A/N: This story has been spinning in my head for over a year and is self-indulgent. A lot of my structure comes from the Blood of Dragons MUSH on , research, and the lovely folks who moderate and contribute to ASOIAF University on Tumblr, who has turned me from a simple watcher of Game of Thrones to an avid consumer of fantasy, history, and meta.
Prologue
She was taught to kneel before the heart tree, a weirwood crying its blood, and pray. Pray for the health and prosperity of her family, for good crops, good winds, and mercy. She was taught to give gifts, to be reverent of all life, and be sober at death, though it was not the end.
For those who followed the Old Gods, there was no end to your spirit. When you die you reincarnate again and again. It did not matter the life you had lived before. When you die your soul is reborn— into a plant, into an animal, into a person. It was the will of the gods that decided what you became.
She had not held to any belief in her past life. There was no need to have faith in any god: she, through pure will, would endure. This had held her through her parents' divorce as a child, her time at university, and failed relationships.
It wasn't because she didn't think they existed—miracles and luck came from somewhere—but she knew gods did not care. They had their own concerns, and any help they received was on a whim. Genocides, rapes, murders, thefts. If god existed, she had asked her grandmother once, why did they allow such horror? But that life was nothing but poppy dreams now, and she knew better than to question so openly.
She would always end her routine early and look through the weirwood at the places she could not yet go. She could see as far as the trees would take her: forests and seas, villages and cities with mighty castles.
When she rises from prayer, she asks silently why she was this way, in this world, when others weren't. The heart tree just cried silently in response.
She had not believed in gods or magic. Yet here she was, in a strange land capable of even stranger things.