HELAENA
Helaena Targaryen was fidgeting with a tiny ball of yarn in the flickering candlelight.
She was supposed to be crocheting. Instead she was spreading half the thread on the table in no pattern in particular. Now she was holding half a ball, now she was batting it from one hand to the other as it rolled unevenly across the surface. Her eyes trailed after the thread. It calmed her down. It was good.
They thought her not right in the head. That was an accursed lie, but a lie she was happy to live with, for it was not wholly untrue. Here she was, daughter to a dragon, wife to another, and mother to three, mourning the passing of her lord father alone, by fidgeting with a ball of yarn. No sane lady does this. Her mother's words, not her own.
The very idea of death was bouncing around her head, like the ball of yarn between her palms. She tried to grasp it, but it eluded her like a puff of smoke. It had always been like that. It had always been a struggle to understand things so blatantly obvious to others, just as it had been a struggle to make others understand that which was blatantly obvious to her.
A knock on the door brought Helaena back to reality, but only just. She blinked and shifted in her seat. "Come in," she breathed.
Into the chamber went a slender figure, draped in dark green. Her face was plain and gaunt, and her make-up was not particularly striking. She wore her curly hair, amber under the candlelight, in a bun tight and rigid.
She closed the door behind her quietly, and curtsied. "With your permission, Your Grace," she said. "I convey a message from Her Grace the Queen. She would rather you rest well." The woman paused, and Helaena made an attempt to look her in the eye. "For there shall be more struggles most certainly in this time of grief, and you must be strong for your lord husband. For your children."
In many ways her servants and ladies-in-waiting were as respectful as they were patronizing. Half-mad Helaena, they called her in some dark recesses, no doubt. Never in front of her, but Helaena could feel the whispers.
Helaena let the ball of yarn fall to the carpet. Now she was more comfortable looking at the lady-in-waiting, her look turned into a stare. She racked her memory. What is her name? It came to Helaena she had never quite asked that one particular lady-in-waiting for her name despite how much time she must have spent in her family's company. Helaena was not good at remembering faces. She was one of the throngs of the Red Keep, a blur in the night like every other, wearing green as a show of loyalty to her mother's House,
She stared at the woman for long. Too long: Helaena had forgotten to blink. Mother always told her she must try blinking more, and smiling more, on top of a litany of other reminders. She could do that – most of the time – but not on the night after her father passed away.
"Your Grace-" the lady-in-waiting spoke again, her voice hesitant.
And Helaena spoke her mind. "What's your name, my lady?" she asked.
The wet nurse trembled. "Your Grace, I-..."
"I insist," Helaena said. "What is your name? I mean no harm, my lady" she added, and hoped she got her point across.
"Your Grace," she woman bowed. "My name is Jenna, of House Tyrell."
Helaena nodded. "Younger sister of the late Lord Tyrell of Highgarden?" She remembered the name. "I am sorry for your House's loss." Lord Theo Tyrell the Younger, so named after their House's illustrious forebear, passed away unnaturally young just the year before, leaving an infant Lyonel Tyrell to carry the name and the title.
"Thank you, Your Grace," the woman said. "Sorrowful as my brother's passing is, our loss pales in compare to yours."
"You would rather I sleep?" she asked equally earnestly. What would she see, closing her eyes? Would she see her father? If she would, the shadow that should descend into her sleep, would it truly be her lord father, or an imagined idea of him? The thought hurt her head.
"Her Grace the Queen so advises," the wet-nurse said.
"And she advises a great many other things," Helaena said. "I must need abide by her. But it can be difficult." She stood up, and proceeded to the more spacious bench near the moonlit window. She rested her back against one of the feathery pillows, and patted softly on the other. "Come sit with me, my lady Jenna, if you will."
Jenna Tyrell hesitated. She would have little choice but to comply. She sat down, gingerly, stiffly. Her back was not touching the pillow.
"Are the children asleep?"
"Soundly, Your Grace," Jenna said. "Their Graces the Princes and Princess are the very picture of childly decorum."
"They do not know their grandfather has passed away."
"They do not, Your Grace."
"I do wonder," Helaena asked suddenly, "if he did love me."
"Naturally, Your Grace," Jenna said. Helaena did not deign to disagree. It was not a handmaiden's place to comment on the state of the royal family's bond either way.
So Helaena nodded slowly, She inched herself away from the moonlight – for some reason the moon was bright, too bright – and let her thoughts flow free once more.
"Mayhaps," Helaena said. "just as he loved my brothers."
That she said without irony. Just like Helaena who never knew how to express the most troubling of her dreams, her father never knew how to express his love for his children. But he was around watching from afar when Aegon was training; he asked often about Aemond's progress with his letter and his sword, and never spoke an unkind word to Helaena.
This, too, she knew: he had wanted to be a Dreamer. She was the other way around. She never asked for this. She never asked for dreams both real and cryptic that plagued her every moment. She never asked for visions so vivid she could not take them as anything but the truth, but at the same time so arcane she could not find the words to describe them to polite company. (And she never asked for Aegon Targaryen for a brother-husband – but that was neither here nor there and they'd been over it.)
Till the end she did not know if her father even knew of her dreams at all. If he had, would their relationship have been different? Would her life have been different, had he been there to vouch for her? She did not ask for the sort of devotion Rhaenyra got from him without trying, no, but some empathy from one Dreamer to another would have been nice.
