea.

Why did Theon believe that these creatures used to live in Westeros? After all, he himself is from a man-made world, in which the absence of any superstitious myths and fables has long been proven. And even the locals are sceptical about it.....

And the fact that relatively recently dragons still existed many do not confuse. If there are such things as dragons, why shouldn't there be others?

However...

Theon tiredly closed the thick folio describing the tales of Westeros and looked away. A small girl, a few years older than him, was spinning around beside him. Asha Greyjoy, his older sister. With her short black hair, thin and nondescript, she reminded him of a rambunctious sparrow.

As soon as Theon came out of his bedchamber, he'd stumbled upon her, and in the couple of days he'd spent exploring his new family's home and reading books, Asha had never left his side. She kept calling him to peek at his older brothers in the courtyard or to practice archery.

Not that Theon minded, but at the moment he was more interested in information than in swinging an axe or trying to hit a ten in a round target.

- Come on, Theon, let's go drop the axes,' the little girl begged again, tugging stubbornly at his sleeve.

-Okay,' he conceded, realising that he could hardly continue reading. Not under such external pressure from the little girl. Putting aside the thick tome with interesting details about the fall of the Giskar Empire, the boy stood up from the hard chair.

That was how they went into the outer courtyard, not noticing when a black-haired, one-eyed man walked up to where Theon and Asha were.

Upon reading the title of the book, Euron grinned. His nephew had changed a great deal, and that interested the Raven-Eye greatly. He would be interesting to watch.