A/N: Prompt word: Blaze.

02x03, 'What is Dead May Never Die'

Their dire predicament seems to have stretched on for an eternity, and there has still been no word from Kovarro or Aggo. Jorah wonders if they found an oasis somewhere and decided not to return. He wonders if they've met the same fate as Rakharo.

The days are listless. The Khalasar shuffles around the small encampment, corpse-like, barely issuing two words to one another. Talking takes energy they do not have. The three dragons are emaciated. They're down to their last water. Their rations ran out yesterday.

Daenerys must shoulder all of these worries. She too says little, growing weaker by the day, unable to drum up any words of solace as they burn beneath the harsh sun.

The night compels them to speak, if only to keep the monsters at bay; Daenerys is never far from his side.

She tips her head back. "You know, the sky over this place is beautiful, isn't it?"

Jorah picks out the thousand pricks of stars glittering overhead. "It is. This place enhances it."

His morbid attempt at humour raises a laugh. She leans back on her hands, fingernails sinking into the sand. "A terrible kind of beauty?"

"Something like that yes."

"People could say that about dragons."

He casts her a sideways look. "I wouldn't say they were wrong, Khaleesi. There is a terrible kind of beauty about dragons." Their scales glisten a hundred colours when the sunlight reflects on them. Their thin, withered wings are majestic. The sound of dragon song is a haunting melody.

But he's heard the stories too. How four thousand men burned in the Field of Fire when Aegon descended on Balerion the Black Dread. How dragon tore apart dragon in the Dance, talons ripping scales from bone, blood steaming hotter than flame, a gruesome tragedy.

Daenerys purses her lips. He's quick to appease her.

"They're still the most beautiful things in Essos," he says.

That makes her smile again, and she goes back to contemplating the stars. Jorah remains silent, wrestling with the swirling feelings in his stomach.

They're an inferno. And he will burn.