It was the duty of the maester to record the deeds of Runestone, and in his long years of service, he had written of many things... births, deaths, harvests, treaties, and even battles.
Yet none puzzled him more than the growing curiosity that was the young Ronan Stone, as known by others.
Even when privately, he is treated as a Royce while the maester himself considers the boy Targaryen.
In any case, the boy's mind, he thought, moved faster than any other, and yet the boy's hands somehow also managed to keep pace.
When the child had come to him first, asking for books on carpentry and woodcraft... the maester had thought it a passing whim.
Many children took up interests on the side, only to drop them when they found the work harder than it seemed. But the child Ronan was different.
He did not read for the sake of reading. He absorbed.
Within days, he spoke of tools with the confidence of a grown craftsman... chisel, awl, plane, rasp, and lathe... his questions sharp and well-placed, his memory frighteningly clear.
And soon, theory turned to practice.
The maester would watch from the corner of the courtyard, quill in hand, as the boy took up scraps of wood and shaped them, shaving off slivers and chips until his vision came alive in his palm.
The first triumph had been that curious stick that returned to its thrower... the "boomerang" as it was named.
The realm had already gone mad for that one. But for Ronan, it was only the beginning.
Before long, another toy took shape.
A small half-dome of wood, curved and polished, that spun in one direction and stubbornly refused to turn in the other. The maester had seen it with his own eyes.
How, no matter how hard one tried... the little piece would right itself and spin the way it wished.
Ronan called it the rattleback.
The maester had studied its motion for hours, muttering to himself about balance, shape, and the strange harmony between motion and form.
It defies common sense, he noted, yet the boy claims it does not defy reason.
Everyone else who had gotten a glimpse of the curiosity was less patient with reason. They simply called it another of the Stone boy's "enchanted" toys.
Alas, it wasn't as popular as the others... only a small curiosity that didn't make much of a wave.
So... then came the more dynamic and popular ones... from the frisbees, the hula hoops, the tops and dreidels... designs unseen before in the Vale.
Some with pointed shafts that whirled on tables, others made to wobble and right themselves like dancers on a stage.
They were not merely toys... they were tests of motion, the maester realized. Including the kick-volley ball and the kites.
And once again, the child's mind continued to the next.
From curved toys to blocks... rectangular, even, and smoothed to the touch.
Dozens of them, near identical in measure, which he stacked in columns and rows.
The maester thought him building a wall or tower, but then the boy explained the game... pull the blocks out one by one without letting the stack fall.
Ronan called it "Jenga". Another curious word.
When the maester sent word of this to the Citadel, he expected polite dismissal.
Instead, a reply came... a brief note of intrigue from an Archmaester, who remarked it as a study of human patience and structure.
Soon after, there were whispers that even the royal household in King's Landing had taken to it.
The young Princess Rhaenyra and her friend Alicent were said to spend afternoons testing their nerve and steady hands with the blocks of Runestone make.
Which was enough to make Jenga spread as another game of fun and folly across the Kingdoms.
Added to the list of many before it.
But Ronan was not done.
He made thinner planks next. Building planks. Which the maester heard the boy muttered them to be... Keva and Kapla but not Legos. Truly odd words one could not place in any tongue.
Granted, the boy used them not just for play, but for private creation...
Bridges, towers, halls, and miniature citadels without a single nail or clay holding them together.
These building planks seemed far more versatile than stone masonry... as it is said that the new King has set himself to build a model of Old Valyria.
Still, it is no doubt that the boy was already learning the principles of architecture through these methods.
And in the far tomorrow, these little constructions might just be constructed in Royce lands.
Then came the miniatures.
Tiny figures, carved with such care that their faces bore expression... soldiers, knights, ladies, even jesters.
Wooden likenesses of Runestone's people, uncanny and artful. There are even characters that the maester could not name.
Then, as if that were not enough, Ronan made the next iterations of these statuettes move. Like the Nutcracker which actually crushes nuts.
And through strings and hinges, his other wooden creations actually dance.
Though wooden toys and puppets are not exactly original... but the boy getting to make them at this young of age is what's noteworthy.
In any case, the maester thought that might have been the end of it... until one day, he was called to the port to witness the boy's latest curiosity.
Little boats of wood.
It wasn't clear if they had accurate interior hulls... but those curved prows and fitted sails of cloth stitched by a seamster's hands sell the illusion.
Then the boy placed them into the port's waters... and to the onlooker's shock, they floated... balanced and swift.
It was not long before he made more... one with twin hulls, another with weighted stones to steady the keel. With designs much more sleek and sometimes even bigger.
Many fishermen and docked captains were impressed. While the maester was alarmed.
A boy of almost seven namedays should not know the secrets of floating on seawater better than grown users of boats and ships.
But mayhaps this will serve as the foundation... because it was no secret that the boy had ambition for the seas and to build real ships of his own.
And as if the waters were not enough, the boy did not forget about the land.
Where he saw to crafting small wooden carts... with the simplest being flat boards on wheels, narrow and light.
After which, he would set them at the top of a hill and let them roll while the onlooking children cheering as they raced down the slope.
He called them "cars" and he planned to call future races a derby. Calling on the other young ones to try to make their own. Using these "cars" of their own to participate in the competition.
A way to encourage the budding woodworkers of the Royces to hone their craft.
So young yet already thinking of strategic moves like this... on a crafting industry that he himself has spurned with his genius.
At first, the maester thought it was mere passing interest... or even a unique obsession... only later did it become clear that there was something greater forming in that young mind.
Ronan was building his world, piece by piece, from wood.
The maester, in his quiet candlelit chambers, often found himself writing more than he ought.
His chronicles had grown thick with the boy's inventive progress, and he sometimes feared that he was recording the beginning of something too large for ink to hold.
He wrote one final note on the last page of the account of those young years...
About how the boy's mastery of wood is not unlike his grasp of letters... complete, unsettling, and wondrous.
If this is what he makes with timber, then the realm should tremble when he turns to stone and steel, or the more familiar bronze of his House.
For the supposed bastard of Runestone carved more than toys. Ronan Stone carved a legend in the making.