⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ °• ☼ CHAPTER FOUR: DRAGON DREAMS ☾ •°⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

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FOR THE WEEKS after, she had the same dreams of the dragon with the opal eyes. She became accustomed to each of its details: the chip in its fourth tooth; the way in certain angles its scales seemed more blue than black; each of the flecks of colour in its eyes. One night, she was even perched on the dragon's back, between sharp spines. The world was black and shapeless beneath them, wind tousling Nessie's star-touched hair. That was her favourite. Most nights, it was just its eyes. She'd told no one of the dreams—they were strange, surely, but who would listen to her? Sometimes, despite what Maester Aemon said, dreams were just dreams.

     She would wake, still feeling as if under the cover of flames some nights, to the darkness of the night. She would hear her mother's weeping and her father's mad yells. Some nights, she would clasp her hands over her ears and sing Gentle Mother, Fond of Mercy to herself as she rocked in her bed. Others, when she was feeling fiercer, she would escape from the tower with the silver bow she now hid beneath her bed, and ride to the forest. She would take only a single lamp with her, following the light of the splotched moon through the maze of woods. And when she reached the clearing, she would shoot all the arrows from her quiver, run to retrieve them when she ran out, and start again. One, two, three, arrows hit the wood. Four, five.

     Owls would call above, sweet melodies to her ears and comfortingly familiar. Her hands would grow blistered and tired, wrists aching from the drastic change between writing poetry and using a bow. The muscles in her arms would burn with each string and draw of the bow, with each sharp release of her fingers on the string. It was a pleasant distraction from the violent tendencies of her father and life at home. Sometimes she dreamt of killing her father with that very bow, but Nessie never really wanted that. She just wanted her mother's screams to stop.

     Only once had she been caught by her handmaidens trying to escape from the palace. She'd ended up vaulting the garden walls and scampering through the rose bushes to escape. Her brother had asked what had caused the wicked delight in her eyes and the cuts on her freckled cheeks, and she'd just laughed and told him it was an adventure. Her father had hit her when she returned, a strong blow across the expanse of her cheek. Blood had speckled from where his large rings had struck her skin but she wore them like jewellery. She may have been timid and small, and afraid of her father, but she wasn't afraid of the people of the court. They whispered as they saw her bruises, and her father boiled with anger.

     Her mother had tried to help her cover the wounds, but Nessie only shook her head and lowered her mother's frail and shaking hands. Her mother had only grown more gaunt throughout the years. She had her own bruises to cover now, though most lay below the collar of her dress. Her eyes showed the hints of pain and fear behind the purple irises. Rhaella knew Nessie was an easy target for Aerys' anger. There was nothing she wanted more than for her daughter to be safe. Before long, it was Nessie putting her mother to bed with bruises and cuts, rather than the other way around.

     Nessie still attended the parties and sewed dresses and wrote book-lengths of delicate poetry, and didn't like them any less. But she also snuck out to ride and practice her archery during nights. It had become a passion which even poetry couldn't fill. Over time, her arms gained muscle and she no longer needed to balance the bow on her limbs, Nessie growing to fit its length.

     Her legs were lithe and long, ever-growing, hair silver and pale as bone. And Nessie's eyes—well, her eyes were a shade of purple so light and peculiar that some common folk whispered they were touched by sorcery.

     It was the dawn of her eleventh year when she was introduced to Tylan, her bodyguard—a youth a few years older than her, hired by her father to protect Nesaela from outsiders who would wish to harm her. Though he worked for her father, it became apparent that Tylan would protect her from even Aerys. The two became quick friends, something which a princess and her bodyguard should never be. He often accompanied her on her late-night rides and showed her the trickier points of archery her brother wouldn't know.

     She ran with him through the forest, on the trail of animals. Her gold-laced dress caught on twigs and branches, tearing in the dim sunlight, and she'd taken off her shoes, bare feet splattered with mud. The wind caught her hair, sending it flying behind her in a wave of seafoam and starlight.

     "Nessie!" Tylan yelled, dashing after her in the sunlit forest.

     It was a chase, like a shadowcat pursuing a rabbit. Except the rabbit was faster and agile, and the shadowcat wasn't as close as it thought it was. Tylan was fast, but Nessie was faster. As he chased her, she ducked and wove and leaped through the bushes, vaulting logs and dodging his every move.

     His voice was breathless and trickled with laughter. "I'm going to catch you!"

     She pranced like a pale deer away from him, lithe on her long legs. Her hair had grown longer around her shoulders, curling in delicate strands around her ears and neck like a noose—silver and white like a painter's dream. And though her skin was pale as animal bones, she had silver and brown freckles scattered along her cheeks to match her violet eyes. (The signs of a peasant girl, the lady of the courts would whisper, as if she was out in the sun for hours every day, like a labourer).

     Nesaela flew down the ditch, bare feet slipping as she threw herself into the forest. They'd gone far now, had left the horses back by the stables and the bows by the stream, and Nessie kept running. The breath leaving her lips was sharp and tiring, but they had done this countless times before. She wasn't going to give up purely out of tiredness.

     She ducked sideways, diving through a gap in the trees and losing him momentarily. Twigs whipped at her face and she giggled. A tree in front of her stretched out with curved limbs and knots in its trunk, perfect for handholds. Its leaves shadowed the forest.

     Nesaela hit the tree at a leap. Her bare feet clung to it as if she was born to climb, and she quickly scrambled up it like a lemur from the Summer Isles. She ducked up through the branches before Tylan could spot her, hidden behind a whispering cloak of leaves. Nessie's back was pressed up against the cool bark and her legs scrunched up in front of her, feet placed on the branch.

