Jon Snow (jon_snow) wrote in antecedents, @ 2010-09-10 00:34:00 |
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The two men and the direwolf had set out on the road again the night following their stay at the cabin. In the end, Jon had decided they should head towards the nearby mountain range. It would be at least a three or four day walk, and they could find another path to take along the way, but it was a start. Going this way, they didn't have to travel through much forest, which meant they could keep a better eye on their surroundings in the meantime, to see if there were any signs indicating nearby towns, or main roads they hadn't seen before.
The other downside to cutting through the forest was the risk of another encounter with those beasts they'd run into their first night here. They'd have plenty more shadows to hide in, if they'd gone that way. Their second night, Jon told the older man a little what those mountain lions had reminded him of: Others. Others were the dead come to life, not just fallen men but animals too. They had that same kind of super natural endurance, a simple swing of the sword not enough to bring them down. Beyond the Wall there were great wooly mammoths that the wildlings rode, and to fight one of those returned from the grave would take twice as many men to bring it down as it would alive. He admitted, though, that a lot of what he knew about them was from stories he'd heard as a kid. A long time ago, they'd been a terrible threat to the world, but that's why there was the Night's Watch and the Wall. They fought the Others. In recent years, it was only wildlings they had to worry about, and the most one typically heard of them was from a parent trying to put a fright into a uncooperative child. Don't stay out past dark, the Others will get you.
Jon recalled when Old Nan would say that to him and his siblings, how Sansa would hide behind Robb in a fright, saying that she didn't have anything to be afraid of her, her brother would keep her safe. She'd always go to Robb, not Jon, when she said things like that. Jon would of had Arya, but Arya proclaimed she'd fight them on her own, she wasn't a little sissy who needed anyone else to fight for her, purposely baiting Sansa in that way. Then the passive-aggressive and not-so-passive-aggressive insults would start flying. "Maybe I'll join the Night's Watch when I get older, and I'll kill so many of them, they won't even need the Wall anymore." "You're a girl, girls can't join. But they probably wouldn't even notice you were one, if you didn't tell them."
Obviously, the story he told John must of sounded as fictional as the way Old Nan described it. "It's not," Jon had said, "I've seen one myself." No one could tell him he'd made it up: his scarred hand was the proof. But he kept that part to himself. "Anyway... it must be nice to live somewhere you don't have to worry about wildlings and Others," he'd said, changing the subject. He wanted to hear more about where it was John came from, even as it became difficult to believe they were even from the same world. He still hadn't said anything about the year he'd given him, because while he could believe in dead men walking the earth, time travel was a bit beyond him. He already knew he couldn't get his head around what was going on his own, so he'd decided to simply get as much out of this experience as he could while it lasted, not knowing if the next time he went to sleep, he'd wake up back in his tent on Skirling Pass, and everyone would tell him he'd dreamed the whole thing up.
Between Ghost and Jon, they had no issue finding food to eat, and the weather, despite a small chill, was in favor of their journey. His clothes were even a bit warm for this kind of weather, meant for freezing snow. In terms of energy, his seemed endless, but that was only because he was so focused on discovering where it was, exactly, that they were. So it would be the other man who'd have to suggest a rest for the night, or Jon probably would of had them walking all the way through it. It was discipline he'd learned from the Old Bear, but he'd found something with John that had helped undo just a small bit of that discipline. When they stopped the third night, it wasn't trading stories that passed the time, but the kind of intimacy they'd shared back at the cabin. Jon's attitude belied his age in almost all aspects, but when it came to this, it was evident he was a teenager. The hour they fell asleep was much later that night.
On the fourth day, much sunnier than the ones before, they were crossing over a very shallow but wide stream on foot. They were almost at the foot of the mountain now, and soon they'd have to decide whether to climb it or go around. But to reach the stretch of grass in front of it, they had to get past this river first. "Hold on a second," Jon said to the other man, "Let me see how deep it is there, we might have to find another way." He walked on ahead just with Ghost then, to where the water turned a deeper blue, not as shallow as the rest.
