Author's Note: Jorah's hand jewelry. Dany's too. Mmm. Yes please.
This is Part 1 of 5 in my current study (*cough* obsession *cough*) of rings.
Shout out to all the usual suspects on Tumblr for tumbling down this rabbit hole with me :)
The Things We Carry With Us
In the Red Waste, there was nothing but time. Time and rocks and sand and sun.
There was no place more appropriately named. With its squat, rocky cliffs, barren of all vegetation, its dry river beds, any hint of moisture lapped up by the greedy, blinding rays of hot sunlight, baking the earth, cracking it open like bread left in a brick oven to burn…
It was all wasteland as far as the eye could see.
And for as many days as they walked, they might as well have been walking in circles. The landscape barely changed. Just more rocks and sand and sun.
Not even sand really, but dust. The dust of a crypt, blown up by stifling winds that would shrivel their lungs and bury them. Finally. Once the desert dried them out, their bones bleached white by the sun.
Under a tent of ragged fabric, pitched against the side of a sandstone cliff, Daenerys sat back against the red rocks, cross-legged in her Dothraki skins, trying to draw any sort of coolness from the sheer stone at her back. The stone's roots must reach far underground—somewhere hidden, where the darkness might grant some relief, if she could only dig deep enough.
She imagined the chill of underground rivers, the feel of bathing under the eerie luminescent light of underground caves—it was a pleasant fiction, but one breath of hot air from the desert melted the illusion away. Again.
Up here in the wasteland, under the oppressive heat of midday, sweat beaded against her neck and rolled down between her breasts even when she didn't move. Her hands were raw and chapped, lacking hydration. Her scalp itched under multiple sunburns, the cover of her silver hair no match against the constant glare of the desert sun.
She tried to pretend the breeze was soothing, imagining its origins on some high mountain peak, sweeping down from snowy ridges and shadowy forests, before rushing across the desert to the sea.
It didn't work. But she tried anyway.
With a sigh, her gaze wandered. She looked over at Ser Jorah, who had closed his eyes briefly. Was he imagining something similar? She knew he wasn't sleeping. No one could sleep in this heat. He was sitting only a few feet away, one knee raised, the other leg stretched out in front of him. His yellow shirt was stained with sweat and red dust.
His hand brushed at a fly that buzzed too near, but slowly, half-heartedly. There was no escaping the flies, just as there was no escaping the heat. But her attention was captured by the fluid movement of his fingers and the glint of sunlight reflecting off the Dothraki beads on his wrist guard and the silver ring worn on his right hand. The raised design on the ring was intricate, made up of spiraling curves.
She wondered at it...
With nothing but time and more time, she leaned forward, scooting a little closer to her knight while staying within the shade of their makeshift tent. His hand was now hovering on his knee, awaiting the return of that pesky fly.
But it wasn't a fly that landed on his skin next.
Without thinking, Daenerys reached out and took his hand. There was a weight to it that nearly demanded both of hers to lift it, at least here, where the sluggish heat seemed to make every action ten times harder. Her fingers curled lightly around his thumb and his smallest finger, casually bringing his hand to rest in her lap, for closer inspection of that ring.
Jorah's eyes flickered open at her touch, but he didn't resist. He allowed her his hand, to do what she wanted. With her silver head bent, her tangled, unwashed hair falling over her shoulders, she studied the many spirals. Her thumb traced the odd patterns, which seemed random and wild in places, deliberate in others. It was unlike any signet ring she'd ever seen, with no letter or sigil discernible. With the serpentine coils, she couldn't help but be reminded of dragons.
A tiny screech from one of her baby dragons, perched in their cage in the shade of the cliffside, only accentuated the connection.
But Jorah Mormont had this ring before he came into her brother's service. Before the dragons. She remembers seeing it on his hand the day they met, the day her brother sold her to Khal Drogo. Everything about that day was seared in her memory and would be, until the day she died. She had been dressed in a pale lavender dress and the air smelled like salt and horses.
She remembers the ring and the feel of Jorah's hands as her fingers brushed by his briefly, as she took the books of songs and stories that he offered her as a wedding gift. The books came from Westeros. But what about the ring?
"Is this Dothraki?" she asked, curious.
"No," he answered, hoarsely. The lack of water strained their vocal chords and made his natural rasp go a little harsher. He swallowed, grimacing on the now familiar taste of dust while reaching for the nearby flask with his free hand, the one not within Daenerys's grasp.
She spun the ring on his finger slowly, noting the thickness of the band, the smooth silver that bridged the underside, the way the designs faded away at the edges. The ring wasn't pretty. Not exactly. It was too masculine to be pretty, and yet, she couldn't call it ugly.
"Is it from Bear Island?"
"No, my princess," Jorah answered, tipping back his head as he took a small drink. He had to turn the flask nearly upside down to gain a drop, which brought another grimace to his weathered features. He wet his lips and clarified, "Not originally."
She knew she was taking liberties that perhaps she hadn't earned, but her hand crawled beneath his, over the callused pads of fingers and the knuckles. With her wandering fingers, she lightly tugged, sliding the ring off his finger carefully, to where it dropped, with a muted thud, into her waiting palm. His hand lingered where she left it, balanced lightly against the inside of her thigh.
