Life seemed empty and quiet without the visitors. Though Dany had initially looked forward to their lives becoming less hectic and more usual, she found herself missing the presence of the others, particularly Sansa, which she had become accustomed to over the two months they were there.
What had happened when they returned? What did they tell everyone? How did they decide to address the slavers? How did they decide to address anything? And did Lord Norrey mind losing his horse?
It wasn't that she wished for them to stay or even for her and Jon to take their family and return to the South. Dany just felt as if she had simultaneously gained and lost the same close friend. There was something in her life to miss now, in a less sorrowful way than before. Not missing like Jorah or Missandei, but a missing that made her anxious to hear from them again. She felt as if her pocket of life had been cracked open to let other peoples' lives bleed through. Though she had traveled over so much of Westeros and Essos, though she knew the true expanse of the world, suddenly Dany felt the breadth of life in a different way as her thoughts drifted to living people far away instead of the memories of those long gone.
"It would be nice if Shadowedge had a rookery," Sansa said to Dany as they were readying the horses to leave on the morning of their departure, "I would love to write."
"You'll have to come and visit instead with news from the South," Dany told her, "When there isn't a storm, the journey is only about a week if you move at a good pace. Although perhaps next time, I'll be calling you Your Grace?"
Sansa blushed. "Sansa is fine," she said, "You can always call me Sansa."
"Sansa," Dany said warmly, taking the woman's hand, "I wish you good fortune. May we meet again."
"May we meet again," Sansa agreed, adding, "Perhaps with one more child next time."
Dany's hand slid instinctively to her stomach. Under her clothes, as it had been last time, it was not yet noticeable that she was pregnant unless you were Jon skating your lips over the naked curve between her hips. Willa now expected that Dany was nearly three months along. Her nausea and fatigue were still evident, but growing less intrusive and allowing Dany's color to be less white or green according to Jon.
This was enjoyable for several reasons, but most notably because Dany felt like she was actually Rose's mother again. Her heart still lurched when her memories turned to Rose's first nameday, which Dany could scarcely remember having been sick to the point of bedridden. Of course, Rose scarcely understood and could hardly bear any ill feelings towards her mother and her unborn sibling, but guilt still wracked Dany's stomach.
Rose said her second word on her nameday.
Mama.
She had pointed from her father's arms to a clammy, shivering, ghost-like woman in bed and said, "Mama?" And instead of responding as Jon had done with the first utterance of "Papa," Dany had been in a fitful sleep. In a dream more ominous than she had experienced since Rose was born, she had been standing on a windy beach so loud she could not hear the sea. Below her feet, white sand streaked with red began to sink. Dany called out, panicked to be alone and feeling as though help was just out of reach, but the only answer was thunderous, pounding wind and a chill dripping down her spine.
Rose said "Mama" again a couple days later, finally gaining the appropriate reaction from her mother, and Dany decided not to mention her dream to Jon and cause him more worry. After that, the morning sickness had begun ebbing away Dany felt like a person instead of a wraith. But she continued to visit the sinister beach in her dreams, each time more chilling than before.
During the day, however, while Jon had been working on small renovations to the barn, Dany had taken to spending most of her time with Rose sharing a new favorite activity: Embar.
They called the great liver horse "Embar" for the sea in Valyrian. Literally, because of how he walked. Privately, however, Dany named him after the sea for his calm, stout manner. And though she had never named a horse before - that not being the Dothraki way - Jon said that she couldn't call him "The Liver" forever, and Embar suited him well. The stallion had adjusted quickly to his new surroundings, having been able to fit in the barn despite Jon's trepidation. He was an extremely hearty horse, although Jon said he was well on his way to becoming quite pampered as any palfrey given the amount of time Dany and Rose spent brushing him while Dany told stories of the Dothraki to both daughter and mount.
Secretly, Dany hoped that Rose's next word would be "horse" or, more specifically, "hrazef" as she never spoke Common Tongue when with Rose and Embar, but it turned out to be "oats" instead.
"Oats?" Jon asked Dany when he heard Rose use the word for the first time. They barely ate oats. In fact, Dany struggled to remember if she had ever said the word "oats" around her daughter or showed her an oat. Husband and wife agonized to figure out how their daughter had learned the word, especially since she chanted it far more than ever saying "Mama" or "Papa."
