In which ASoIaF stops pretending to be a low fantasy setting when all the magic comes back, thanks to a misplaced demonically corrupted Silver dragon. Its lack will no longer be an issue for anyone. Or anything. Good does not always triumph over Evil. What has been lost can not always be reclaimed. What has been forgotten cannot always be remembered. Some decay is irreversible. Winter is coming, but it will not do so alone. If the world doesn't end in fire, salt or shadow first?

It will end in ice.

Rust

The Eyrie

Elbert Arryn dreamed of flying.

It wasn't a rare occurrence. The first time he'd seen a man executed by the Moon Door as a boy, he had night terrors of coming across that Weirwood door in a darkened High Hall. The pale white wood with the crescent moon carved into it would loom large over him. The three bronze bars that should be holding it closed missing. He would be unable to halt his approach and the door would slam open. The howling winds would sweep in and drag him out, sending him tumbling out into the sky where screeching falcons and demanding ravens flew.

The Eyrie was no place for anyone afraid of heights, having been built on the shoulder of the Giant's Lance mountain peak. So Elbert had taken the time to bodily fling himself against the Moon Door and its bronze bars, solely to satisfy himself that it wouldn't open without cause. He went to bed with a sore shoulder for that entire moon.

A Lord Arryn afraid of his own future seat wasn't proper either.

Fuck proper, then.

The sheer cliffs surrounding the small, but grand keep and the tall towers wouldn't be nearly so bad if he could just sprout wings whenever he wanted and fly to safety. If he were to be completely honest, it wasn't the thought of being high up in the air that got him. The view was amazing, after all. It wasn't even the thought of falling, really.

It was the godsdamned sudden stop.

There was no need for the way up the mountain to be so narrow and steep, you couldn't ride a horse up but had to use a bloody mule, who makes people climb up handholds in rock to get to your keep and the wind was murder -

The bird in his dreams called out in shrill, trilling chirps that echoed across the mountains. It was almost, but not quite that of an eagle. It was bolder and deeper, as if coming from a much larger bird.

Just don't drop me, he thought, inexplicably fond of the animal for all that it had taken to visiting his sleep for the past three days.

It trilled in response and there was a snap of flapping wings.

The sky above them was a soft red glow. He could not see the sun, moon or stars but below the Vale of Arryn stretched out as they soared above the clouds. The Mountains of the Moon were stately, inhospitable snow capped peaks crowding in around the long narrow Vale of Arryn. The valley was mostly brown and gray with patches of white snow. He was too high up to see the small lakes and streams clearly, but further out were the shadow of the Fingers and the cold coast of the Narrow Sea that lay between them and Braavos. Elbert turned his head and the bird responded to his half-formed thought. They turned away from the Fingers, back towards the Eyrie. The white stone of the seven slim towers fairly gleamed. Alyssa's Tears spilled endlessly over the nearby cliff, the vapor and mist of the water forming the very same rainbow that inspired Roland Arryn to build his new seat there, in the light of the Seven.

Well.

What really inspired him was the grandeur of the Lannisters' Casterly Rock and the Hightower of Hightower. He competed, and in Elbert's opinion still lost, but it made for a nice story.

His bird called and the falcons surrounding the white keep scattered as they approached, but a black bird, a raven, flew directly into his face.

Elbert cried out, raising his hands as the half-burned animal shrieked. It batted his head with its wings and scratched his forearms with its talons as it tried to peck at his forehead. There was the sensation of powerful muscles between his legs as if he were astride a horse, brown and white plumage out the corner of his eye, the glint of golden talons.

His bird screeched, a harsh, angry sound and it chased the foul creature away.

I am yours, he thought with relief as he lowered his hands. Never fear.

There was an answering chirp.

He should be afraid of it, he knew.

The same dream three nights in a row was some kind of sign. Or perhaps he should wait until he made it to seven nights in a row to take it as a sign from the Seven-Who-Are-One. He couldn't imagine what dreaming of flying through the clouds as if he were the First Men legends of the Winged Knight or the Griffin King coming again would have to do with the Seven? He had never been one to concern himself overmuch with the details.

Perhaps he would ask the local septon or the maester, perhaps he would not.

I will not let any drive you away from me, Elbert thought. His bird called out happily and they soared together.

Elbert Arryn dreamed of flying.

All too soon, he woke up.

