WE MIGHT FALL (J.SNOW 2)

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE SUN HAD BARELY KISSED THE HORIZON by the time the two fair-haired Iris girls had set off, with not even Alec knowing of their whereabouts.  Livia had said, in her older wisdom, that ignorance would be better when it came to dealing with their mother later that day - a point which, despite wishing to confide in her brother, Cynthia had to agree with. If he didn't know, Frea could not do anything to get it out of him. The two sisters were in this together; just the pair of them. And it was terrifying. 

The biggest obstacle to overcome while facing the North's environment in its raw, unrefined state was that Livia really hated the North - perhaps because, as a lady, she had grown up predominantly on the tales of princesses of the South, with their fine dresses and sunshine, no mud or boots in sight. Cynthia, on the other hand, grew up with the boys - she went out hunting, running, scrambling through the wilderness on a daily basis, and faced the elements as savagely as one could. Cynthia was, in the grand scheme of things, a true Northerner. Livia was not. However, she was embracing it more than Cynthia thought she would, and had hardly complained at all since leaving Stillwater in their wake. 

But The Wall was a great distance from the comfortable boarder on which the Iris family lived, and several treacherous days of harsh weather and painful riding lay ahead of them, through which Cynthia doubted Livia could maintain the silence. 

"Do you believe what Alyssa said?" Cynthia said that afternoon. If the two girls spoke while on their journey, it was more as observations of their surroundings than of any important topics that were worth upholding a conversation about; this being the first discussion to not revolve around the weather or the exhaustion of the horses on which the girls rode. 

"Which part?" Livia responded with a slight delay, as though regaining her ability to talk which had been switched off during the lapses in conversation. Although, the older of the two Iris girls was smart, and it soon became clear that the question which she immediately posed was not one she needed to ask: "You mean about him taking a wilding lover?"

Cynthia shuffled her gloved hands on the reins of her black stallion, the squelching of the material becoming audible above the quiet breeze and trodding of the horses' hooves underfoot. "Would he do such a thing? Break his oath? To the Watch." 

"To you." Livia replied, which did no serve as an answer to Cynthia's question, but did well in making the younger of the pair feel worse about Jon's promiscuity.  "Would it change anything? If you knew, for certain, that he had?"

"Maybe." Cynthia sighed. Yes, was what she had wanted to say, but when it came to the way that she felt about Jon, it hardly mattered who he slept with in her absence. "Would it have mattered for you? If what happened..." She paused to glance at her sister, whose expression hadn't faltered from a frozen frown, "hadn't happen. If the tables had turned, would it have mattered to you?" 

"Everything matters," Livia said, very quietly, and the wind swept past them in a wild flurry.

Everything did matter, and everything had changed. Jon had been honourable when Cynthia had met him, but he had also been younger, not as wise to the world as he is no doubt now; perhaps being at the Wall had changed all of that, put things into perspective. It certainly had for Cynthia. When Robb died, everything became fragile. Suddenly life, everything, mattered so much more than it did before. Things can be lost so easily when you aren't paying attention. 

"Alyssa wouldn't lie." Cynthia stated. It was more of a general statement than anything worth bringing into the conversation, but she had to say it to believe it. Her siblings had grown up, but they had grown up knowing the importance of the sibling bond - even if Alyssa lied to their parents, which all of the children did, she would not have lied to Cynthia. 

"Alyssa can be swayed though." Livia's voice piped up again. "Asher once tricked her into believing the sky in Meereen was purple. She only learnt that he had been lying to her last Spring." 

"You think she was relaying what she had been told?" Cynthia could see that being likely, Alyssa was still young, impressionable, and even if Jon had left the Wall, there was no way of those back at Castle Black knowing the truth of what he was doing - not really. 

"I'm saying there is no use believing rumours. Not on something as important as this is." 

The ride took just under a week - between stopping in taverns and towns on the way, steering clear of the King's Road, which had been Cynthia's idea for no reason beyond that it would likely be the place attracting the most trouble, and avoiding the rain, which came in dense showers and lasted for hours on end. If they had gone out in it, Cynthia had said, the horses would never have made it more than a couple of feet before their feet would get swept out from underneath them. But after 4 and a half days of trekking across the Northern Kingdom, a sign of snow began to fall on the travelling pair, and the Wall was but an hour away. 

"Remind me," Cynthia spoke, her voice shaking as she exhaled a cloud of mist. "Why did we do this?" 

"You're nervous." Livia almost chuckled, her voice as comforting as that of a mother, not theirs of course because Frea Iris did not understand 'comforting' nor would she if it hit her in the face, but Livia's tone sounded like what Cynthia envisioned a proper mother should sound like. 

"Would you think less of me if I said yes?" Cynthia had to admit, now that the reality of her actions had set in, and she realised how close she was to where Jon could be, everything was beginning to feel a lot more daunting. "What if he isn't happy to see me?" 

"If you think like that, all you will do is scare yourself into believing you apprehensions." Livia's smile was as reassuring as her words, though they did little in the way of preventing Cynthia's mind from conjuring a snowstorm of all the things that could go wrong in a matter of minutes. "Besides, it is too late now to turn back; we are here." 

And she was right. Upon looking up, Cynthia came to find that a creaking, shadowed structure had been glaring at her from the foggy distance and was now close enough to hear the men shouting from the top of it. They had reached Castle Black.