You guys know I don't own anything. I'd never have the patience to write this much. :p

1. Friends

The fire is cracking but I still feel clammy and hollow inside. The sixth time already. No man should live with six parts of his soul sliced away. I look at Thoros who stayed awake with me.

"We can't keep doing this." I say.

He focuses on me, looking thoughtful. "Is it our choice?" he asks.

Thoros has become quite faithful in his own way. Understandably, I guess, and still he seems to be more surprised by this than anyone else.

Of course I believe too. How could I not. If there is anything that can't fail to make you believe it's being brought back from the dead.
But being brought back left me thinner and thinner each time and each time less interested, blunted and dull.

Whereas being the instrument of this godly intervention, being the one who initiates the coming back must be something else altogether and seems to flush him with renewed awe every time.

He must have seen the weariness on my face, how little religious arguments sway me, because his eyes grow softer and more sympathetic. "You won't have to do it alone, old friend." he assures me and I know he does not mean the resurrections, but the stretches of 'life' in between.

'Old friend' I think. Of course I am a friend and the Lord of Light knows how immeasurably old I feel. But doesn't the phrase 'old friend' usually refer to someone who has been a friend for a very long time?

Thoros and I have not been friends two years ago, before this mad war started. I had no quarrel with him, he was amiable enough, but I must confess I looked down on him a bit.
His ridiculous clothes, his ridiculous faith that he himself never failed to mock – and when he wasn't in a tourney he was usually drunk. King Robert enjoyed him, which was no wonder since they shared some basic interests, but I would never have called him a friend.

Then again we have been friends for a lifetime, because that time back in Kings Landing surely happened in another life, long, long ago and as far away as that bloody star in the sky.

When we heard of the King's death, of the Hand's death, it seemed to be time to return to our old lives. No-one would thank us for staying and fighting on.
But we saw how they turned the fertile Riverlands to wasteland and what they did to the people seemed even worse.

We had a long conversation that night, Thoros and I, and when morning dawned I had won a friend but sealed the fate on my old life: it would be buried for good.