Only after four paws scampered into the house one night at Dany's call for meal scraps did the word make sense.
"Oats!" Rose shouted to her furry shadow. The direwolf's ear swiveled and was followed by his head turning to look at his young charge. Ah, Dany thought amused, close.
Ghost - or, Oats - was soon followed by "seh" which turned out to be Rose's sled (that gave Dany a smug look of satisfaction), and since then the words had tapered off (although Dany thought that "no" and "baby" may be in the works since she had been using them often) and been replaced by Rose's continued exploits into the land of unaided walking.
That is where Dany found herself this evening, watching her daughter hoist herself with the aid of a chair a few feet from her position seated on the floor. Stew cooked over the fire, filling the house with warm, meaty smells. Ghost was asleep on Dany and Jon's bed, although his red eyes popped open once in a while whenever Rose let out a particularly loud noise in her attempts. Determination was written across her little face, violet eyes sparking with eagerness.
"Come to Mama," Dany encouraged, stretching her arms just out of Rose's reach, "You can do it."
Rose lifted one small hand off the base of the chair. Good so far. Took a wobbly step toward Dany with the hand out to the side and the other one pressing on her support. Yes. Lifted the other hand to stand on legs that had leaned out from the chubby baby legs of infancy. Come on, Rosie. Tried taking a second step and fell straight backwards onto her rear just as Jon opened the door.
Although it had been happening nearly every time she attempted this, Rose looked thoroughly shocked at her predicament until Jon came to stand over Rose with a mocked look of surprise. "Why are you down there, Rosie?" he asked.
"Papa!" Rose exclaimed, lifting her arms up to her father for assistance. Chuckling, he stooped down and helped stand his daughter upright, leaving her with the chair for support and walking over to the fire.
"Dany?" he called as she stretched her arms out again towards Rose.
"Hmm? Come to Mama, Rosie!"
"Will you quit doing this?"
Rose toppled onto her bottom again as Dany looked behind her, where Jon was standing with the glowing dragon egg in one hand and a basket of pelts in the other. Sheepishness crossed her face as he continued. "Every time I add a pelt to this basket for you or try and get a cloth out of the other basket, you've made a nest!"
"Sorry," she grunted as she scrabbled off the ground and hoisted Rose into her arms, "That's become a habit, hasn't it?"
"May I ask why?"
She shrugged. "It started when Tyrion and Sansa first came and I just haven't stopped. I was feeling...protective, but now it's just like a normal thing to do. Get up, get Rose up, hide the egg in the basket for the day in case anyone comes over."
"And not replace the egg at the end of the day?"
"Well… because...you've been doing that," she murmured lamely, looking up a bit heavy-lidded to try and soften the assumption.
Jon rolled his eyes, but simultaneous replaced the egg onto the mantle and came to kiss Dany's forehead. "I think it's safe on the mantle, Dany," he said, "And maybe it's better we don't keep moving it around?"
Feeling a bit stupid, she nodded, glancing at the silver and gold scales glinting from the mantle. It had not changed from the current quiet brilliance since the first day she had seen it like that on the mantle, when Tyrion and Sansa had come calling. A dark part of her wondered if the egg could possibly be stagnating, unable to do what its clutchmates had done and go from this stage to hatching. How long did it take? Technically, Drogon's egg was thousands of years old before he hatched. But Dany didn't have thousands of years to wait for the egg to hatch. And the Scarlet and Violet hadn't taken that long. But what more could she do save for killing Jon and walking into his funeral pyre? No blood magic, she vowed silently.
Resolutely disinterested in the adornment on her family's mantle, Rose squirmed from Dany's arms as Ghost, done with his nap, joined the three. His nose pressed to Dany's stomach briefly as he came up beside her.
Besides being called Oats, Ghost was in the midst of a larger identity crisis. His protectiveness over Dany from her first pregnancy had returned, although he had the added pressure of wanting to be near Rose as well. Nighttimes were the worst. Nobody could settle with an enormous direwolf running around, torn between laying across Dany, next to Dany, or at the side of Rose's bed. At wits' end, Jon had finally made Ghost stay off their bed and tried to train him into the habit of staying with Rose until Jon and Dany had gone to sleep.