"Your Grace," the handmaid said, and Helaena snapped back to her candlelit chamber once more. She opened her eyes, and caught the woman's anxious look.
She decided to change the topic. "I did not know your lord brother well, my lady Jenna," she said. "What was he like?"
The woman's gaze shifted to the fine mahogany table, and did not leave it for quite a time. "He was as you would expect the head of my House, Your Grace," she said. "A loyal man, a generous lord, and a fine knight."
"And as a husband, and a father?"
"For that the Stranger had taken him too soon," Jenna said. "My lord nephew is his only child."
"Would he have been a good father, do you think?"
The woman shifted in her seat, and inched just so slightly away from Helaena. "I would not know, Your Grace," she said. "I beg your pardon."
Helaena did not expect anything more telling, truth be told. She had the privilege to be more outspoken about her male family than most, and there were so many things even she could not say. "I understand," she said.
"But," Jenna added, "I would have no doubt my lord Lyonel shall be most brilliantly raised. My goodsister is as astute in mind as she is loyal."
That she spoke in a rigid, courtly voice. Helaena could have expected no more. She gave her a nod.
"If I may-" Jenna said pleadingly, "With your permission, of course, Your Grace, I would much like to beg your leave-" She tried her hardest to catch Helaena's eyes, and then bent her neck again. "Her Grace the Queen would much rather you rest."
Helaena sighed. "It is all right, you may leave," she said, "and I will sleep, as my lady mother desires. Children ought to be obedient, as is the order of things."
The woman bowed, and left the room.
And Helaena found her way to her bed. It was a lonesome bed most of the time, and she'd grown to like it that way. Sleep was precious to her, when it was actually sleep and not a receptacle for visions. She did not change out to more comfortable clothes, but merely took off her slippers and covered herself to the neck with her down-feather blanket.
Sleep came to her surprisingly quickly, and so did her dream.
It was not an unpleasant dream.
It was not, at first. In fact it was a particularly pleasant sight she saw, of an idyllic place where songs were sung upon the winter gale.
She dreamt of a doting father and his spirited daughter who wore gauntlets of steel and fire.
She dreamt of a father who saved lives, and a daughter who saved more lives.
She dreamt of a mother whose love turned to despair, and a daughter whose love forced her to lie. Their faces she could not discern, nor their voices.
But she enjoyed their stories. Yes, that was what Helaena had wanted all along: stories. Glimpses into memories and tales not her own. A look into people she was not but could have been in another life. Not dragons, and fire, and ice, and the deafening silence from beyond the Wall that could frighten even fire made flesh.
And then it went downhill, just as dreams were wont to in the life and time of Helaena Targaryen.
She saw a fat pale worm that crawled wetly across the earth, now hidden beneath the soil, digging deep beneath dirt and filth, now soaring to the sky next to dragons. She saw another worm, black and smoky-gold and fast as thought, burying itself into the heart of a bleeding dragon-man. She saw a golden seed that sparkled and twinkle most prettily, but everything it touched turned into ash scattered in the wind. She saw those three things, the white worm and the black worm and the golden amber, twirling and melding together, till they became the very picture of ruination.
Then the floorboard beneath her melted, and up came a grotesque beast armored in white and blazing violet, whose shape was beyond human imagination. It reared its two heads at her, and licked its fourfold lips, and its foul breath washed over her in a cascade.
At her feet were the remains of children. She saw the indescribable visceral things: flesh and bones and blood where they did not belong. She tore her eyes from the mess as soon as she discerned what was what. She wanted to scream and gag, but she had no mouth.
Then a hand-like force grasped her, and drew her back, and back, and back again. The speed dazzled her, knocked the breath out of her. A ringing sound pierced her ears, like a thousand buzzing bugs. But she didn't wake up, not at all.
Things went dark, then went bright again.
There was neither beast nor worm, nor terrifying viscera here. In fact, there was much like nothing at all. Her skin felt nothing. Her nose smelt nothing. Her eyes saw nothing - nothing but a tree, whose unnumbered leaves were sparkling, and a stretch of water, whose unfathomable vastness was glittering. The mere sight of those things filled her with thoughts too numerous and incomprehensible that she could burst. Images flashed before her, now of places entirely distant: A white-haired girl that grinned, a white-haired girl that screamed, a redhead dying in a fire.
Then she blinked, and it was gone, and not a moment too soon. she was back to the beast and the bodies of children again. The roar and the stench dominated her, and Helaena heard her own heart thumping.
Then and only then, did she wake and free herself. Up she bolted, throwing her blanket off like a boulder off a siege engine.
And there, up in the sky, she saw it.
It came out of nowhere, and unbidden. It started as a spark in the night sky. A trail of light, gold and sparkling blue, darted across the firmament, glowing as it descended. A falling star was what astrologers would call it.
But it did not fall.
Instead, it stopped in the middle of the sky, its silhouette imprinted upon the pale moon of the Hour of the Owl. It was so far away, far enough as to be dismissed as a figment of imagination, but Helaena could not tear her eyes off what she saw.
Helaena stared at it long: it looked like a segmented stick that jutted out, endlessly, extending into the deep unknown where neither men nor gods dwelt. It suspended itself there, as if mocking the laws of gods and men alike. It was a stick, or an oddly-shaped wagon train, or a worm printed into the sky. She did not know where the thought came from, or even if it was hers to begin with.
"An omen," she murmured. "It is all real."
Her pulse quickened. I must tell someone who knows. She stuffed her feet into her slippers, and ran out of the room.
