In Daenerys X of ADWD, Dany has been living for weeks with Drogon at his lair, the hill in the Dothraki Sea she’s nicknamed “Dragonstone”. She’s been flying on the dragon several times since their first flight from Meereen, learning how to control him a bit with her whip, but she can’t get him to go back to Meereen. There isn’t much food for her on the hill except the charred remains of Drogon’s kills and some fish in a pool, and she’s beginning to starve. So she decides to go back on her own, walking, by following a stream she hopes will lead her to the river that flows to Meereen.
As Dany walks, the heat of the sun and her lack of food start to get to her, and she begins to talk to herself. The wind rustling the yellow dying grass sounds a bit like murmuring words, so she imagines the grass is responding to her. By evening, she finds the ruin of an old village, and sleeps by a wall; she dreams that she is flying in the sky, and that Quaithe, made of stars, is speaking to her, reminding her of the prophecy she’d first made in Qarth and repeated on the ship Dany took to the slaver cities, saying “to go forward you must go back”, telling her to remember who she is.
In the morning Dany wakes to find herself covered in ant bites from an anthill that had been on the other side of the wall, but she continues walking. (Because “if I look back, I am lost”.) By noon she has had no food at all for a day and a half, so when she finds a bush with green berries Dany eats them, convincing herself that they’re safe and she’s eaten them before. They aren’t safe. First they bring on cramps and vomiting that disables her for the rest of the day; by evening she’s struck with diarrhea that only gets worse as she tries to drink water to rehydrate herself.
The poison berries, her starvation and dehydration, further affect Dany, and she falls into a fevered sleep. She has a nightmare of her brother Viserys (looking as he did when he died, his face burning off from the molten gold), accusing her of betraying him, telling her if he had a dragon he would have taught the world the meaning of the Targaryen words, “fire and blood”. When she wakes at dawn, she is bleeding from her vagina. She tries to convince herself it’s only her period, which she realizes has skipped for a few months, but the blood flow is unusually heavy, and it’s not at the time of the month she usually bleeds. It’s not a period, it’s a miscarriage, though she doesn’t realize that (yet?). She begins to hallucinate that the grass is chiding her for her mistakes.
Though she is fevered, weak, starving, cramping and bleeding, Dany begins following the stream again, trying to get home. But she realizes Meereen was never truly her home, and at this her hallucinations of the grass’s words take on Jorah’s voice; reminding her that her true war is in Westeros, speaking of her regrets and choices to send him away, of her choices and regrets about being queen in Meereen, telling her she’s the blood of the dragon and to remember the Targaryen words.*
Then a Dothraki rider, a scout, appears in the grass of the sea, and luckily he doesn’t see Dany. He does see Drogon, who is flying not far off, and gallops away back to his khalasar. Once he’s gone, Dany calls to Drogon, who comes to her. Dany realizes “to go forward I must go back”, that she must return to the Dothraki, and she and Drogon fly, making him follow the Dothraki scout. They soon come upon the khalasar’s herd of horses– the Dothraki herders ride away in fear, the horses panic and run, and the dragon flames a straggling horse and kills it. Drogon lands and begins to eat his kill; Dany, starving, eats the cooked horsemeat alongside him.
And by sunset, Khal Jhaqo** and 50 Dothraki warriors arrive, to find Daenerys Targaryen (wearing only a ragged tunic, her hair burned and short, her hands covered in burns and and horsemeat juices, her face no doubt covered in juices too) standing in the Dothraki Sea beside her dragon.
*This was of course not actually Jorah, it’s Dany having a debate with herself, just as her nightmare of Viserys was also a debate with herself. (Quaithe may also have been an internal debate, or it’s possible she appeared in Dany’s dream by magic.) Many have compared Dany’s fevered journey through the wilderness to a “vision quest”, one that will set her on a new path with new motivations.
**Jhaqo was a ko, a lieutenant in Khal Drogo’s khalasar, and was the second to declare himself a new khal after Drogo got sick and couldn’t ride, and split off with 20,000 riders. One of his new bloodriders was Mago, who had captured and raped Eroeh, the Lhazareen girl Dany had tried to save, and had gotten Drogo to take from him. While all the chaos of the khalasar splitting and Mirri’s blood magic and Dany’s childbirth was going on, Mago seized Eroeh again, and raped her along with Jhaqo and his other bloodriders, and then cut her throat. Dany promised vengeance (swearing by every god that exists) on Mago and Jhaqo when she woke and found out what had happened. Dany has Drogon now, with her. Things are going to be interesting, with much fire and blood. Not to mention that Dany is the stallion who mounts the world…
I hope that helps! If you need any further explanations, just let me know.