No sooner had Jon assessed that they would need to find an alternate route, that there came the cry of an animal like nothing he'd heard before. Along with that, he heard John say something too, yet it happened so quickly, all Jon had time to do was turn around to face the direction he thought it had come from. Then, a flash of black and scarlet, a sharp shock of pain, and he was knocked onto his back in surprise, the water splashing up around him as he landed in the shallows.
What had that been--someone's hawk? Or another creature turned as aggressive as the lions they'd fought? For a brief second the panicked thought it blinded me ran through his head, half of his world gone dark. But he realized quickly enough that was just because there was blood running down from the cut in a stream over his eye. Pulling his hand back that he'd used to touch the wound, he could see it had drawn a lot of blood, but when John quickly came over to him and asked how he was, he said, "Fine, I'm fine-- What was that?"
After spending a night on the mountain side in a small cave (more like an alcove) that kept out the cold, Daenerys and Stephan continued on. When they woke up, they found the weather had taken a turn for the better, and Dany offered to return his coat to him now that it was no longer needed. She watched him fumble for another reason to let her keep it for now, to the point she couldn't bring herself to refuse him and have him feel the need to keep an awkward amount of distance between them. "On second thought, there is a bit of a breeze out today. I think I will keep it until we get to the base of the mountain, if you don't mind." She added that last part purposely to please him, smiling politely when 'of course he didn't'.
That day, her dragons flew further from her than they did the one before, but she knew that was because they needed to hunt. At sea, fish had been easy for them to catch and were in endless supply, so they rarely had to venture beyond her line of sight. Now, though, they'd probably find little nearby that would be out in the open, maybe a snake or a mouse. They were big enough now to have larger appetites than that, and she thought little of it when Drogon was the first to disappear behind some trees down below. If she missed them in those hours they left her, she found enjoyment instead with Stephan's little dog, Gustav. He really was too cute, and she couldn't contain a bit of laughter when she watched him start running after some noise he'd heard, probably just a bird taking flight, with those tiny legs on such a long body.
She asked Stephan more about himself, and she answered his questions in turn if he had ones for her, but she didn't talk about herself too much beyond that. What it was she'd been doing before she came here exactly, what she would do after she found the way back, short of returning to her khalasar. She'd picked up enough on what it was like where he was from to know that telling him she intended to purchase fighters to take to war wouldn't be something he could easily digest. Anyway, she enjoyed having someone to talk to about things other than her upcoming trials, though she never would allow herself to forget them.
Rhaegal and Viserion heard Drogon's cry at the same time Daenerys and Stephan did, faint but impossible to miss. "He's found something," she said, at least knowing the difference between the sounds her dragons made when they were hunting or playing, versus when they were stressed or in danger. As expected, the other two dragons started to head towards where it had come from, and it happened that was the same way Dany and Stephan were going, who'd hit flat ground again about half an hour ago.
What they came upon when they emerged from the trees by the water bank wasn't the sight Daenerys expected to find. Rather than Drogon descending upon the animal that would be his lunch, it was a man who he struck; from afar, Dany feared he could of landed a grievous blow. Instantly, she stepped into the stream and hurried towards the one he had attacked, getting there only a few moments after the blond did. "Are you all right?" she asked the young man, a question he'd be hearing for the second time now. When he raised his head, she saw how badly he was bleeding. "Forgive me-- I never thought he would--" They were her responsibility, and she was angered to find that one of them had done something she'd tried to teach them was bad. It was one thing when they tried to intimidate people who got too close, but another entirely when they started to attack them without her command.
"It happened so quickly, I can't really feel it," Jon half-lied. It took him a few seconds to find his words, so surprised was he by the look of this girl who'd come from nowhere. There were plenty of things for him to think about the current situation, but something in particular struck him then. She's young, but her hair is white -- just like Maester Aemon's portrait... He was outright staring at her now.
Dany shook her head, not accepting that for an answer. "Is your eye all right?" It looked like Drogon's claws had gotten him pretty bad. The dragon in question had since flown on, reconsidering it's choice when a second man had shown up, but Rhaegal and Viserion were still in plain sight, drawn to see what the smell of blood was about.