In the grey cold of early morning she woke, shaken by tremors running through the arm she lay against. The Hound was dreaming, and shivering, and his hand shook; the other hand fumbled through sleep for the sword beside him. She rose to catch the wrist as it pattered through the loam and stilled it, felt the pulse running fast in it. He blinked awake and lay rigid, looking at her; she watched his vision clear into recognition. He nodded at her, breathed for a moment, shut his eyes again.
She leaned back against the arm and thought of her own dream. It hadn't faded and it hung just behind her eyes; there was still enough wine in her to make vivid the horse underneath her, make the salt spray real. Had she been leading them, leading war? Where was Robb, then? There was no one before me, only the shore. But I'm going home, and Robb's going home, too- If I ride with any army, it should be his, not the black riders, never them. Robb's face rose up wavering in her mind, but something had gone wrong with it- longer, cragged; ah, her father. It was comforting. In a way, Robb now is as my father was. Her father had died, a desperate unfairness- a hole in the world, and one hand that had pulled at the tear to open it had been hers. Robb could stand for him; Robb, beloved and just, to be the salve. If only she could see his face more clearly in her mind. Would he always look as he appeared now, swirled together with her father? No. I won't need to look at him with my memory at all; soon I'll be home and he'll be standing before me, real again. That, too, was comforting; she pressed her cold face into the warmth of the arm and trailed away to sleep.
Even so, even so- she was now standing in the surf, the barren shore at its low tide so far away. She looked down at her skirts floating about her, all laced with seaweed; bubbles were rising before her, and the silt under her feet was giving way. She fell back, her legs splashing through the water and up into the air, wings of droplets, and was caught and held up by the thing rising up through the sea floor. The great head parted the surface of the sea in front of her, green mud sliding from it- the warhorse. Once again, she was astride. Why does it come to carry me? What can it want? As soon as she asked herself the answer came, bright and clear through the unreality- It must have a rider; it cannot run alone. She wound her hand through the mane. What is this? Do I fear it? No- it was fearsome, truly, but she had learned its secret: without a rider it had wallowed under the silt of the sea floor, and had eaten its own heart.
The warhorse rose fully from the sea beneath her, mud and sea-ferns sluicing from it; it stamped, and tossed, and trembled there. She reached to pass her hand over the wet poll. Is it evil? She couldn't say; it was wild, but evil no longer seemed as clear to her as it had before. Had it been evil, before, and I changed it by riding it? No, it was still the same, and would always be- only, she knew its secret now; that was what had changed. She leaned forward to the silky ear and whispered into it.
They rode to the shore, and past it. Over the sand, the high waving dune grass, the grey piles of driftwood; back to the wood, of course, and back to the green warship of heaven that sailed there.
She woke on her own and with a touch of headache at her temples; it was midday and the sun was flooding the inlet. She rose and rubbed her eyes, fixed the braid, looked for the Hound. He'd gone- she could hear no steps in the wood- but the horse was ambling on the ledge, grazing. In the light of day he was only a horse again; great and black, but a horse. She felt foolish. She rose and dug through the bag, and sat on the ledge to eat her honey bread, and hummed, and waited for the Hound to return.
She tried to keep her mind light, concentrated on the sun gleaming on the moss and its beauty, but her thoughts kept dipping back into the night before, and into her dream. It had been so unsettling. She would never choose to ride with Them, but the horse somehow had compelled her. Its wet poll under her hand had been as familiar as the ruff that fringed Lady's throat, and had given her the same pang.
Her thoughts turned to the Hound and what he'd said the night before. If he killed his brother- what would it win him? Something he craved, maybe, but not a face made whole again. Her own face, lovely as it was, wrung approval and smiles from all; she thought of how the gusting laughter had stilled as his scar had entered the inn. He'd had a lifetime of that and there was no repayment for it, even if he killed his brother every night til the end of time. Joffrey's gold curls appeared before her then, pouting. How many nights in her dreams had she stood again on the ledge, and, smiling, turned and shoved hard; in her dreams he fell so fast that he shattered when he hit the flagstones. She could've done it, she would've. She licked the honey that smeared her palms, eyes narrowed.
She imagined his death in great detail, sitting there on the ledge and swinging her slippers; she gritted her teeth and sucked honeyed crumbs from her fingers and smiled to herself.
Then a breeze ran low through the creekbed and swung the mossy vines about, and the birds flew from them cackling, and she remembered that she could push Joff every night til the end of time and it would never make her father rise from his stone box. So she sighed to herself and rubbed her sore temples and lay back flat with her arms above her head, and thought over instead the things she'd left behind in her wardrobe at Winterfell, and whether they would fit her, now.
The sun was lovely, seen through the canopy like this. She spread her arms wide, felt the moss dense and resilient under her like fur. Then quiet steps wove through the brush behind her, closer and closer, and the Hound was walking over to her laughing, and telling her she looked like a sacrifice lying there, and handing down to her a fistful of blackberries in a rag.