CARPE NOCTEM, jon snow

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀thirteen

thirteen. the others

loc. the haunted forest, beyond the wall. 298AC.

⠀⠀⠀Carsen had never seen eyes so blue.

⠀⠀⠀Over the last few days, Carsen had seen the eyes of a dead man far more than she would've liked - but Rogon's irises were a pallid, ghosted hue of their old olive green, like moss bleached and curdled in the sun. These eyes were the shade of sapphires, starkly bright against the grey-white snow. The blue had spread across their entire eye, pupils and irises and whites, and were sprinkled with stars the dead men could not see.

⠀⠀⠀Carsen swallowed; it was not a particularly gruesome sight. The skin was the hue of marble, the lips painfully blue, but other than that the bodies were unblemished. Carsen frowned suddenly. They seemed almost far too unblemished. Her eyes lingered on the deep wounds in their stomachs, then at the pure snow surrounding them, untouched by gore. Their flesh was also unravaged by animals - no hungry foxes or birds or wolves had taken nips at the plentiful feast of flesh before them.

⠀⠀⠀It was far too serene. Slowly, Carsen knelt down and ran a single finger through the snow beside the bodies - it created a deep cavern in the white, but even as she dug with her fingers, no red appeared. This snow was not fresh.

⠀⠀⠀She looked up at Sam - intelligent, well-red Sam, hoping he would get the message, but the boy was too busy trembling and retching to be bothered with the lack of gore. Carsen wondered why she wasn't - and as if in answer, Rogon appeared. He lay next to the two bodies on the ground, looking exactly alike except bleeding, staining the snow as wine may stain crushed ice. Carsen swallowed back the nausea rearing in her.

⠀⠀⠀"What's the sparrow doing?"

⠀⠀⠀"Digging for buried treasure, eh?"

⠀⠀⠀Shutting her eyes briefly, Carsen stood up and wiped her palms on the wool of her trousers. She noticed, for the brief time she allowed herself to look, that Jon was examining the frozen corpses with odd fascination. She also noticed the small, yellowing bruise on his right cheek, where her hand had come to blows a few nights before, and felt a twist of guilt like a shard of glass in her gut.

⠀⠀⠀They loaded the bodies with difficulty and began the weary journey back to Castle Black. Carsen's shoulders ached with the effort of hefting the heavy, well-built men through the woods, and the sound of the Horn was sweet music to her ears as the group reached the edge of the woods.

⠀⠀⠀They grouped in the courtyard. Carsen helped build a fire, and for a while, that was the only noise - the crackling and spitting of flames as everyone stared down at the two corpses.