Daenerys turned the ring end over end, watching the metal catch sunlight.
"Where, then?" she wondered, as she slipped the ring on one of her own fingers and then another, attempting to find one that would fit. Her fingers swam in the midst of its large girth, as they were half the size of his. She put the ring on her thumb and she could still shake it off just by turning her hand towards the ground.
"I don't know," he licked his lips, already dry again, exhaling quietly. "Wherever my mother's people were from, I suppose."
"You don't know where your mother was from?" her gaze jumped from silver metal to blue eyes, meeting his gaze with a measure of surprise.
He never talked about his mother. Or his father really. And then, only when she asked. She'd asked him to describe Bear Island to her as she tried to fall asleep the night before, holding on to the idea of crashing waterfalls, ice on the sea, frosted branches and the crunch of snow in a northern forest.
Home. He'd said, when she asked what he prayed for, echoing her own prayers.
And thinking of home—his, hers, and then a seaside villa that flickered in and out of focus—she finally fell asleep.
"No, but my mother didn't know either," he replied. "She was an orphan child, washed ashore in a basket when she was little more than a babe. That ring was in the basket with her, among a few other oddities."
Jorah continued, in a tone heavily laced with regret and guilt and old pain, "I sold nearly everything of value in my father's house before I fled from Westeros, trying to pay off my debts…but not that."
Daenerys looked at the designs again, musing over their unknown origins.
His hand suddenly turned on her thigh, palm upwards, his first finger stretching up lazily to brush at her wrist. And then further, to take her hand and pass his thumb over the two white pearls on the twisted ring residing on her left hand.
"Now it's your turn," he said, taking his own liberties. But the desert forgave them all. He asked, softly, "Where did this come from?"
A sad smile graced her lips, but only briefly. She slipped the ring off her hand and handed it to him, where he held it up with two fingers, admiring the simplicity and the setting of the white stones. It looked like two petals of a lily set adrift on a silver stem.
"Ser Willem Darry gave it to me when I was four or five," Daenerys replied, after a moment's silence. "He said it was my mother's."
Ser Jorah nodded, having no reason to doubt it. Why should he? But Daenerys had her reservations, old ones, nagging ones, which she found herself sharing with him, despite having never shared them with anyone else. Ever.
"I don't know if it's true," she admitted, shaking her head slightly. She continued, not quite glumly, more like a recitation, "He might've been trying to make me feel better. It was my birthday. Viserys and I had quarreled over something, I don't remember what it was—but he said that our mother had died because of me and then slammed the door on his way out of the house."
She leaned over, lightly resting her hand on his, to finger those pearls with affection. She added, in a small, melancholy voice. "But it's pretty, yes?"
"It's lovely, Khaleesi," Jorah answered, giving her a long look before releasing it back to her. "Much as I'm sure your mother was."
"You never met her?" Daenerys knew the answer to that question. If he knew her mother, he would have mentioned it, knowing how desperate she was to know her family and her home, both lost to her long ago.
"I never had the pleasure. But they say she was beautiful and kind."
"And unhappy?" Daenerys guessed. Viserys and Ser Willem had never said it outright, nor Illyrio Mopatis or any of the others, but the dark looks that were exchanged whenever Rhaella Targaryen was mentioned spoke volumes.
"Yes," Jorah didn't want to lie to her. He never wanted to lie to her again. "Very unhappy."
"Perhaps she wanted to die," Daenerys muttered, spinning both rings together now, side by side. She could almost nest them together, with the pearl ring fitting inside his silver one easily. Her gaze slowly left the rings in her hands, rising across the windswept plains before her, with rubble and dust cluttering the landscape from horizon to horizon.
Her pitiful khalasar clung to the shades of the cliffs, barely moving, drying out as they waited for the sun to go down. She had sent the last horses in three directions. If the riders came back with bad news…
Well, then, she hoped that red comet in the sky was merciful and might crash down on them from the heavens, if only to save them from starvation and a slow death beneath the hot sun.
Jorah roused himself at her words, her tone too hopeless to his ears. She wasn't talking about her mother any longer.
"You will survive this," he told her, confidently.
"How do you know?" her words sounded faraway to her own ears.
"Because I watched you walk out of the flames with three dragons, born of eggs that had turned to stone centuries ago," he answered. His blue eyes sought her gaze, waiting until she looked up at him once again. He implored her to heed his words, "You didn't burn then and you will not die now. I promise you, Daenerys."
His strong words. His unwavering gaze. They never failed to give her the peace she so desperately wished for. That feeling of home, if only for a passing moment.
You must be their strength.
As you are mine.
She managed another smile, for his benefit—still small, but a little braver this time.
The riders would return. They must return. If nothing else, the insistent sounds of baby dragons, with their little screeches and little coughs, demanded it. They hadn't returned to the world just to go back to stone and dust.
They slipped into silence, except for the snare of cicadas and the buzzing of that same, persistent fly, back again. Jorah waved it away with another flick of his hand, the beads on his Dothraki bracelet dancing with the sudden motion.
And when that hand came back down, Daenerys caught his fingers once more. She gave him back his ring, gently slipping it over the knuckle on the same finger that she'd taken it from, saying only, "Thank you, Jorah."
"Of course, Khaleesi."