CARPE NOCTEM, jon snow

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀forty four

forty-four. ruins

loc. castle black, the wall. 300AC

The smell of smoke clung to Carsen's clothes long after leaving Craster's Keep behind.

It had been a flurry of movement back to Castle Black—several of the men had injuries that needed tending, and cleaning the wounds with the clean snow had only served as a temporary solution. It was a quick walk back to the crop of dark trees they'd left the horses in, but it would take another few hours with no stops to complete the journey.

When Carsen looked over her shoulder, she saw spots of blood pockmarking the snowy trail they'd left behind.

Jon rode slightly ahead, Ghost at the heels of his horse. Every so often the direwolf turned on its tail and wandered over to Carsen, peered at her as though she were a hunk of meat it was contemplating taking a bite out of, before sniffing and returning to its master. The first few times, Carsen had stiffened, wondering whether she was about to be unseated from her horse by Ghost's teeth on her ankle, but he seemed to have lowered his hackles a little around her.

The journey back was long and cold; by the time the Wall began to push through the ghostly horizon, dawn had begun to break. Carsen was fighting off fatigue only by occasionally digging her nails into the meat of her thigh—but it was the soaring blasts of the horn that really helped keep her awake. Two long, melodic wails for rangers returning. As they approached the portcullis, they unhorsed; Jon took the opportunity to wander over.

"Ghost is growing to like you," he murmured to her. He was tired, too; Carsen could see it in the shadows beneath his steely eyes, the wan tinge to his smile.

"Either that, or he's finally decided he's big enough to eat me." Carsen stroked the mane of Nightwing, feeling the horse quiver through the leather of her glove. "You have such a strange connection to that beast."

"We're of the north," he replied, eyes lingering on the direwolf as the portcullis clanked loudly and started to open. "We will always find each other. Even when we got separated, I saw him in my dreams."

Carsen's eyebrows quirked. "In your dreams?"

"Ah—it's nothing." His expression grew distant, dreamlike. "I see all the wolves. The ones left alive, I mean. Or, that's not quite right. I feel them. I don't know where they are, but I know they're out there."

The wolves, or your family? Carsen knew that three of Jon's brothers were dead, an elder and two younger. One of his sisters had vanished with the beheading of his father in the capital, and the other was still confined there, a chained wolf.

"Perhaps you'll see them again someday," was all she chose to say. By the way his brow knit together, she thought he understood. Then again, she shouldn't have been surprised. Jon had always known how to see straight through her.