The Last Flames

The flames crept up through the wood pyre beneath her, licking at her frozen skin. Soon, her fur wrapped body was engulfed in fire. 

 This is what she wanted - to be burned after death. Jon had to honor her request. As badly as he wanted to keep her in his arms, desperately pleading to the old gods and the new to bring her back - he knew she wouldn't come. She wouldn't open her thoughtful eyes and look up at him, or wrap her arms around his neck. She was gone. Her heart had been ripped by an arrow, and hadn't beat for days. He put it off, only because this made it so real. The flames first singed the red hair it had kissed at her birth.

 After she had been surrounded, unable to see her dead face - he looked at the first woman he had ever loved, with both his body and heart, one last time before turning to go back to Castle Black. The flames peeled back her fair and freckled skin, allowing her young skeleton to see the light. The stench of burning flesh meant nothing to the creatures of the woods, but it meant something to the walkers. They couldn't take her now. She would never be theirs, just like Jon had wanted. Like she had wanted.

 Her body may be gone, consumed by fire, but her soul wouldn't travel far. Her spirit followed the path of the smoke, intertwining itself with the branches of the forest trees. She now watching over the land of her people, carpeted with snow. He felt her presence everywhere beyond the wall, especially when he was with her tribe. Her family. Occasionally, though, a strange wind would tug at Jon's hair as he rode with the Free Folk, bothersome but soothing. 

"Strike hard and true - or I'll come back and haunt ye."She had told him once - his heart smiled each time his hair was teased by the wind, because he knew it was her.