The low ceiling of the Gates of the Moon with the wooden rafters and pale gray stone greeted his eyes.

At least he had that still.

The first of his uncle's wards, Robert Baratheon, heir to Storm's End had yet to wake from the winter chill that was burning him up from the inside out.

The second, Eddard Stark of Winterfell, had woken up blind.

Elbert rose from his bed, tossing aside the heavy furs. The wind was not as loud as it was in the Eyrie, but they still howled furiously, wailing outside the walls of the stout keep. He splashed his face with the cold water left in the bowl for him.

"This nonsense better do away with itself before I inherit," he murmured softly to no one. "Gods know I'll have enough on my plate." The blond haired green eyed reflection with the Arryn nose and dark blonde stubble on his chin had a wretched, miserable smile as water dripped down his face. "Get your head out of the clouds, man."

But falcons were made to fly.

"You have a duty," Elbert whispered. He splashed his face again and squeezed his eyes shut in a hard blink. "You cannot waste away dreaming of what could never be."

He washed his hands and got dressed. He caught himself casting a longing look back at his bed and bolted out the door like a demon from the Seven Hells was after him.

"Shi - " Elbert spun to avoid trampling a maidservant carrying a food tray past his door. "Quick on your feet," he said admiring the way she caught herself against the wall so she didn't drop her burden. She was a pretty enough girl, buxom with dark red hair. He remembered seeing her around a few times. "For my uncle?"

"Yes - " She started, but he'd already snatched a small loaf of bread and some hard cheese off the tray. "Milord."

He grinned at the poorly hidden irritation in her voice. "Then you'll tell him I've already broken my fast, would you?"

The maid smiled back tightly. "I'll be sure to tell Lord Arryn where half his meal went, yes."

Oh, he liked this one.

"Careful," Elbert warned lightly as he turned to leave, waving his cheese at her. "Keep that up and I might just want to keep you, you know?"

She curtsied low enough to hide her expression then and said nothing at all. Insolent, but that was all well and good. He certainly didn't mind having to work for it.

Her name, next time.

The halls of the Gates of the Moon were short, but wide, fitting the stout gatehouse castle with its deep moat that guarded the way to the seat of House Arryn. The entire keep was made out of the pale gray stone mined from the Mountains of the Moon and it had the luxury of a few narrow windows, currently covered over with oiled leather flaps to keep the wind out. The soft red glow creeping around the edges along with the cold wisps of a breeze almost tricked him into thinking it was later than it was.

The bleeding red star still burned in the sky. It had been a moon since the Stars Fell.

They have all adjusted in their own way.

The inner ward of the castle was just beyond the Great Hall, down the stairs through the pillared gallery. Winter was still going strong, covering the roughly triangular shape in the white of snow instead of green grass or beige sand. Elbert's breath steamed in the cold air as he strode towards the now familiar sight of a wooly headed Northerner out and about with just an undershirt and breeches on.

"Uncle Jon's still trying to figure out what to tell your father, Ned." Elbert deliberately dragged his feet as he rounded the boy to announce his position. "He is not getting much further than 'Rickard, your son is now blind. My apologies.'"

Jon Arryn had been unamused, but Elbert had laughed himself sick.

If he didn't laugh, he'd cry.

Eddard Stark snorted softly. "Make sure he does not forget the 'cannot freeze' part," the young wolf said solemnly. The boy's iced over gray eyes looked up at him as he wiggled his bare toes into the snow. "That might be important."

Elbert raised both eyebrows. "You mean, you didn't come like that?"

Ned sighed the way he always did for him and Robert and Elbert almost smothered his smile until he remembered it wouldn't be seen.

That was almost enough to kill the grin by itself, but not quite.

"Starks have ice in their veins," he offered lightly. "Isn't that what they say?"

"Aye," Ned said gently as the wind howled around them. "I am from the North, my lord."

"A moon ago, you knew better than to brave the winter in nothing but your underclothes," Elbert drawled. "And you were from the North then too."

"You won't catch me like this in a Northern winter, Lord Elbert." Ned had a tiny smile on his face. "This is just summer snows."

"I see, so I was just imagining you bundled up with the rest of us."

"Just so."

The boy was looking in his direction, but as always now, it overestimated his height and was just to the left over his shoulder. Ned looked…

Small.

