sing me a song of a lass that is gone; say, could that lass be i?

[jalan]

When Daenerys felt the cold weight of her crown, watching her dragons cut through the blue skies of Kingslanding, the bite of pending winter in the air, she thought might never dream again, for she only ever dreamed of that which she desired.

That isn't how dreams work. Even hers.

She falls asleep to the sight of midnight snow flurries visible through glass panes, and they dance now, light as ash, cold as death. In spite of snowfall, a hidden fire seems to burn away beneath the edges of the world, glimmered on the edge of shifting shadow, unfelt wind pulling at colour and form. Her silver hair flutters free of braids and pins, her moon-white dress flapping like a loose sail against her legs. Her feet bare on cold stone and frost.

Daenerys can stand before a dragon's open maw and feel its fire breath like a hot august wind, but she has no such immunities against the cold. The dream has the vivid texture of dreams she's had before, the fine hairs on the backs of her arms standing up once she shivers. Are these trees, around her? Pillars? Is the movement beyond that of figures, or they shadows only?

Up ahead, she thinks she might see something. Someone. She opens her mouth to call out.

Her words are torn away in favour of a dragon's call, too big for her throat, the flex of her jaw. She bites her mouth closed, the ache of effort tasting like copper.

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[hardcut]

Someone awaits at the crest of a hill just beyond the pillars, and ancient trees twined with human-like shapes made from wood and moss, empty holes for eyes watching impassively in the cold blue-black dark. For another dreamer: no lucidity, and no hope of remembering. Magic touches each in its own way.

The figure looming ahead is cut in the shape of a man, featureless in shadow. His head rises at the primal cry-- a glint, then, two points of reflected light, like moonlight on water, and he's looking at her. No, past her. Something that's stalking her with the crackle of breaking ice, reaching out with dark spears and barbs to ensnare and draw in and change. Attention, a gaze, like a physical presence, though turning reveals nothing but ice, stone, black, empty, nothing. A part of what should be neatly cut away with the sharpest blade, a corner of the world snipped from existence, left with only the frozen void of unmaking.

Behind the figure erupts black fire, and it screams and screams like one of her dragons raging. He moves forward, as though underwater, sword in hand. Ice shatters around him, each movement casting hidden threats and outstretched claws into the light and obliterating them the next minute. The sound and screaming of the impossible fire rises.