#by jacoby

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The Young Seer

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Winterfell's Heart Tree

Then somehow he was back at Winterfell again, in the godswood looking down upon his father. […] "… let them grow up close as brothers, with only love between them," he prayed, "and let my lady wife find it in her heart to forgive …".

[…] Bran felt his eyes fill up with tears. But were they his own tears, or the weirwood's? If I cry, will the tree begin to weep?

The rest of his father's words were drowned out by a sudden clatter of wood on wood. Eddard Stark dissolved, like mist in a morning sun. Now two children danced across the godswood, hooting at one another as they dueled with broken branches. […]

After that the glimpses came faster and faster, till Bran was feeling lost and dizzy. [...] a woman heavy with child emerged naked and dripping from the black pool, knelt before the tree, and begged the old gods for a son who would avenge her. Then there came a brown-haired girl slender as a spear who stood on the tips of her toes to kiss the lips of a young knight as tall as Hodor. A dark-eyed youth, pale and fierce, sliced three branches off the weirwood and shaped them into arrows. [...] And now the lords Bran glimpsed were tall and hard, stern men in fur and chain mail. Some wore faces he remembered from the statues in the crypts, but they were gone before he could put a name to them.

Then, as he watched, a bearded man forced a captive down onto his knees before the heart tree. A white-haired woman stepped toward them through a drift of dark red leaves, a bronze sickle in her hand.

“No," said Bran, "no, don't," but they could not hear him, no more than his father had. [...] And through the mist of centuries the broken boy could only watch as the man's feet drummed against the earth … but as his life flowed out of him in a red tide, Brandon Stark could taste the blood.

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On his way back, Jon swung wide of the column's line of march and took a shorter path through the thick of the wood. The sounds of man and horse diminished, swallowed up by the wet green wild, and soon enough he could hear only the steady wash of rain against leaf and tree and rock. It was midafternoon, yet the forest seemed as dark as dusk. Jon wove a path between rocks and puddles, past great oaks, grey-green sentinels, and black-barked ironwoods. In places the branches wove a canopy overhead and he was given a moment's respite from the drumming of the rain against his head. As he rode past a lightning-blasted chestnut tree overgrown with wild white roses, he heard something rustling in the underbrush. "Ghost," he called out. "Ghost, to me."

But it was Dywen who emerged from the greenery, forking a shaggy grey garron with Grenn ahorse beside him. The Old Bear had deployed outriders to either side of the main column, to screen their march and warn of the approach of any enemies, and even there he took no chances, sending the men out in pairs.

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A Spring Baby

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Noble Houses of the North: House Bolton

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A Child of Winterfell

Jeyne, Jeyne, it rhymes with pain

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The Wildling and the Lost Boy (for anon)

AGOT – Catelyn III

"Rickon needs you […] He's only three, he doesn't understand what's happening. He thinks everyone has deserted him”

AGOT – Bran VI

"What are you doing here?" [...]

"They are my gods too," Osha said. "Beyond the Wall, they are the only gods."

[…] “The cold winds are rising, and men go out from their fires and never come back … or if they do, they're not men no more, but only wights, with blue eyes and cold black hands. Why do you think I run south with Stiv and Hali and the rest of them fools? Mance thinks he'll fight, […] but what does he know? […] He's never tasted winter. I was born up there, child, like my mother and her mother before her and her mother before her, born of the Free Folk. We remember." Osha stood, her chains rattling together. "I tried to tell your lordling brother. […] But he looked through me […]. So be it. I'll wear my irons and hold my tongue. A man who won't listen can't hear."

AGOT – Bran VII

"I lived my life beyond the Wall, a hole in the ground won't fret me none, m'lords," she said.

[…] Ser Rodrik had ordered Osha's chain struck off, since she had served faithfully and well since she had been at Winterfell. She still wore the heavy iron shackles around her ankles—a sign that she was not yet wholly trusted—but they did not hinder her sure strides down the steps.

[…]

Rickon patted Shaggydog's muzzle, damp with blood. "I let him loose. He doesn't like chains." He licked at his fingers.

ACOK – Bran V

"Osha," Bran asked as they crossed the yard. "Do you know the way north? To the Wall and . . . and even past?"

ACOK – Theon IV

Osha would need to carry Rickon; his little legs wouldn't take him far on their own.

[…]

Theon Greyjoy knew he was beaten […] Osha had deceived them with some wildling trick.

ACOK – Bran VII

Bran heard fingers fumbling at leather, followed by the sound of steel on flint. Then again. A spark flew, caught. Osha blew softly. A long pale flame awoke, […] Osha's face floated above it. She touched the flame with the head of a torch. Bran had to squint as the pitch began to burn, filling the world with orange glare. The light woke Rickon, who sat up yawning. […]

There stood Osha holding the torch, […] and the double row of tall granite pillars and long dead lords behind them stretching away into darkness . . . but there was Winterfell as well, grey with drifting smoke, the massive oak-and-iron gates charred and askew, the drawbridge down in a tangle of broken chains and missing planks.

[...] "Are we going home?" Rickon asked excitedly.

[…] Osha carried her long oaken spear in one hand and the torch in the other. A naked sword hung down her back, one of the last to bear Mikken's mark.

[…]

"Take me home!" Rickon demanded. "I want to be home!" […] They stood huddled together with ruin and death all around them.

"We made noise enough to wake a dragon," Osha said, "but there's no one come. The castle's dead and burned, just as Bran dreamed,” […]

"Hodor must stay with Bran, to be his legs," the wildling woman said briskly. "I will take Rickon with me."

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"I see you," she whispered. "I see you, wolf child. Blood child. I thought it was the lord who smelled of death . . ."