He was a decade younger than himself, a boy of two and ten but he looked some years younger still. He would likely never match his older brother Brandon in height, but he had the same dark hair and long Stark face. Northmen were usually pale and Ned was no different, but since his eyes iced over, the boy could put a hand on the Weirwood Throne and they'd lose sight of where the white wood ended and he began.

He'd almost gotten used to those iced eyes of his. He'd seen blind men before. The Ninepenny Wars had not been so long ago. Men blinded in battle that had the eye scooped out of the socket, the eye turned white from the scarring left behind from infections or abscess, or with the eye lazy and crooked with wide pupils from bad blows to the head. It was unlike the illness of the eyes that came upon men when they got old with the cloudy, white patches, but iced.

The same thin ice that crept along the shores of slow moving streams and deep lakes covered the gray of his eyes, as if it could melt as tears, but never did. At times, there would be beads of blood at the corners and he'd know Ned had been rubbing them again.

They stung him sometimes and nothing the maester made helped.

"...no one is helping guide you out here, is there?" He watched Ned's thin shoulders hunch and his small smile dropped. "I've been having dreams!" Elbert blurted out, stricken. "The same one - for the third night now, so if you - what I mean is, I do not believe you cursed. Or we are both cursed."

So you can talk to me, he meant.

His uncle was his father, in deed even if not in name after his own Ronnel Arryn died of a bad belly the same year of his birth. It was such that he never wondered about him beyond some curiosity and it was the same way that after Robert and Eddard arrived, he had never needed to wonder further about baby siblings.

They were gloriously unrepentant burs-in-his-saddle half the time, but he'd die for them.

"You do not believe the Seven can return my sight, my lord?" Ned asked. He sounded like it was a simple question, but his shoulders remained tense.

"What I think," Elbert began slowly. "Is that the Seven have better things to do than to torment a child over his faith." He frowned and then grunted, "That was ill done of Septon Doller. If they needed to take your sight to get your attention, they weren't deserving of it in the first place."

Ned shrugged a shoulder. "He learned I lost the use of my eyes, not my fists."

Elbert sighed.

He should say something to that, but Ned had already taken his punishment without complaint and it was not like the boy could avoid the sept harder, so he let it be.

Robert was - is the very definition of boisterous, but Eddard was trouble in his own quiet way.

"I dream of flying," Elbert admitted as he looked to the sky where the bleeding star hung, forever falling.

It should have fallen by now. He'd heard his Lord Uncle question the maester thoroughly on the topic. It should have passed.

The word 'unnatural' was on many lips.

"There should be a weirwood here," Ned said seriously and Elbert looked back at him to see him staring at the patch of fine dirt and snow he always seemed to find himself in front of these days.

Can the blind stare?

Elbert accepted the subject change. "Ground is too rocky, it could never support one." He placed a careful hand on Ned's shoulder. "...here? Not the Eyrie?"

It was the same answer there, but he'd never heard Ned express real interest in having one after he first arrived some five years ago.

"Here," Ned said firmly. His head moved as if he was going to look back at him, but thought better of it. His shoulders stiffened further. "...that is what the wolf says."

What the wolf says.

Elbert felt a chill creep up his spine and an itch tickle the back of his head as if he had suddenly become aware of someone's gaze. He looked around, but there was no one else in the inner ward for it was early and all would be heading to the Great Hall to break their fast and to stay out of the cold.

"I assume the wolf is why you've been able to come down from the Falcon Tower without breaking your neck."

Elbert didn't question whether the wolf existed, even if Ned was the only one able to see it.

Lying was not something the young Stark enjoyed doing. He would, Elbert had no doubt about that, but it would not be for a trivial matter or the usual childhood foolishness. Eddard would say bold as brass to your face that he and Robert snuck some strongwine last night or that he struck the septon for being a cunt that day, take his lumps stoically and move on.

Robert would puff up like an angry cat on the defense before the words even came out of his mouth if he was telling the truth, but thought he wouldn't be believed. Ned wore his heart on his sleeve.

You just had to actually think to look for it among the snow.

Under his hand, he felt Ned relax. "Aye."

"The bird I dream of is a bloody big animal," Elbert offered. "Brown and white feathers, golden talons and we fly all across the Vale."

"Like the Winged Knight," Ned said and Elbert squeezed his shoulder lightly.

"I believe it to be an eagle of some kind, perhaps a very large sea eagle. Big enough to carry a man on its back."

