(THINKING OF SNOW 2)
"Now that we are older, I remember you.
Reaching out to show me all the things that I must do.
Now that we are older, I remember youth.
Now that were are close to death and
close to finding truth,
we might fall."
Continuing with...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
CYNTHIA THOUGHT BACK TO THAT DAY, the ride in the Wolfswood as her new, much younger horse trotted carefully alongside Jon's, without threatening the similar antics that occurred last time she rode within these trees. She thought back to those times, now, with a stinging nostalgia: Robb and Livia; Sansa, Alec and Theon; Ned, Caterlyn and her parents; the twins, Bran, Rickon and Arya; Jon and her. All of them had roamed free and wild among the vast landscape of the North, which had belonged to the Starks back then; they'd screamed at the bitterness of the rain as it poured from the sky, dark clouds having gone unnoticed until the thunder boomed so loud they felt it shake the earth beneath their feet. The direwolfs had barrelled around, carefree and excitable, much like the children while the girls had fretted over their dresses, and Cynthia bonded with Robb and her brother. And Jon.
Jon had caught her in his arms when her horse had bolted, been there when she had least expected it and saved her a fall she knew would have hurt had he not been there. She'd fallen in love with him then, or had at least become more aware of how far she had already fallen for the bastard of Winterfell; only then, when wrapped in his careful embrace, did she realise how much she adored him. An adoration that had not died in a very long time.
That ride through the Wolfswood had been years ago now. Most of the people to have ventured out on that day were dead. Robb, Ned and Catelyn, and Rickon. All gone. Jon, Arya, Bran and Sansa were all that remained now of a once magnificent house. One that Cynthia had, for a long time, believed her own would be unified with. But things, as her mother would say, do not always end in the way we would expect. And so now, on a day stained with thin clouds and balls of rolling fog, Jon and Cynthia ventured into the vast landscape once more, without their families behind them. They rode across the stretches of moorland and through the valleys of the wilderness, finding themselves back beneath the canopy of the woods before they'd realised how long they had been gone for.
"Cyn..." Jon began, startling Cynthia with his voice after the calm silence, which had been intermittent between small talk and questions asked about the lives they had led while apart. Neither of them had any great amount of eagerness to know what they had done without each other, and so the conversation seemed to revolve at a safe distance from subjects related to their love lives, or lack there of. Cynthia had no intention of hearing about the girls Jon may or may not have bedded or loved in her absence, and likewise she dared not mention her late husband, hoping that Jon would not want to hear of it, either.
"Yes, your Grace." Cynthia rose an eyebrow, not thinking the topic would be all that serious. But when she looked at him, his expression seemed tenser than before.
She heard Jon retrieve a heavy breath before replying. "I need to talk to you about something."
She gulped back the icy chill of the Northern air and tried not to wince at the words Jon had said, and the tone carrying them with a seriousness she hadn't heard from him in a while. "Alright." She tried for a smile, doing her best to seem reassuring in response to his apprehension, but she felt her fists ball tighter around the reigns of her horse. Nobody had every said I need to talk to you about something, in a way as Jon had just done, when the something was anything to look forward to hearing.
