Drogon can feel her weight in his talons, so small and so light that she can hardly be called ‘weight’ at all. Afraid of dropping her, he gathers his feet closer to his body and tightens his grip, securing her limp body.
As Drogon flies east, flapping his wings and riding the wind, he scrambles to gather the pieces of what transpired in The City of Mother’s Death. He heard the screams and wails of dying men, terrified men, realizing their mortality is upon them as he opens his mouth and spits his fire, sending the smell of cooked meat wafting into the air. Mother had been on his back, and her fury and sorrow fed his. He sensed her loss as acutely as he felt his own: for the man Jorah Mormont, and, more recently, for the woman Missandei - and for Rhaegal.
Jorah. He was dead. Drogon has always been fond of Jorah. He could see that Mother loved Jorah well, and the man has ever been kind to him. Drogon needs only his family, his mother and his brothers, but if he included anyone else in that circle it would have been Jorah. He remembers clearly his confusion to find Mother on the ground, clutching Jorah and sobbing. And then the stench of death. Then the sorrow. And he knew Jorah Mormont was dead.
And Missandei. Dead too. Mother’s dearest, closest friend. When her head was separated from her shoulders, Drogon felt Mother’s devastation and ruin, stabbing cleanly through his chest as it had hers. And his own shock. Why Missandei? Missandei was good. Missandei was kind. Missandei was lively. Missandei made Mother happy, and when they were younger, her stroking made Drogon and his brothers hiss with satisfaction. Missandei was like his mother’s sister, and she was gentle. Why her?
Rhaegal. And Rhaegal. And his brother, his annoying, arrogant, sly brother. Drogon remembers play-fighting with Rhaegal and Viserion as hatchlings, pouncing and hissing and screeching, as Mother watched them and smiled. Rhaegal was always mischievous, he recalls. And tricky. You could never trust Rhaegal. He would play-surrender and then lunge again. But Rhaegal is gone too, struck in the chest with a giant man-claw, plummeting from the sky and vanishing beneath the waves.
Pain fueled only rage, as it had Mother’s. And as it had - still did - Drogon’s, as he unleashed his fire and burned the stinking city to the ground. He sensed Mother’s anger at the place, and it sang with his, his anger being her anger and her anger being his anger. You will all burn. You wronged Mother. You killed Missandei. You will burn. They had been one, melding together into a force of nature bent on destroying all that wronged them.
But then Drogon had lost Mother, and when he found her again, she was still. The stench of death hit him, and he had known that Mother was dead. And the man standing before her - Jon Snow - he was the one to do so.
But why? Was Jon Snow not his mother’s chosen mate? Drogon remembers watching them in the icy cliffs of the north, before the not-dead came marching. He remembers smelling the scent of Jon Snow all over his mother and flaring his nostrils in dislike. They had copulated. Multiple times, in fact. So why? Mates were for life, and it was heinous, the height of treachery, to betray each other. So why was it that Jon Snow had thrust the small man-claw into Mother’s chest? Mother did nothing wrong. Avenging her companions - was it not something men did? Was it something particular to Mother only among humans?
Drogon does not know. He is confused.
And frankly, he does not want to know. From the moment she sailed with Jon Snow, Mother has lost and lost and lost. She has lost Jorah Mormont. She has lost Rhaegal. She has lost Missandei. And even barring that, Drogon senses it when she is in distress, and she constantly was after their arrival at the Stone Castle in the North. Jon Snow has hurt her, time and time again, and in the end, he has killed her. Drogon wants no excuses. He wants no reasons. He needs none of Jon Snow’s justifications, nor those of any cooperating with him.
Drogon clutches Mother tighter to his body.
He is headed east - the far east, to the place of ebony stone and shadow. Something there calls to him. Drogon cannot name what it is, but his instinct bids him to do so, and his instinct has not failed him yet. If he goes there, he feels that his Mother, dead and limp in his claws, will be dead no longer.
Drogon flaps his wings in the air to halt his progress and hover, and gazes back toward the Stone Castle in the North and City of Mother’s Death. He bares his teeth in disgust. They are full of leeches, parasites, who used then betrayed and discarded his mother’s people, his mother, his brothers, as if they are nothing but beasts of burden. He does not remember all their names, but he recalls all their faces. Jon Snow. Tyrion Lannister. The three-eyed-not-man. The tall red-haired northern woman. They are traitors, all of them.
And if they think they can survive betraying Mother, Drogon will ensure that they are wrong. No one who has ever betrayed Mother has survived. He would have burned them himself, then and there before he took off with Mother’s body, but he refrains, for he wants his mother to have that honor herself. The traitors deserve it. Mother deserves it.
He turns his gaze back eastward and takes off once more. The quicker he arrives, the better. Then Mother can wake once more. Then she can recuperate. Then she can gather her strength.
Then she can return. And it will be with fire and blood. The traitors, they will die.