He never saw the Vale from the sky and maps were expensive to make and had only the important details, but somehow Elbert knew that if he took to the sky right now, awake, he would see the same view as his dreams.

Ned moved his hand, reaching out to trail his fingers through the air. "It's as big as your horse."

Elbert paused.

"The wolf?"

His horse was a destrier stallion bred for battle. It was almost taller than he was.

"The direwolf." Ned said. "Like my house sigil."

Elbert made a noise in his throat. "I count myself fortunate that they are extinct then."

Ned looked towards him and there was his small smile again. "No, they aren't. They just aren't seen south of the Wall. Much."

Ah.

So Elbert was never going north of the Neck.

"Wipe that grin off your face!" Elbert demanded and Ned obediently did so, but the cheeky shit still looked amused so he cuffed him gently. "Come, let us get some food in your belly. I can hear it."

The Great Hall of the Gates of the Moon was of a far different look than the High Hall of the Eyrie, being both far wider than it was narrow and holding four hearths that were kept burning day and night. In the coldest years, lords and smallfolk would sleep on the benches and the fires used for slow roasts and stews rather than to make everyone wait for food to be brought in from the kitchens. It was a practical room for a practical keep. The High Hall in comparison seemed made for ceremonies and dances with its blue-veined white marble walls, silk carpet and fluted pillars. The luxury evident in the glass of the narrow arched windows.

In truth, the seat of House Arryn was the smallest of the great castles for lack of room on the mountain peak. Perhaps old king Roland Arryn could have commissioned a bridge over Alyssa's Tears as he heard of Volantis built up on both sides of the Rhoyne River, but then there was the issue of stability.

He won't say he had night terrors of the Giant's Lance peak crumbling away beneath the keep, but he had a few concerns.

And the Eyrie was unlivable for years on end during winter anyway!

If he surprised Jon's bones by keeping his household at the Gates and letting the Weirwood Throne collect dust up there, the old man simply hadn't been paying his heir any attention.

Elbert accosted one of the staff for a wooden bowl of preserved fruits and nuts, a thin slice of buttered bread and balanced a mug of weak beer as he made his way back to the high table. Jon's seat was empty, but he already knew his uncle had broken his fast in his rooms. He took his own seat to the right of it, nodding at several of the lords already sitting such as Rendan Belmore, the current Steward of the keep and Vardis Egen, a knight of the household guard.

"Here we are." Then they began the dance that after a moon had begun to feel routine. He placed the mug by Ned's left hand with a loud clunking sound so he knew where it was, picking out a good mix of fruit and nuts before seeking out the boy's cold fingers to place the food in his palm, repeating after every mouthful as Ned blankly stared ahead over the hall, seeing nothing.

The mood was as subdued as it had been since the Stars Fell. Robert was still abed and Maester Colemon was optimistic about his chances. Even if it had been a moon with no improvement, he had yet to worsen and die like the others.

"I've heard the news that Lord Estermont is to visit his nephew," Elbert said, if nothing else than to distract himself from the suspicious stares from the lower table.

They were all familiar enough with the effects of having stayed too long in the cold. The loss of sensation and then the return of it with a bloody vengeance, like the air itself was burning your fingers and ears. The shivers. The stuff nose and sneezing. Even in spring, the harsh winds coming down from the mountains could turn a man's lips blue. The Eyrie was second only to the North in bearing the brunt of winter.

Ned had since stopped showing any signs of warmth. A living corpse. The only hint of red on his cold skin came from the fire at his back that played strangely across his iced over eyes.

Elbert saw why the septon had reacted as he did, he just didn't much care. Eddard was Eddard. Second son of the Lord Paramount of the North, Rickard Stark, ward of his own Lord Uncle and a good lad.

He refused to entertain the odds of the boy being hung as a witch if he had been anyone else.

"The babe pulled through, Renly I believe his name was," Elbert mused.

"That is good," Ned said softly.

Lord Baratheon was said to be glued to the king's side with hints of some malady in King's Landing without detail, so he couldn't travel to see Robert, his heir. Gods, he hoped they weren't about to see the return of the Great Spring Sickness. Brynden Rivers had burned the capital's dead with wildfire, because normal fire wouldn't have done the job fast enough.

"Baratheons are made sturdy. Robert will wake, I assure you."

Ned turned his head. "Wake different?"

Like me, Elbert heard in the silence.