It generally worked and Ghost often ended up spending the whole night with Rose. Although there were still a few mornings when Dany woke up to a large furry head draped over her stomach and red eyes staring at her.
That night, after enjoying the stew, Jon got Rose ready for bed while Dany made her way out to the barn with a torch for her evening routine with Embar. As he ate under the extended roof Jon had made that connected the barn to a newly fenced small paddock, she brushed out his coat, murmuring to him in quiet Dothraki - the only language that should be used for horses, in Dany's opinion. It was a cold night like any other, but no wind was around and Dany relished in the Northern version of warmth.
While Dany loved her family, loved being able to be part of it again instead of feeling so ill, it was with Embar that she felt the most calm. There was something quiet about being with her horse that she never felt with Drogon.
With Drogon, it was always a thrill, that zing in her stomach that was terrifyingly addictive. But with Embar, it was a whispering calm. Her mind would slow down to only focus on the stallion in front of her. She couldn't worry about the nightmares that stalked her sleep, wonder about what was happening in Winterfell, or even let her thoughts wander. There was just peace.
"Want to do a lap?" she asked the liver horse from his side. He stared back at her in response, chewing carefully, and she took it as an agreement. Grinning, as she always did at the thought of riding, Dany led him out of the paddock and took her usual fist of mane in her left hand and hauled herself up onto the enormous stallion's back. Remember to put a block or crate in here, she told herself as she scrambled to sit properly on Embar's back, nearly panting from the effort. Any more pregnant and she doubted that mounting from the ground would be possible.
She urged Embar into a paced walk around the clearing and, after a moment, closed her eyes to listen to his movements. The way his legs worked separately and all together at the same time, the way his feet crunched upon the frosty ground, the warmth of his back and the chill of the air, the rocking of his body like the sea. Dany was smiling again as she dropped her arms from a hold on Embar's mane to stretch them out and enjoy the sensation of floating in the night.
Embar paused suddenly. Opening her eyes, Dany looked to where her horse was staring and saw Jon's figure emerging from the dark next to the house. "Affa," she murmured, stroking his great neck, "Affa, nozho." The stallion relaxed as Jon came closer, staring up at Dany with dark eyes.
"Bit late for a ride," he said lightly, patting Embar on the shoulder. He let Dany walk Embar into the paddock, closing the gate behind them and leaning over to watch his wife dismount. He never spoke much when he watched Dany on horseback, but she could tell his eyes tracked him. Dany smiled privately over the thought, aware that he had yet to act on anything to take any small revenge for the teasing the night they had met Embar.
"Too nice of a night not to," she replied, sliding gently from Embar's back and landing on the ground. With another pat, she turned and walked over to meet Jon at the gate, standing on the first rung of the fence so that they were the same height, noses nearly touching.
"How long were you watching?" she asked, pressing her apparent advantage with a voice low. Her right hand reached to interlace fingers with her husband.
Jon ran a thumb over the top of her hand. "I could have watched for longer," he murmured, nosing past her cheek toward her ear. His lips brushed her ear as he spoke again in a whisper that sent tingles down her spine, "You're breathtaking."
Lightly, Jon nibbled on her lobe, causing Dany's hand to grip his tightly and Jon to chuckle quietly, still continuing.
"Jon," Dany managed to stutter against his jaw.
"Aye?" Jon asked quietly, not moving, but instead kissing below her ear. His right hand had snaked through the topmost space between fence poles to tease her more.
While her mind still worked, Dany took his wandering hand in hers and brought it to open the fence, allowing her to swing out and meet him on the other side with the gate closed behind them. Quickly, she was pressed against the fence, her neck still being voraciously explored.
"Inside," she said vixen-like, slipping from between Jon and the fence and tugging on his hand towards the house, "It's still not too late."
As the summer wanes, I'll be posting less frequently (gotta go get that piece of paper that says I have a Masters degree), but hopefully on a regular schedule.
For the person that asked what kind of horse Embar is: he's based off of a very huge Oldenburg dressage horse (same goofy stripe and everything), but with a more carriage-type look.