𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑑, ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑠 𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚.
or, a serpent sheds her skin for a boy whose wolf pelt fits him not.
⠀⠀⠀VALYRIANS 17.05.2017
⠀⠀⠀JON SNOW/FEMALE OC
⠀⠀⠀BOOK & SHOW CANON
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loc. castle black, the wall. 298AC
⠀⠀⠀The Night's Watch was to ride North.
⠀⠀⠀The news was announced when Carsen, Sam, Jon, Pyp and Grenn were breaking their fast on bread, beetroot and ale, a meal no more appealing now than it had been when Carsen had first arrived. Commander Mormont had stood up from his place at the high table and called for the attention of all.
⠀⠀⠀"Brothers," he said solemnly. "As some of you know, two nights ago I was attacked." Carsen frowned and sat up a little straighter. "I was attacked," Mormont continued, "by Othor." Carsen felt her mouth go slack, heard the mutters that arose like fog hum in her ears. "I was attacked by a dead man. A man whose corpse I had seen, blue and lifeless, mere hours before. This thing rose from the land of where the dead dwell and came for me with cold, hungry hands. This was not the man I had known; this was a monster wearing his skin. This was a white walker."
⠀⠀⠀Carsen swallowed; it felt painful. She had heard the stories of white walkers as everybody had—bone-men that rode dead horses and pale spiders large as hounds into the blizzards; ice dripped from their noses and chins, and their eyes were blue, blue as sapphires, blue as cold stars that burned in the sky for eternity. Carsen shivered suddenly, recalling those open, glassy eyes of when she had found Othor and Jafer Flowers.
⠀⠀⠀"So tonight," Mormont pressed on, cutting off the panicked whispers effectively, "we ride North. We make for Craster's Keep, we find our missing Rangers, we return these dead men back to their graves, because we are men of the Night's Watch and we bend the knee for nothing!" He thrust his mug of ale into the air, and Carsen followed, watching as a sea of tankards were plunged upward; ale tipped over the rim and spattered the floor, but it didn't matter, because perhaps they would never see this floor again. When Carsen drank, she fancied all her troubles going down with the ale.
⠀⠀⠀She drained the mug in one.
⚘ ⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀Something was wrong.
⠀⠀⠀They'd been riding for a few hours. The pale day sky was darkening, and now in the gloaming, the moon hung bright and silver, and a dense mist had rolled over their feet and horses' hooves. As they moved further into the trees, tall and thick and dark, the cold northern winds had lessened, and the snow began to thin, giving way to frozen blades of grass in a few places.
Carsen had started the journey feeling perfectly fine, if a little tired and lightheaded from a mug too many of ale the night before. Now, however, her head was pounding fit to burst, her mouth dry, and, most worryingly of all, beneath her furs a sweat had started to collect on her skin. It was cold enough out here that the lake they had passed not a half-hour earlier was completely frozen over, but Carsen was beginning to feel unbearably, suffocatingly hot.
Gods, she was burning. It felt like she were burning alive.
The pale light against the snow seemed suddenly lightning-bright, and Carsen shut her eyes reflexively. The heat in her skin rose as though stricken, arching from an uncomfortable buzz to a shrieking torrent of fire, sweeping over her flesh, boiling the blood in her veins, and she bit so hard on her lip to stop herself crying out that blood ran warm into her mouth, even as frightened tears gathered in her eyes. What the fuck was happening to her?
Her horse had stopped. Her head was pounding, like footsteps, like the great brass bells of the Summervale, drowning out any other noise. Was somebody calling her name? Her eyes were shut tight. She couldn't feel the horse between her legs.
Out from the darkness of her lidded eyes, she saw blood.
Blood, spilled across soft fertile soil, seeping in and salting it. She saw an amalgamation of twisted limbs wrapped around each other, and twin eyes staring down at her with divine hatred, mingled hands reaching out to drag her back. Back, back to that cavernous darkness, to that yawning maw of the temple. She saw glitter and diamond and marble, the sunlight that spilled over the white floor, the Goddess that sneered and the one that smiled. But both welcoming her to death.
Come home, Ceria Sargen. What awaits you on this land? This continent of salt and iron? Only misery. Only cold. Only blood.
She saw flame and roiling black oceans, tasted seasalt and smoke; she saw a man with a wolf's head, jaw pried open and eyes stuck wide, deep and dark, with a heart in its mouth. She saw a body curled up on the snowy floor, face hidden by languid brown locks.
Carsen's eyes were flung open against her will, and she realised tears were running hot down her cheeks, that her horse was bucking madly, eyes rolling, kicking at the ground and wailing, that a figure in black was calling her name, but he swam before her eyes.
⠀⠀⠀Perhaps she would have screamed, but she felt rooted to the spot.
⠀⠀⠀She fell.
⠀⠀⠀She fell straight into the snow blanketing the earthy ground, but she barely noticed the cold because she was so unbelievably rigid with heat, and her skin was hot coals and her hair red-hot metal, and couldn't they see?
⠀⠀⠀The heat inside her reared like a snake, as though it were taking shape.
⠀⠀⠀It yanked her up into a sitting position—those black stars were back, crowding her vision again. She barely noticed people slowing their horses when they realised what had happened. Their shouts of her false name were even less real, vague whispers of somebody she was not.
⠀⠀⠀When she opened her mouth, all that came out was ice.
⠀⠀⠀It projectiled from her lips; a high, glittering arc of diamond-bright shards of ice and wisps of snow. It rolled over her feet, and she gagged on the coldness, but the tears froze in her eyes as the last of the ice left her.
⠀⠀⠀And now, she was empty.
⠀⠀⠀Those black stars obscured her vision, but she was aware of falling - she was falling so far into the void with no way of knowing where she was heading. She was aware of feet hitting the ground beside her, aware of her body thudding limply against the cushion of snow before her senses left her.
⠀⠀⠀Jon ran toward her.
⠀⠀⠀He grabbed her face in his hands, his large hands that felt callused against the skin of her face. It was blindingly hot, wet with tears and swear, but her lips were blue.
⠀⠀⠀His brothers watched, some still on horseback, some on foot and looking terrified but not daring to come any closer. Jon's eyes were alight with such an urgency and panic as they had ever seen as he opened his mouth and delivered that one sentence that hung over them like a shroud, that echoed in the ears of the dead and newborn babes alike, that brought forth the men set into shadows as that one sentence cast them into the terrible, bitterly truthful light;
