CARPE NOCTEM, jon snow

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀thirty one

thirty-one. the archer

loc. mance rayder's camp, the frostfangs. 300AC

⠀⠀⠀THE BOW FELT alien in Carsen's hands.

⠀⠀⠀She had quickly figured out that it was a thousand miles away from a sword. With a blade, there were a dozen different ways to wield, to stab, to kill. With a bow, it was very simple; point, aim, shoot.

⠀⠀⠀"Relax your bow arm," Ygritte commented from behind her. Carsen did, and the arrow in the notch quivered. "Let go." As she snapped her fingers from the string, the arrow flew, sticking firmly into the bark of some thick, dark tree Carsen had no name for.

⠀⠀⠀The solid stick would have pleased her, if she hadn't been aiming for the pale-barked birch seven feet to the left of it.

⠀⠀⠀Carsen sighed; her frustration left her lips in a cloud of milk-white mist in the frigid evening air. The forest was white with a winter that seemed to have lingered for years - even the very sun, tucked behind clay-coloured clouds, looked sliver as it sunk deeper into the rolls of the horizon, casting a sunset unseen by the dense blanket of clouds.

⠀⠀⠀Carsen dropped the bow into the snow and flexed her aching fingers. "My hands are cramping up now," she complained, all too aware that she sounded like a whiny child.

⠀⠀⠀Ygritte stifled a snigger. "We should 'ead back to camp anyhow. And you should stick to swords, Carsen Sage." A flutter of one of Ygritte's eyelids made Carsen drop her gaze, bending to retrieve the fallen bow.

⠀⠀⠀A rigidity spread through her entire body when she heard the twigs snap, not thirty feet away.

⠀⠀⠀She righted herself sharply, her eyes sweeping the full circle of the canopy, finding only white and bare trees and frost wherever she looked - and then Ygritte's hand closed over her wrist. Carsen jumped violently, shaking the vicing fingers from her skin and stumbling a few steps away. Ygritte blinked at her, her pale brows drawing together in brief confusion, but all she said was, "get down."

⠀⠀⠀They crouched down together; Carsen glanced questioningly at Ygritte, but the wildling only pressed a finger to her lips and drew an arrow. She removed it from it's leather sheath with the silence as if they were made of shadow, mist sliding against mist. Ygritte nodded, and Carsen followed the direction. Half-hidden by pale brown trees, grazing through layers of snow to get to frost-brittled grass was a deer.

⠀⠀⠀Carsen blinked, watching the animal with an odd fascination, before a humming sound yanked her attention back to Ygritte. Beside her, the wildling was drawing an arrow. The urge seized Carsen suddenly, to tell her to stop, to put it down, but the arrow flew, burying itself in the deer's eye socket. The animal fell into the snow, the halo of blood bubbling sluggishly from it's marred eye turning it pink. Ygritte grinned, then caught sight of Carsen's face.