"You know, when I woke up this morning and wondered what the day would bring, I didn't expect it to bring a child and a pet dog," Willa remarked coldly as she sat with Jon, Dany, and Tormund in her house. Dany and Jon were dressed and packed for traveling. Rose was sitting against Ghost on Willa's bed, babbling happily as she played with the braided cloth that Willa had given her the day before.

Dany was still trying to process the last day in which she had somehow been convinced that going to seek out Drogon with Jon was the right idea, while Willa had been convinced to take in Rose (and by extension, Ghost) until they returned.

"You're insane," Willa had pronounced as soon as they told her the plan, "You know how ridiculous this sounds? Chasing a dragon that may or may not be where you think he is and leaving behind your definitively here baby. I've been a nomad. It was a hard life with other free folk around. Now the north is empty. And the walk to Mammoth's Head was never been populous to begin with."

Mammoth's Head was the name of the small, lone mountain Dany had described in her dream. Apparently, it was a good marker to those crossing over to the sea from Thenn or the Frostfangs that they were headed in the right direction. If the mountain was ahead and to your left, you were going the right way.

"And what if you get lost? Or separated? Or he isn't there? Are you just going to keep looking or turn around and come back? What happens to your daughter if you never come back?"

"He's my child too, Willa!" Dany snapped, a headache angrily protesting behind her right eye.

He's my child too, had become her mind's constant refrain in an attempt to convince herself that this was the right choice. Though Dany knew that one child was a baby and the other was a twenty-foot or so dragon, she felt overwhelmingly compelled to go to Mammoth's Head. But the continued realizations that she was about to leave her seven month-old daughter behind and go on a potentially deadly trek to a place that neither Jon, nor Tormund, nor Willa had ever seen closer than at a distance to potentially find her other child at a dangerous cave where something else most likely sinister lived were in a stalemate against her resolve and it had resulted in a nasty migraine that left her feeling more anxious and abrasive than usual.

"I need to know if this is Drogon," Dany continued, trying to stay calm.

Willa had opened her mouth to retort, but fell silent at a look from Tormund, though she still looked mutinous, as if she was going to poison Dany to keep her in Shadowedge.

Now she cleared her throat, getting up from her seat. The rest of them stood up, Dany pulling her satchel back onto her shoulder. If I don't leave now, I'll never do it. And then I'll be left wondering if I should have gone for the rest of my life.

"I've told you everything I know about that area," Tormund said, clapping Jon on the back as they got ready to leave, "You're sure you don't want an extra hand coming with you?"

"I'd feel much better knowing that you're still here," Jon told him, throwing an uneasy glance at a still-angry Willa.

"Suppose it doesn't hurt to stay until you're returned," the red man replied, "But if you're not back within a month, I'll come for you."

While Jon and Tormund spoke, Dany had made her way over to Ghost and Rose. The baby greeted her mother with an enormous grin and shouted excitedly when Dany picked her up and kissed her cheeks.

"Avy jorraelan, Rosie," she whispered, her throat constricting with each syllable, "We'll be back soon."

"Real soon," Jon said from behind her, his hand coming to Rose's cheek. They remained for only a moment before Dany turned and passed Rose to Willa, swallowing and blinking back the sting in her eyes that came from both leaving her daughter and the sight of her best friend refusing to meet her eye. She and Jon headed through the door before turning back to look at their friends and daughter once more.

"One month," Tormund repeated, standing behind Willa, who looked at her feet, and Rose. It took every ounce of Dany's strength not to allow her legs to walk back to her daughter, who was looking very confused about why mama and papa weren't next to her.

Jon nodded, taking Dany's hand. "We'll be back," he promised.

They turned to leave and Dany wrenched her eyes away from a perplexed Rose and a red-faced Willa, praying to get far enough away before Rose figured out that she wasn't coming with them.

It was four days before they saw any other sign of life besides the trees and an occasional stag. Dany and Jon trudged along the coast of the north, making sure to always be able to see the Shivering Sea horizon if they ducked out of the trees. Mostly, however, they tried to remain in the tree shelter. The wind was bitterly cold and aggressively tore through the little skin they had exposed around their face.

While the snow by Shadowedge had become a foot of powder over permafrost, the more north they went, the more frozen the snow became until their footsteps were punctuated with crunching that seemed to try to alert every cannibal, snow bear, and wild beast for days of where they were.

"Ah, dammit!" Dany cursed as she took a step too close to a tree and slipped into a bank much deeper than it appeared. She would've liked to blame the slip on the darkening sky and low visibility, but this was the third time she had done it that day. I just can't spot these drifts, she thought exasperatedly, Although Willa would have laughed if she saw this. Shame washed over her, thinking of her friend. Dany had desperately tried to keep any thoughts of home only on Rose, but times like this left her with a bad taste in her mouth from how she had said goodbye to Willa.

"Hold on," Jon told her, running back from where he had been ranging ahead. Making sure his ground was steady before offering Dany a hand, he helped her out of the bank. "You all right?"

