CARPE NOCTEM, jon snow

forty one

forty-one. the training yard

loc. castle black, the wall. 300AC

SHE WALKED THROUGH a field of fire, each step sending ash into the grey air.

         Pillars of flame rose red and furious around her, beneath her, and she breathed in ash and smoke. She spun and spun, eyes straining for a way out, but the fire was thick, and the smoke thicker still; not even a sky was visible through the grey billows, a grey the colour of Jon's eyes, dry and choking. She was burning alive, her skin bubbling like melted wax, running in cream-coloured streams down her bones, but when she opened her mouth to scream, she found her throat blocked with something thick and wriggling, something alive.

         She retched, falling to her knees in the dirt, and as her stomach turned and bile rose from her chest, out from her mouth came pouring a great black snake, writhing and shrieking, hitting the floor with a thud. It shuddered in the heat, recoiling, wailing, and wrapped itself around her leg, tight as a vice. Stupid snake, could it not see that she was melting? It looked up at her with it's ugly oval head and blinked at her with eyes green as moss, green as a lover's laughing emerald.

           The pillars of flame shifted, and through the gaps Carsen glimpsed a figure - a woman, it must be, for she wore a dress red as sin, a bloody whirlpool dancing with the flames, her hair a fiery waterfall down her back, but Carsen couldn't see her face. She tried to shout, to tell her to leave this hell, but the woman drank the flames with her skin, her body shuddering in delight, and Carsen watched in horror as the woman's shadow, long and black, reached out with smoking hands for Carsen's throat.

          She shrieked, shutting her eyes tight and turning away, but as soon as her eyelids shut the flames changed. They froze where they stood, great pillars of fire made ice, and snow began to fall from the thick smoke, settling over the ground. Through the columns of ice, glittering like white glass, she saw another figure, much smaller than the woman; she was tiny, lithe, short, with dark hair down to her shoulders, but when she turned around, her face was a blank canvas of pale skin, sewing needles stuck in the flesh where her eyes would have been. A cat curled around her shoulder, thin and dust-coloured, and in her hair, peeking out from the onyx strands, tiny blue flowers twined themselves, filling the air with sweetness.

          Carsen felt the breath stick in her throat, but as she opened her mouth to call out, the ground began to tremble. She looked down sharply; the snake twined around her calf hisses loudly as the dry earth began to crack beneath the snow and, from the dark gaps, pushing through the cold white blanket came a pink flower, blotched with purple, shining stark against the silver. Carsen stared, but even as she reached out to it, more followed, sprouting up left and right, more and more until they covered the snow, and when they ran out of ground to fill they clambered up her skin, up her legs, smothering her snake, and when she tried to scream she choked. Her coughing sent tiny pink petals out of her mouth, and the cerialises reached for her with new hands, hungry hands, hands cold as death...