"Mayhaps," he shrugged with a nonchalance he did not feel. Ned did not burn with fever. He froze over. Elbert had gotten through the night the Stars Fell seemingly unaffected, but with increasingly insistent dreams.

He didn't know what it all meant.

"If you wished to return home…" Elbert found himself offering. The North was a wild, strange land with its own legends and tales that might help, but Ned shook his head.

"Not until spring comes, my lord," Ned said softly.

Elbert hummed. "The Citadel believes it will come early. Barely two years of winter this time."

"Yes," Ned intoned and looked to his right at an empty space. Elbert swallowed hard.

The wolf.

"It will."

And what a spring it will be! The sigil of Eddard Stark's house cackled with the genderless voice of someone old, even older than Old Nan, with dust and bones in its throat. Enjoy it to the fullest, pup, before its end.

Winter is coming, Ned thought his house words and he felt Elbert press some food, dried berries by the feel, into his hand.

The Grand Hall was a shifting, shapeless mass of shadows and light and moving images flowing past him like a rushing river. It was as if every person he saw was a Faceless Man assassin, ever changing their faces, surfacing and drowning out of sight with the passage of time. The history of the Gates of the Moon was a long one and he was not yet skilled enough to separate the strands from each other.

He saw it all at once. It was confusing at best, but it was better than nothing.

It was better than nothing.

Since the wolf came to him, Ned dreamed while awake with his eyes wide open.

Winter has always been coming, the wolf chuffed as it towered over him as a steady presence with eyes of gold. It responded to his thoughts as if they were words spoken out loud. Its coat was a dark gray mingled with bronze and emerald strands, bronze fangs and bronze claws offset by the fluffiest tail Ned had ever seen or felt.

It is ever consuming and ever consumed, a circle with no end nor beginning. What is one grasping mouth to the ceaseless hunger it feeds?

Ned thought about the cold winters his father spoke of. He chewed his berries and knew that even now the people of the North were cinching their belts and rationing to hold out for as long as they could through the snowstorms. There was no way of knowing when winter would end, but Winterfell had never needed a white raven from the Citadel to announce the season's arrival.

Everyone in the North knew Winter had Come when the white winds blew.

His father said it roared like a wild beast from the far North. You could see it coming, a solid wall of white like a mountain avalanche of snow rushing in, swallowing trees and roads and keeps whole. If any were caught in the wilds unaware…

A lone wolf dies, but the pack survives, Ned thought.

For a moment, a group of men arguing fiercely became clear in front of them. They wore iron armor and furs and one had a silver circlet on his head, but before he could catch any more details, they melted back into the shifting waters of history.

The direwolf let its tongue hang out of its mouth in a dog-like grin and its golden eyes were crinkled in mirth. And who is your pack, I wonder?

My family. Wild and brave Brandon, the firstborn and heir to the North. Adventurous and loud Lyanna who had been begging father for riding lessons when he left to foster in the Vale. Little Benjen, barely more than a babe toddling after his siblings.

And Father, tall and strong, a true lord.

For a moment, he thought he saw Rickard Stark on one knee with his head bowed and hand outstretched on the trunk of a white tree. His eyes stung.

The wolf laughed at him. Ah, mortal minds, capable of so much and so little at once.

It stood and padded closer, passing completely through the shadow of a shadow that passed for the table before him.

This boy, the wolf spoke, breathing over Elbert Arryn's brilliant plumage. Ned saw when the heir of Arryn's dreams started, because he was able to see him at all.

It wasn't an eagle. It looked mostly like an eagle, but there was no eagle Ned knew of that had the body and back legs of a lion.

Andal, you would call him, yes?

Ned would. Elbert kept the Seven and was descended of Artys Arryn, the Falcon knight and Andal warlord that had defeated King Robar Royce of Runestone.

Wrong! The wolf snapped its jaws at him and Ned jumped.

"Ned?" Elbert asked. Concern was clear in his voice. Ned looked towards the strange bird and then at the wolf, warily.

"I believe I was just told that you are a First Man, my lord."

The bird that was Elbert tilted its head questioningly.

"Well, my mother was a Belmore," the man said and Ned loved him for simply accepting his words. "You remember them from your studies, I hope?"

"Six silver bells in three, two, one formation on a purple field," Ned recited.

"Their seat?"

"Strongsong."

"Words?"

He hesitated, mind blank.

