Author's Note:
I know I say this a lot but seriously, I love my readers!
Your comments are always so insightful! And since we have *checks wristwatch* oh-I-don't-know about half a year or more to wait for our show to return, it's lovely to keep all the theories, hopes and dreams alive in fanfic land. And perhaps delude ourselves into thinking D&D might give us the Season 8 we deserve *insert gif of Bonnie Hunt's character in Jerry Maguire saying "you f*ck this up and I'll kill you" before she downs her drink*) ;)
Okay, okay, some Jorah/Dany shippiness on the horizon *heart eyes.* But first thing's first, Lyanna's got some thoughts. I mean, doesn't she always?
Xoxo
Lyanna
They burned Theon's body.
They stood on the level plateau of one of the steep, snowy hills outside the Keep. A sparse pyre was built by the men, with Theon's body, wrapped in linen, placed gently upon it. Jorah lit the base aflame with a touch of the torch in his right hand. As it caught fire, he stepped back to stand next to Daenerys, who grasped the hood of her silver and black furs tight around her, watching the flames grow with a faraway expression in her pale, lavender eyes.
It was a waste of wood but Lyanna could see no other way to give Theon a proper burial. The ground was frozen beyond any spadework and the sea ice was too thick to consecrate him to the Drowned God, as his forefathers had been for generations. And despite the defeat of the Night King months before, there was still a lingering fear of allowing dead men the chance to come back again.
That fear would last their lifetimes, and even perhaps their children's lifetimes. Bear Island would burn its dead until the horrors this winter had brought became memory as distant as alliances between the Children of the Forest and the First Men. Even then…well, if Lyanna had her way, the House of Mormont would never be foolish enough to trust that winter was ever at an end.
Not even when the waters in the Bay of Ice sparkled in their deep summer blue silks once more.
Winter is always coming. She thought, echoing Ned Stark's favorite words in her head, adding her own dour observation. Even when you're in the midst of it.
Her breath was white against the hillside, even gathered inland as they were, blocked from the sea wind by a cut of black ravine and a thick patch of evergreens between them and the coast. The forest splayed out from the Island's interior with long, curling fingers and root systems that went deep underground. The trees shivered in this weather, the occasional snap of branches in the woods too like the brittle break of white bones.
If the old forest groaned on winter's gnawing bite, how would they survive it? The trees lived the lives of ten men and saw winter after winter come and go. But this one felt different. The air was chilled to the point of a knife blade. Without Theon's funeral pyre, they couldn't stay out in it for long without risking frostbite and exposure.
And no one knew how long this winter would last. Not Maester Morlan, who gave Lyanna the hypothesis of Old Town maesters who had spent most of their lives in summer, feasting on wine and sunshine. Not the girls in her kitchens, who quoted their grannies old sayings and looked for signs in the movement of birds and insects ("kill a red spider in the cupboard and you'll add two years to winter").
The skies had settled in for a long season, turning stormy at the slightest provocation. The heavens dressed in slate blue and dark violet too often. The sun's rays were too weak and distant to cut the cold and did little more than light up the white flecks that easily fell from every passing cloud. Even now, as the flames consumed Theon's funeral pyre, Lyanna noticed little pieces of ash rise into a sky cluttered up with tiny spits of snow.
Jorah and Daenerys spoke quietly to each other as they watched Theon burn. Daenerys's face was hidden deep in her furs as Jorah bent towards her to hear her hushed words. The dragon queen had grown up in far warmer climates than these and Lyanna was surprised she'd stayed more than a few minutes at the pyre. Even the Northerners were struggling to keep their teeth from chattering in the deep freeze.
Lyanna refused to shiver in the cold but she felt it cut into her lungs and spread through her veins like frost over a window pane, testing her Northern blood and daring it to break. She wouldn't break for a long time yet. She was the She-Bear of Bear Island, not some Dorne princess. Or some Targaryen creature that would be better off seeking out landscapes of fire.
