CARPE NOCTEM, jon snow

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀thirty five

thirty-five. in my restless dreams, i see that place

loc. icemark, the north. 299AC

⠀⠀⠀CARSEN'S DREAMS WERE RESTLESS that night.

⠀⠀⠀It had been only two sunsets since they'd climbed the Wall, and they now traipsed over fields, grass brittle with frozen dew and fingers of whispering mist sliding about their ankles under a sky the dull blue of a pigeon's down. The days were peaceful. The nights, Carsen dreaded.

⠀⠀⠀Tonight her sleep took her back to the Summervale. Home. The word tasted odd on her consciousness, a word that had long since lost any meaning to her. In her dreams she saw waist-high threads of blushgrass, glass rivers shining like diamonds in a golden sun, fig trees, and her home, made of sand-coloured brick. Different pictures slid through her memory. A giant hall, made of glass and white quartz and chased with gold. A statue, made of gold, depicting a woman—two women, two gods, fused to each other in metallic amalgam—a stream of water spilling from their conjoined, twisted mouths, spilling upon the sparkling floor.

⠀⠀⠀Blood in the water. A hand pale as death grasping onto the lip of one of the statues from the inside, trying to pull herself out of the gods' cold, metal throat.

⠀⠀⠀Carsen woke as if scalded to the first dull rays of dawn.

⠀⠀⠀Her cheeks were wet. She touched them, wiped the tears from them and stood quietly. Ygritte and Jon lay slumbering just three feet to her left; the redhead was slack-jawed, drooling slightly into the snow. Jon curled into himself beside her, looking his young years when he slept, lashes flickering as he dreamed. Carsen prayed they were good dreams.

⠀⠀⠀Carsen tiptoed through the mass of sleeping free folk, when a searing sound reached her ears. She turned, eyes straining in the faint light, and a flash of copper caught her eye. Tormund sat against a rock, sharpening his spearhead with a whetstone. Carsen opted not to pay him a visit. He seemed tolerant enough of her, and even amused her at times, but something about him made her wary. Instead, she journeyed to the edge of the shallow cliff they resided on, and sat. Her legs dangled into a misty oblivion as she let the wind, cold and biting, whip her hair back.

⠀⠀⠀The cold wasn't near so much as they travelled further south. Crossing the wall seemed to have snapped some sort of barrier. The snowfalls came only at night, the sun shone brighter, the sky was bluer. An uneasiness had settled in Carsen, though, as they travelled further south.

⠀⠀⠀She swallowed back her disquiet. The sky was lightening, day fast approaching. Behind her, some of the wildlings began to stir.