~Dany~

The crying wakes me from my slumber, a slumber that clings to me with the weight of endless death. It is cold like the north and my breath dances in clouds against my lips.

Where am I? How did I get here?

I can recall nothing from before, my thoughts and memories slipping away from me like wisps of fog when I try to capture them.

The crying is that of a child, of a babe, wailing for its mother.

Rising, I look around the room. Empty. No cradle, no babe, no fire burning in the small hearth. No sign of life or heat. The room is simple; the small bed wooden and made for one.

I hear another cry from somewhere in the bowels of the castle and so I rise and go towards it. A cold dark corridor leads me to a stairwell, the stone beneath my feet worn and shaped by many others before mine.

I do not like this place; there is no happiness here, no warmth or joy, no life or love. It feels like a place forsaken souls come to wait for death. Is that why I am here? To wait?

Then I remember something. Someone.

Jon. The name bleeds into my mind, warm and vital.

I need to find Jon.

The crying is louder as I pass through a large hall left in a hurry by its occupants; bowls lie upturned on long tables, benches pushed askew and toppled, bread left rotting for rawboned rats that scurry with caution across the tables, as though some predator awaits in the shadows to pounce.

Outside, a large yard covered in thick snow, and abandoned too by whoever resided here. As I turn full circle I see it. Stretching up as far as my eye can see before disappearing into a blanket of thick fog, stretching far off to the east and the west.

The Wall. This is Castle Black. Where Jon had become a man. I look around the keep with new eyes; had it been his bed I'd awoken in? Was he here somewhere? A squawking noise pierces the air as a single black raven flies overhead and disappears upwards into the white.

Suddenly I understand. For it is a rare thing to recognise one's own dream as they move through it, yet I have always been able to.

But something about this one feels different, like it or I is a stranger to the other. As though neither of us belongs here. An unwelcome visitor.

Wait. What was I looking for? Not Jon, something else, someone else. My mind feels slow and thick like the fog atop the wall.

Gods, I feel so... alone. So cold. I must find it. Find him. I feel empty and desperately alone suddenly, the ache tearing and spreading through me like fire.

The sound of movement behind me causes me to turn. A large wolf stands some way away; fur thick and white like snow. It regards me with intent for many moments, red eyes glowing like hot coals before it turns and slopes off toward a great set of wooden stairs anchored into the wall itself. At the foot, it stops to look back at me as though waiting for me to follow. Perhaps it will lead me to what I am looking for, to Jon. Gods I long for him. Long to feel his warmth around me and his lips upon mine.

Time feels like moving water as I take the great stairs; soon with no end or beginning. How many I climb I do not know, thousands or more, but the wolf stops every now and then to wait for me.

Below, the towers and keeps of Castle Black have shrunken to small dark shapes; above, the wind's howl grows fierce and loud. Woven through it is the sound, constant: the soft wailing cries of a babe. Only the wind has changed it so that it sounds now like a chorus.

I rush on, reaching the peak just to see the sun sink below the horizon, turning the sparkling white to shining grey.

I turn my head west to see the white wolf lop towards a figure. A boy, no more than sixteen perhaps, tall and thin like a reed. He looks to the north like a king surveying his lands. As the wolf comes to sit obediently by his feet the boy reaches down to touch its head, a strange frost-like shimmering moving between them.

'I have been waiting for you,' he says without turning. His voice is the wind, the wall, the world.

'I am looking for something,' I tell him. My own voice is strange, as though I have not used it in a thousand years.

'It is in the past.'

I want to disagree with him but I cannot find the words. 'Who are you?' I ask instead.

'A messenger.'

'A messenger for who? For what?' I look at the wolf.

When he turns to me I try hard not to gasp, for his eyes are white like snow itself. Wisdom seeps from him. As though many thousands of years and lives have lived within him.

'For that which must be known,' he says simply.

'I heard a child, crying.'

'I have heard them all. But yours will be last.'

'Mine is dead.' Strangely, it no longer hurts as I say this. I feel nothing now, not even the cold.

'From ice does the dragon's fire burn,' he intones. It pulls forth a memory, of a tale told to me once though I cannot recall when or by whom. I can recall nothing before this moment now, here, in this place between life and death.' And by the blood of ice and fire shall the dead walk no more.'

'I do not understand.'

'You will.'

I glance out over the wall, over nothing but a world of desolate white.

'The children of the forest called him Rhysgrom. Cold blood,' he says. 'But the north call him the night king.'

'You will tell me how to destroy him.'

'First I will show you a truth unknown to all. Then you will understand what must be done.'

With the wolf following close behind, the boy turns and strides toward a cloud of low-hanging fog, disappearing through it.  As I move toward it I am certain I hear a man's voice calling me from far far below. I recognise that voice for it is my home. It is joy and warmth and love.

'Dany,' it calls across the wind. 'Please, Dany. Please, stay with me.'

I want to go to him, to stay with him, but the fog reaches out and curls a hand around me and pulls me into it. Then I am falling.