Kisses of Summer
What is life like in the Land of Always Winter?
It was cold.
Of course, it was always cold up here, but that was the way Rydun liked it. Southerners didn't like the cold, for some reason, but he didn't quite know why. Sure, it was hard to be truly comfortable, but was that even possible, with warmth and fire? Something was always wrong. Maybe you were sitting on a rock, or the smoke from the fire clogged your lungs, or you hadn't eaten quite enough. It was impossible to be truly comfortable; better cold be the reason you were uncomfortable than something less …
He felt, rather than heard, the steps behind him. It was Therrak. She glided up to him, and Rydun revelled in the cold she brought with her.
"The Frostfangs are alive tonight," she said.
Rydun nodded. "The Thenns are out for blood," he said.
She grinned lopsidedly, her eyes glowing as bright a new moon. "Let them come," she said.
He laughed. "You enjoy this too much."
Therrak laughed, twirling her sword, lithe as a Squirrel Child, and mimed a stabbing motion. "The Long Night is coming," she said.
Rydun didn't quite see how this tied into their conversation. "That is as planned," he agreed.
"Best make a start on it."
"The Long Night has been planned for centuries," he reminded her. "Since eight thousand years. Since you or I were mere Thenns ourselves. We don't know how long it will be until it truly comes to pass."
Therrak's crazed grin widened more. "No," she agreed, "but I plan on being around when it does."
She danced off, swinging her sword at the icy teeth that formed on the rocks' grey jaws (for there were no trees this far north) as though they were enemies. As though they were the Squirrel Children she remembered from her youth.
Rydun turned around and walked on his own. Perhaps, he mused, more had happened than he'd realised in his isolation. Time was only what you made of it. He had no reason to keep time; if something important happened, someone would seek him out, as Therrak had, but until then, he could enjoy wandering aimlessly around the Ice Desert.
Then he turned around and ran after Therrak. Surely, she would not seek him out intentionally, only to leave after a brief-at-best conversation about the Thenns and the Long Night?
Rydun supposed she could have run into him on accident; however, this land was vast and bare, and Therrak was not known as the most sociable creature in the Heartland. She preferred bounding through the empty land, fighting direwolves and ice spiders, pretending as though the Long Night had never ended. That she would cease her travels, simply to make small talk, was folly.
Indeed, she was sparring with an unidentifiable enemy, her cackles of shattered ice echoing in the nothingness. She spun again, and caught his eye.
"Figured I had more to say?"
"I may have wondered," Rydun said.
"Hmm." She swayed slightly on the spot, her thin crystalline sword resting on her shoulder. "Oh, yes, you are wanted."
"Where?"
"Winterheart."
Rydun nodded. He didn't know where he was in relation to Winterheart, but it didn't matter; time was what you made it. He could walk to the Fist of the First Men and back, and make the same time as if he had been in the northernmost Thenns. All he had to do was find the Ice Rivers, and he would be nearly there.
"There has been talk of a conquest," Therrak said.
"A conquest?"
"By dragons," she said. "Three dragons. A human, from Andalos. Or the Rhoyne. One of the Eastern cities."
"Not a Squirrel Child?"
Therrak scoffed and threw her sword through the layers of snow. Knowing Therrak, and the sword, it could travel hundreds of metres through the soft snow before halting. "Squirrel Children!" she muttered. "What have they done, since they stopped warring with the Invaders? Nothing!"
"Something we should be thankful for," Rydun noted.
She scoffed once more, and summoned her sword. "I could take them," she said, miming a swing again.
"Soon," he reminded her. "Soon, the Long Night will come again."
Her scowl morphed into a grin again. "Yes, yes, that is true," she said. "Soon, we'll cross the Frostfangs and that blasted wall …"
Rydun nodded in agreement with her. Personally, his heart wasn't as set on retaking the South. It had been there for twelve thousand years, and would still be there in another twelve thousand. Why would he want the South, with its weirwoods and spying eyes and Squirrel Child Markings, when the Ice Desert held all he was content with?
Nonetheless, he walked away from Therrak, as she wrestled with as yet non-existent direwolves, towards the Ice Rivers and the Frozen Blood, and new that soon, he would be marching on Thenn, on the Southern Frostfangs and the Frozen Shore. On the Forest, on Storrold's Point, and on the Barrier. Onto the Stolen Lands, the Neck and the Fire. All of it would be theirs. Eventually.
There was no need to rush, though; it would still be there in twelve thousand years. What did one or two hundred years mean?
Rydun had more patience than Therrak. He could wait. He would wait. There was no reasons to not.
When he arrived in Winterheart, he was neither the first nor the last. His detour to the Frozen Shore hadn't delayed him for too long, it would appear.
He said to Gillan: "Is it true an Andal has conquered the Stolen Lands?"
Gillan shrugged. "It was a hundred years or so ago now."
"Really?" He hadn't realised he had walked for so long.
Gillan waved a hand. "It matters not," he said. "One king, two kings, three, five, each is just as useless as the last. Time, age, life, it means nothing."
Rydun agreed. What did life mean, if yours was never-ending?"
"Though," Gillan said, "there has been talk of a king. One beyond the Barrier."
Rydun was fascinated. "Truly? One to unite the Northerners?"
"That is his apparent aim." The scorn cracked clear in Gillan's voice. "How a simple Barrier Man from the South aims to unite the supposed 'Free Folk' I don't know, but it is early days yet."
Rydun nodded, "So it is," although he remained enraptured by the idea. Time was nothing, after all, so who knew what this man could accomplish between now and tomorrow?
Rydun was a little upset to learn that the man had been killed for his troubles when he stormed the Barrier, but was more shocked to learn that a brother had been killed by Dragonglass.
"I thought the magical properties of Dragonglass were all folly?" he said. "Dragonglass and Dragonsteel. Made up by the Squirrels to convince us to abandon the Long Night."
Gillan frowned. "I wish that were truth," he said sadly. "Yet the opposite has become apparent."
"Then we should invade now," Rydun said. "I must have arrived forty years ago!"
"Time is nothing," Gillan reminded him. "You could wander the Ice Desert for thousands of years and not care. Why is wandering the Northern Frostfangs so different?"
Rydun conceded the point, but pointed out that the Invaders had a much shorter lifespan, and so were aware of time, of each seconds, minute, week, month and year, much more than they were. What they accomplished in their blink-of-an-eye lifetimes could add up to be substantial.
Gillan agreed, and so the army, as it stood, marched southwards.
The Long Night had commenced once more.
Just a small plot bunny I had bouncing round my head. I wrote this in like an hour so it's not very good, but it was fun. I hope me changing the names of things to fit how the White Walkers (yes, the characters in this are indeed White Walkers) would see things.
As a general guide:
Invaders - The First Men, now just generally humans.
Squirrel Children - Children of the Forest.
The Barrier - The Wall
Barrier Men - the Night's Watch
The Northerners - The Wildlings.
The Stolen Land - The North (south of the wall.)
The Neck - The Neck (didn't change this, because I couldn't think of anything.)
The Fire - The South + Dorne.
Placed such as Winterheart, the Ice Desert, the Ice Rivers, Frozen Blood etc. are not canon, as far as I'm aware, and I made them up as names for places within the Land of Always Winter. Seriously I even drew a map of it all. It was kinda fun, not gonna lie. The Frostfangs, Thenns, Storrold's Point etc. are all property of George R.R. Martin and his respective publishers.
Yours,
~ Emmy.