As she watched Jorah and Daenerys together, she tried to hold fast to the anger that she first felt, all those years ago, when word reached Bear Island that Jorah had cast his lot with the exiled Targaryen princess, aiding her quest to reclaim her father's throne, giving her counsel, finding her armies and cavorting with dragons.
Maege, Lyanna's mother, had looked at the scroll that carried the news and shook her head from side to side, lips pursed with her favorite expression, a growling glower.
The most disgraceful Mormont in a hundred years, her mother had said, setting aside the parchment with a sigh. And Lyanna, too young to know any different, just nodded along with her sisters.
It was her mother's words and her mother's disappointment that she was attempting to keep alive. She was self-aware enough to know that part of that stemmed from wanting to keep her mother alive as well.
She wasn't succeeding. Her mother's voice faded in her head daily. Her sisters' faces receded to the graves of hazy memory with an ease that shouldn't be allowed.
The gods were cruel—to give mothers and sisters and then steal them back again.
As Daenerys and Jorah settled into contemplative silence, Lyanna found her gaze lingering, not on her cousin this time, but on his silver-haired lady. For beneath her fur-trimmed hood, Daenerys's eyes had flickered from the flames to Lyanna.
The two women faced each other over the dead man's pyre, through a small swirling of snow and ash. No one gathered to send the dead man off witnessed the moment that followed. Not even Jorah, his attention now back on the fire that consumed Theon's mortal flesh.
But it was a long moment, violet eyes met by dark brown ones. Daenerys wouldn't be able to read Lyanna's thoughts.
She's not a damn sorceress…Lyanna gave her that at least. Though, even if she was, could a sorceress read thoughts that Lyanna hadn't quite parsed out herself?
Daenerys was not old enough to be her mother…or maybe just. She was older than Lyanna's sisters had been and twice Lyanna's age. She had seen things and done things that Lyanna would never understand. She didn't want to understand—the great houses played at games that raised them up to lofty perches and cast them down into pits of despair. These were not games that Lyanna played or would ever play.
But perhaps Daenerys had never wanted to play them either.
Seeing her here, in Mormont furs and a swirl of winter snow, she seemed almost one of them. She was still a stranger to these shores and had been among them not even a year. And yet, she stood beside Jorah as if she'd stood beside him all her life.
If Jorah belonged here…which he does, Lyanna couldn't deny it. The Island itself would embrace him even if I didn't. Well, if Jorah belonged here, there was no question that Daenerys belonged here too, despite Maege's voice in Lyanna's head insisting otherwise.
She's a Targaryen. They are creatures of fire. They cannot help but bring destruction in their bloody wake.
She's tired, Mother. And broken and sad and looking for peace. As I am. As we all are.
She needs to go. Bear Island suffers no conquerors to plant themselves within our borders. Kings and queens belong to the South.
There are no kings and queens left. And the only thing she's conquered is your nephew's heart…
And maybe your own? In her mother's imagined voice, she heard the lift of tone, the arch of eyebrow. The questions that followed were heavily skeptical, nearly mocking—do you imagine in this exiled princess you will find the mother and sisters you lost? That the House of Mormont will no longer echo with the ghosts of dead men and women but the vibrant voices of the living?
Don't be stupid. Lyanna replied to her inner voice, in a tone that would convince anyone…except maybe herself.
Daenerys lowered her eyes finally, adjusting her furs to further cover her face against another breath of freezing air that slid down the icy hillside. Without removing his gaze from the fire, Jorah inched closer to Daenerys on instinct, raising his arm to allow her to step into his embrace, where she finally hid her face from the cold winds completely, head buried in the fabric of his coat.
Lyanna's men shuddered at the wind's bite but Lyanna still refused to shiver, despite the frost fingers crawling up her spine. She'd lost enough self-respect for one day in contemplating a tolerance for dragons. She certainly wouldn't let the weather take the rest.
After Theon's pyre burned down to ash, they returned to the warmth of the Keep.
