fight like gods. asoiaf

TWENTY SIX/ TWENTY SEVEN

XXVI
SANSA
"dreams of ice"
⚜️

When Sansa dreamed, she dreamt of Lady.

The softness of her white and grey fur. The deepness of her golden eyes. The high-pitched yelps she would give when they would play with Sansa's siblings and their direwolves. The Stark children would never play like that again, so carelessly and happily with all of their wolves. Lady would never play again. Sansa would never play again.

When she dreamt, Sansa saw her direwolf beneath the dining tables in Winterfell's large hall. Her tail thumped against the floor, loud and pleading, her whine silent yet heard in her mistress' mind. The slip of meat that fell to the floor was dropped from a precise hand, the owner of which laughed at something her brother said, feigning it so as to not draw attention.  

Sansa missed these such nights with just her family. It was a more intimate setting for once in comparison to the busy evenings spent with the people of the castle and the town, with one such stranger sitting at the family's high table. Father had always said that it was wise to sit council with the people of Winterfell, that it was the right way to govern, but Sansa had seen nought of such grace within the crown's capital.

Her mother sat beside her father, her hair plaited in a northern style. She was wearing Sansa's favourite dress of hers- a beautiful, grey dress decorated with a bodice of warm blue. Sansa had embroidered on it herself, gathering many compliments from all the women who had admired their Lady Stark's dress. 

How she missed her mother. Lady Catelyn was smiling, brushing the hair from little Rickon's face. She missed her brothers too. Poor Bran, who had fallen and finally awoken. Robb who had teased her most about Prince Joffrey, but had given her the biggest of hugs as the northern party had departed for the south. She even thought of Jon, who was sitting at their high table this time, with the intimacy of it all. He would be in the far north now, dressed all in the black of the Night's Watch, just like Uncle Benjen. 

Lady's bark left Sansa hushing her, but when she looked down beneath the table, her direwolf was gone, and when she glanced up again, she was no longer within the warm halls of Winterfell with all of her family. Sansa sat against a tree, her body shivering from the rot of cold and wetness. Lady was nowhere to be seen, but oddly, Sansa could smell her. 

She looked around her, feeling as if it was all too real to be a dream. It did not look like Winterfell, in fact, it did not look like the North at all. The trees were different, covered with the colourful bloom of dragonsbreath, a deep red, rather than the lush greens of the moss of the north. There were no snowdrops, and the floor not mangled by the roots of trees was covered in a soft blanket of long grass. She felt so alone.

It was as if she was looking through another pair of eyes, seeing the dew that sparkled beneath the cool, low sun and the sway of the leaves against the quick breeze, just as vividly as she smelled the freshness of the air, the briskness of sea salt lingering behind the strong scent of pine and clover. 

Sansa stepped forward, the movement feeling all wrong against her bones. There was a noise to the east, a sharp sound of something rushing through thick bushes, and suddenly the sharp, searing pain of hunger took over Sansa's body, and the wrongness of running felt nothing but right. She seemed to run as fast as the wind, following the small feeling in her head that seemed to know where she was heading. 

The forest seemed to blur around her, merging into paint-like swirls of greens and blues and beige. She could smell it, whatever she was heading toward, and as keenly as her own, she thought she could sense its fear, and Sansa's heart ached with something she couldn't yet recognise. 

As she crashed through the bushes, her eyes finally fell onto the figure that waited. It was a deer, its body lithe and young and delicate. Sansa's body sang with her hung and her mind screamed with confusion. The deer let out a mournful sound, loud and jarring and then suddenly it was skidding away, hooves edging to bite into the soft ground and scurry away. 

She startled before her arms could wrap around the animal's body. 

When Sansa woke, she could still smell the natural sent of her Lady's fur, and could feel that wolf-like hunger. But as she carried on about her day in the Red Keep, Sansa's heart glowed a little brighter. 

XXVII
LUCELLA
"dreams of fire"
⚜️

Lucella closed her eyes and saw fire. Great, engulfing flames that burned the colour of blood. They surrounded her, taking up each inch of her senses, burning them until all she could see was red, all she could taste was ash, and all she could hear was the echoing of her own screams.

In her dreams, they were not the evening flames beneath the new hearth in Clegane Keep. The fire was large, flickering a dangerous, dull green, that must have been like her brother's eyes, staring down at her with an anger that had once confused her younger self. It surrounded her on each side, licking each inch of her skin, burning each thin expansive of her nightclothes, letting them crumble away until she was bare. 

Above her, Gregor looked like a demon, his figure dark and commanding. The iron prongs that lay by the foot of her father's hearth protruded from behind his head like long, twisted horns. His face was shadowed, only his eyes visible, piercing into her as he forced her head down and down until it was almost as if she was drowning. Drowning in the flames that seemed to muffle the sound of her scream- a harsh, vague sound tainted by the thick, suffocating pain of the ash. 

This was not how it all went. Her dreams were wrong, so wrong, and far more like nightmares. There was no rush of metal, slicing through her eye until she was dripping blood far darker than the red of the flames. Lucella wished to find that metal dagger and drive it upwards, an iron stake to warn off her own, personal demon. But her hands felt nothing but the burning, nothing but the hard grip of her brother's body. 

Gregor was the figure of the Stranger, the shadows like a cloak over his body, dim despite the violent glow of the flames. Lucella thought he might bow down to kiss her as father did, a light touch to the spot on her forehead where her skin broke into hair. But then she was falling backwards beneath his push, hearing Sandor's shouts- distressed and fierce- falling down and down until all she could see was the fiery swirls of reds and oranges, becoming one with the rotting wood that fueled the very fire that burned her. 

When Lucella woke, she woke with a shout, her body layered in sweat, her brother's eyes staring down at her, full of knowing, full of understanding.

*

a quick filler-esq chapter before we get to some heavy plot 

i used symbolism in this for once, i kinda hope it's obvious haha