SOLIVAGANT ─ HP & GoT [ON HOLD]

☽ Chapter XI ☾

Amalthea Potter never really knew what she would feel when she finally got there... There, to that place she heard so much about, that place that would be her new home where she could finally make room in her life for a little happiness and hope, where she would spend the rest of her days... But what she felt was different from what she ever imagined she would feel, and her heart ached when she realized that some of what she felt was disappointment.

She wanted to cry and scream, and to cast spells left and right on everything and everyone around her. She had traveled so much, suffered so much, wished so much... For that?

Maybe it's my fault, Amalthea thought to herself with furrowed brows and a frown evident on her lips. I was fooled by Harlan's embellished words. He described a castle out of a fairy tale, a castle of fantasy and dreams, and what I see in front of me is merely a sand castle that has been knocked over by the tide and what remains is just waiting for a gust strong enough to knock down the rest... it will be a sand castle blown away by the winds and tides. Her grip on Masquerade's reins - which seemed to sense her tension - was so strong that her pale knuckles became bone white. I refused to listen to the warnings... Lord Stark, Maester Luwin... even dairy farmers and butchers commented on the situation that Moat Cailin was in but I refused to believe it.

Masquerade advanced slowly through the narrow marshy mud path, so slowly that it almost didn't look like it had even left the same place. Suddenly her ears picked up a familiar sound, a lingering wheeze that seemed to rise and fall quickly from her right in the middle of the confusion that was the land of her future home. Amalthea let out a breath that was a mixture of self-deprecating amusement and despair. And what a big mess that land was: shattered rocks, huge blocks - so big that it must have taken more than fifty men to lift it on what had previously been the outer wall - of oil-black basalt destroyed and sunk in the swamp.

As if it were fate laughing wickedly at Thea's unhappiness, there was a thunderous sound that seemed to have made the swampy ground tremble and the horses to neigh with furious fear, and a part of the wall already immensely destroyed collapsed. The black stone fell and shattered as it rolled down the wall, becoming smaller and smaller but still huge, until it reached the ground ,and landed in what they thought was a safe land area, with all its strength scaring the birds miles away. What seemed to them like a shiny solid lawn proved to be just an illusion, nothing more than green water turbid enough to trick the human eye, the stone sank in the water but did not disappear completely... It stayed there half-sunk, like a dagger in Amalthea's stomach mocking her childhood dreams.

Swirls, poisonous-looking flowers, one or two rotten carcasses of animals that would have been trapped in the quicksand that was that place until they died of thirst and hunger... And that insistent and almost contemptuous hissing that seemed to get louder and to be accompanied by many others...

Thea turned her head in the direction of the sound, squinted her green eyes like gems wrapped in thick layers of black that was her lashes, and looked in the direction of the sound that came from those dark waters. A long white snake slid in the middle of a rock, separating the water like a ship's hull separated the sea, moving quickly and disappearing from view with words low - too low for Thea to understand but loud enough to realize they were words - coming out of its forked tongue. The white snake disappeared again among the black basalt, but two others replaced it and now that Thea had been able to identify them, she was no longer able to unveil them... Snakes of various colors and sizes glided through the water, lurking, hidden, coiled on stones and animal carcasses, hissing and fast.

"Be careful." The young witch warned, motioning to where a smaller snake wrapped itself around the neck of a very dead goat on the spot, seeming to want to get inside its empty eye. "The swamp is full of snakes."