"'The Bells Toll Loud'," Elbert said warmly. "It was taken from the Battle of the Seven Stars when they were defeated alongside the Royce king against the Falcon Knight. They claim they announced the arrival of the Andal armies with bronze gongs, the mountain valley making the sound echo."

Ned felt very foolish.

Names are words and words are wind. What use is fickle faith? Forgotten traditions? The wolf replied as it prowled behind Ned's back. Only blood matters.

Torrhen Stark met Aegon the Conqueror with his brother, Brandon Snow at his side. The South hid their bastards away as unworthy to be in the presence of kings. But Brandon was there, because trueborn or not, he was a Stark.

Good, the wolf growled softly.

"What brought that on?" Elbert asked.

"We are talking of wolf packs," Ned offered. Elbert grabbed his hand from where it had drifted on the table, turned it palm up and placed a small handful of nuts within. "And I have been reminded that I have much to learn still."

"In your studies? Or…is it…teaching you." He sounded like he didn't know what to make of the latter option.

"Both," Ned answered honestly, sipping at his beer.

Elbert is pack. Ned had no trouble accepting this. Durran Godsgrief was a legendary First Man king. House Durrandon became Baratheon during Aegon's Conquest when Orys Baratheon married the last daughter of the house, Argella. Robert is pack.

Your pack is the living and your enemy is death, the direwolf intoned with a voice that creaked like rusted hinges and cracked like tree bark. Your ancestors did naught but sever the tips off seeking fingers and built great works in the desperate hope of stemming the insurmountable weight of the ever-approaching tide.

For the first time in a moon, Ned felt cold. You are speaking of the Wall.

The Wall, the wolf sneered. Ned had never heard Brandon the Builder's greatest accomplishment spoken of with such disgust. Mortal cowardice made manifest. For all that death nips at your heels, you are so quick, so eager to turn a blind eye to the truth of your history.

The North Remembers, Ned thought.

Oh, child, the wolf crooned softly. We watched you forget.

"Lord Elbert?" Ned spoke up, voice shaking. The young knight cursed under his breath as he clutched at Ned's cold hand and Ned did not blame him. "I think the wolf is an old god."

The old gods did not have names.

For names are words and words are wind.

"Of course it is," Elbert replied tiredly. "That's why it wants a Weirwood."

Is it? Ned asked in thought. To see through?

Even as he thought the question, it did not seem right. For it saw him, yet there was no Weirwood around. He felt Elbert drape an arm about his shoulders, pulling him into the taller man's side.

The tree has long since ceased bleeding, the wolf answered bluntly. Do not mistake that for death.

The Moon Door is made of Weirwood, Ned remembered. The Weirwood Throne of the Arryn kings. A corner of his waking dream spun into the High Hall of the Eyrie from on top of the dais, looking down to the carved wooden doors, then it melted away.

You are the most peculiar greenseer we have ever seen. The direwolf sounded almost disturbed and confused. The golden eyed stare was a heavy weight as Ned sharply turned his head towards it, astonished.

Greenseers were legends.

They are servants. You will be made great or we will discard you and find another.

Ned stiffened, but he met its stare. He refused to balk at the old god's cold words. He was a Stark. His way was the Old Way and it was bleak and brutal. In the North, when winters ran long, the whitebeards would leave their families to 'go hunting' so they would have one less mouth to feed. He will not be a millstone around anyone's neck.

Eddard Stark would be great, or he will die trying.

His vision twisted again. A desperate, sad family with a red star or sun sigil pierced by a golden arrow or spear was combing a deep and wide river for the daughter it took and would not give back. They could not see into the water, but for that singular moment, Ned could.

She was not drowning.

The wolf chuffed and its tail thumped the stone. Then a pact we must forge between us, by bronze and stone, sea and sky.

Ice and fire, Ned completed the phrase.

All is not lost if that yet remains, the wolf yipped, pleased as fleeting images of past and present spun around them both. The silver brought destruction and salvation both. It sniffed contemptuously as it circled on the stone floor of the Great Hall and lay down. We shall not thank it.

The silver?

It is truth and lies in the same being. Past and future inhabit the same space, the same word, the same thought, the wolf explained. Unraveling the symphony into a song of its own making until all doors are open and shut, the observers and the observed one and the same.

I don't understand, Ned pleaded helplessly, but the wolf closed its eyes.

You will.