Dany dusted herself off, shaking out her arms and legs to get as much snow off as possible. "Thanks," she said, "I'm fine. Small price to pay for keeping out of that wind."

The times they had been in sparsely-populated tree areas had been nightmares. Dany's face was still raw from their meetup with the wind earlier in the day. Her lips were cracked and she could taste blood still oozing from a couple of spots. And I complained about walking across the Vale. That was nothing.

"I think I found a good spot to camp for the night," Jon continued, "Rock overhang a little further on. Almost no wind. Not quite a cave, but…"

"As long as I don't have to sleep in a snowbank, I don't mind," Dany said, motioning to continue on, "Just lead the way."

Jon was right, the overhang was extremely sheltered from the elements that had been plaguing them. With a nice fire going, it was nearly comfortable. Admittedly, what would have made Dany wholly comfortable was a real bed, so they were doing pretty well all things considered. They lay together on their furs, so reminiscent of their first journey together, watching the green lights dance overhead.

"Maester Luwin said it was called the aurora," Jon said, stretching his arm out to point at the lights. They sometimes crossed over their house in Shadowedge, but Dany had never seen them this vibrant before. Briefly, Dany wondered what they would look like to Drogon when he was flying. "It's a nice word, isn't it? Aurora."

"We're not naming her after lights, Jon," Dany said, rolling her eyes.

"You're the one who insisted on naming her after a flower," Jon countered.

To pass the time as they walked, Jon and Dany had started names for Rose once she reached her second nameday. It was far off, but then again I thought sleeping in her own bed was far off. Thinking of Rose caused more familiar pangs of heartache. Dany wondered how their daughter had taken to sleeping at Willa's house. Had she cried at night? Was she okay because Ghost was there? Did she say her first word or at least something other than "ba?" Was she thinking of her parents, in her own baby way, missing them the way that they desperately missed her?

"You didn't have any objections. And it's only a milkname," she replied crossly, "What about Alysanne?"

Jon shook his head. "I like the idea...but not the name. Lyarra?"

"Like your grandmother? It's pretty...but it sounds like a lion for some reason," Dany told him, hearing a Lannister lylt to the name, "Lyanne?"

"Too close. Jocelyn?"

"No. Shiera?"

"No, what about - "

"Shh!"

"Hey!" Jon said, "It's my turn to - "

"No!" Dany hissed, "There's something there. I swear I saw something move."

Quietly, they both sat up, squinting past the fire. Jon instinctively reached for Longclaw, hand ready to draw it up in a second, while Dany found the carving knife she had been using earlier.

Only the pop of the fire could be heard before Dany saw it again: a glow. Not belonging to the fire, but to two distinct, yellow eyes that seemed to move silently through the darkness of the trees.

A shadowcat.

It slipped into view soundlessly, its white stripes seemed to faintly shimmer in the firelight. Jon reached for Dany's hand, gripping it as the cat crossed right between them and the fire. Powerful muscles rippled underneath its long, black and white coat and each pawstep it took was so imperceptible that Dany had to hold her breath to hear it. It paused, catching Dany's eye with a glowing yellow stare that had made her swallow any breath she was holding. And then it was gone. Melted into the shadows again, becoming part of the night.

Fleetingly, Dany thought of how many times she had used shadowcats as part of an expression. She felt disrespectful. They couldn't possibly be trifled in that way.

"Wow," Dany breathed once it had vanished. Although she knew shadowcats existed throughout Westeros, including the Mountains of the Moon, which Dany and Jon had traveled along, she had never seen one before. "Why didn't it attack us?" she asked, suddenly remembering that the breathtaking creature was also one of the most feared predators. It stripped carcasses down to the bones before cracking the bones to reach any marrow inside. Jon had once pointed out a carcass that had been cleaned by a shadowcat. There had been nothing left. The bones were dried out and brittle, and looked painstakingly cleaned as if someone was planning to use them for tools.

"They rarely attack humans, especially two humans that were watching its every move," Jon told her, "But they're curious. And they can smell blood for miles." Pointedly, Jon swiped his thumb delicately across Dany's sore lips.

She licked them, tasting the metallic tang that he was referring to. "Don't lick them," Jon said, "That just makes it worse."

"Feels good in the moment," Dany grumbled as she and Jon lay back down.

"Aye, but they'll just get more raw after that. Then we'll have several hungry shadowcats to deal with." That wouldn't be so bad, Dany thought, wishing she had more time to marvel at the impressive creature that had come and gone so quickly.

Habitually, Dany went to lick her lips again, but stopped and instead simply mashed them together as she shifted closer to Jon. Even without being able to see her face, Dany knew her annoyance must have been palpable because he chuckled. "They'll heal with time and hopefully less of a biting cold," Jon promised her, "Just keep your tongue in your mouth."

Fun fact: Mammoth's Head is a landform called an "inselberg" or "monadock."

Dany's Valyrian in this chapter means, "I love you."