     Below her, the bushes moved as Tylan emerged in the clearing. He turned and surveyed for a moment, the forest suddenly quiet. "Nessie, where are you?" He glanced around the bush, sticks in his brown hair. "I know you're hiding somewhere!" He wandered out beneath the tree, in front of its long branches, still looking around for sight of her. Nessie crept out on the thick branch and without a second thought, leapt on him.

     The princess landed square on his back, knocking them both to the ground. The air hissed out of her mouth as her bare feet struck the pine-needle ladened ground, seated on his back. He let out an "oof" as Nessie promptly sat on him.

     "I got you," she said, raising a victorious fist.

     Tylan squinted his dark brown eyes at her, letting her tumble off his back. Her silk dress flittered around her pale ankles. She fell onto the ground, laying on her back and looking up between the trees.

     He rolled himself over with a huff. "You cheated," he said.

     Nessie raised her eyebrows and propped herself up on one elbow, squinting her eyes at him teasingly. "If that's what you call winning. You chased me. I got you."

     "You're more like a snake than a dragon," he snorted. "Always in hiding, ready to strike."

     She flicked a pine needle at Tylan. "I am a dragon. My family are the dragons. You're a mere sheep," she teased, throwing her eyebrows up as a playful grin worked its way across her face.

     He raised his eyebrows to match hers. "A sheep who could kick your princess ass."

     Nessie snorted. "Who just kicked yours? Have fun with those bruises tomorrow, Ty." She lay back, letting herself rest against the dirt and leaves. Tylan had done the same, laying beside her in silence.

     She felt free with Tylan. As if she could ever leave Kings Landing, as if she wasn't just in the forest beyond the palace, but far away from her father and the golden chains which bound her to her birthplace.

     "Where did all the dragons go?" Nessie asked, staring at the sky.

     Tylan made a face—what an odd question to ask. "The dragons are all dead. They died a long time ago, Nessie."

     Nesaela nodded. "I know. But where are their bodies in the ground? Are their bones sprouting flowers and trees? Did their ghosts make it to the clouds?" Tylan let her talk. The sound of her voice was like moonflowers brushing in a valley. Sometimes Nesaela became all poetic—her lips just spoke all the words her mind wondered, all the words she could never quite capture on paper. It was always best just to let her talk, and to listen. It was a few minutes before she murmured again. "When I dream, I feel like I'm a star," she whispered. "I feel like I'm a meteor, catching fire as I soar through the sky a hundred leagues at a time."

     "You make no sense sometimes," Tylan observed, not in a cruel way, simply stating a fact.

     Nessie peered through the leafy canopy above. "I know. But when I dream, the dragons are alive and breathing. When I dream, they seem to waken from their coffins just to send breaths towards me; to meet me in their dreams."

     "I dreamt I was a duck once," said Ty. "Dreams don't have to mean anything. It's what makes them dreams."

     Nessie stared at him, hair with twigs stuck through them falling in front of her face. "You're not very poetic, Ty," she said, unimpressed.

     "Just not as highborn as you, m'lady," he mused.

     "Maybe some people's dreams do mean nothing to them. But I've felt the wind in my hair, the stars in my tongue as I graze the fabric of the sky. I've seen myself become fire. I have felt beneath my fingertips, the breathing side of a dragon. Everything means something." Her fingers felt the dirt and pine leaves beneath her. "And how can a dream like that not mean everything?"

     A few moments of silence ticked by. A finch moved in the branches above and and the sound of leaves shifting enveloped them. The sun lay across Nessie's face in golden pools. "I could get you out of here, you know," Tyland said.

     "No, you couldn't," Nessie said. When Tylan opened his mouth to argue, she shook her head. "It would take the end of the world to get me out of here." Her hair lay around her, curled with sticks and leaves. "For now, I'll stay here with the dragons in my dream. I have you anyway, Ty." Her head turned towards him. "You and my mother and my brother are all I need." Her lilac eyes glanced at him.

     "I wish I could take you with me when I returned home," Tylan told her. "Then we could run away."

     Nesaela's father would have Ty's head if he'd heard him talking about such thing. Ty knew the risk and sent it anyway. A sweet, equally sad smile overtook Nessie's face. "You'd have to marry me then."

     Tylan pulled a disgusted face. "I would, if it meant you could come with me."

     Nessie let out a short laugh, a tear present in her left eye. "Tylan, sweet Tylan, I can never leave this place. Married or not. This place is a birdcage—a dusty birdcage painted in jewels to try to hide the fact it traps everyone in. My father only yanks the chains which opens the doors, and slams them shut just before anyone can leave. This place traps people. And I'm at the centre of it all." Only Tylan's ears and the woods around would ever hear these words. "The earth would catch fire before I ever escaped here."

     "And you would be a star," Ty echoed her words spoken before. He lay his head back, watching the gaps of sky between the swaying leaves. "Your poetry depresses me, Nessie," he said, in an attempt to lighten the mood, and Nessie laughed.

     "I'll write you some more," she mused, "some very depressing poetry to remember me by. When you're married and happy, and I'll be here still, a prize to some man."

     "That's never going to happen," Tylan said. "I'll never marry anyone before you're out."

     Nessie snorted. "Such a hero, Ty."

     Tylan turned himself on his stomach, so he was staring at her purple eyes. Her purple eyes were so strange—he could see an ocean's storm in them. "I'll never leave you," he said. Nessie felt like he was a shooting star, and she was a planet. "I'll never leave," the star would say to the planet, but then a blink had past and the star was already gone, leaving the planet alone in the same place it had always been.

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guess who's back and ready to continue this story

2,377 words

27.12.2018.