"Ned?"

"I am well, Lord Elbert," he replied softly and he nibbled on his bread.

Since the wolf, Eddard Stark dreamed while awake.

Robert Baratheon dreamed of the storm.

If you wanted to be poetic.

If you asked him, he was dreaming of his many times great grandmother who happened to be a fucking cunt.

"What was that, boy?"

"Fuck you!"

Robert sputtered as a wave of sea water crashed over him and his small boat. He lunged for the other side, throwing his weight against it to keep it from rolling over and spilling him into the turbulent dark sea. Lightning lit up the iron bellied clouds boiling furiously above him constantly, followed by claps of thunder. Every time the lightning flashed, he was able to see to the far horizon where the silhouettes of mythical giant sea dragons reared up from the water, chased by the thick, grasping tendrils of what could only be a legendary kraken.

He heaved as the boat steadied, sailing over the swell of a large wave. The shadow of some large creature passing underneath and a small wave splashed over the side to slap his face.

"I am saving your life!"

"No, you're not!" Robert screamed back into the storm. He shoved his coal black hair out of his eyes, lamenting putting off trimming it until it was too late. He flung out a hand at the endless, troubled ocean and cloud covered sky. "I'm going to die out here!"

"Do you want to?"

"No!"

"Then don't!" The wind howled back.

Robert rode through another tall wave that broke and crashed over him, forcing him to bail water out by his cupped hands as he coughed out sea water.

"Why me!" He called out.

"Too young! Too rigid! Too old and set in his ways!" The wild laughter of the wind gleefully echoed through the clouds as Robert hung on to his boat for dear life through the waves. He had to beg the crazy bint for it. He'd be dead already if he had to swim. "Am I to let the flame have you?"

As if summoned by her words, a great gout of fire seared across the sky. It split the clouds in twain and the sky beyond it, flipped upside down as if Robert was peering into a mirror was a twisted boneyard of fire.

It was an image straight out of the Seven Hells.

Live volcanoes spewed glowing rock, ash and smoke down at him, molten rivers crisscrossed over blackened, barren land as great ribs and fingers and teeth of bone reached for him and Robert shrunk back from it with a squawk of fear.

The clouds swiftly returned to their place.

"You are mine," the wind growled as thunder. "My daughter's last disappointment!"

"And you wonder why she ran off to Durran Godsgrief!?" Robert's smart mouth blurted out and the wind snarled. There was a snap! And the ropes holding the pitiful sail of his small boat steady waved free. "Fuck!"

He lunged for the nearest rope before the sail itself flew away, hissing as the wet fiber rubbed his palms raw.

"The storm is approaching, blood of my blood!"

Stomach sinking, Robert looked up and saw the small prow of his pathetic boat was headed right for a dark curtain of rain, the clouds almost black and hanging low as arcs of lightning swept down into the water as great waves the size of castles rose up. He swore as he wrapped the rope around his forearm and clung to the thin mast.

"Sail through it!"

"You cannot be serious!"

The wind laughed.

"You broke my fucking sail!" Robert raged as his boat sailed over a wave and was briefly airborne. When it plunged back down into the sea, water splashed up on either side. "I'll die!"

"Yours is the fury," the wind mocked him, cruel. "Withstand and you will be acknowledged as my son, my legacy."

"I don't want to be your fucking son!" Robert bellowed. He had parents! A kind mother! A proud father! By the gods, he had two brothers now! He had Jon and Elbert and Ned! "I want to go home!"

"What does the wind or sea care for your wants?" Was the sneering reply. "Live or die, your choice."

"That's no choice!" Robert choked out, gripping the wood until his knuckles turned white. He was drenched to the bone, freezing and feverish at the same time as the storm closed in. The waves were huge, two, three men high already and vicious.

He was - he was tired.

It felt like he'd been at sea for years. Every inch of him trembled with exhaustion, fear, desperation and rage keeping him awake. If he fell asleep, would he wake for true? Or would it be his end?

This - this had to be the last of it.

It had to be.

The wind spoke again, for the last time before he passed completely into the howling. It sounded almost gentle, soft enough to nearly drown in the clashing of the rain and waves. It sounded as tired as he and a small - tiny, really almost non-existent frisson of pity worked its way into his heart.

"Life or death is the only choice that matters," his grandmother murmured.

Robert wisely didn't reply.

He just held on tight through the storm.