The LOTR/Jonsa Fic is Being Posted
The Prologue:
“The world is changed,” Old Nan would always begin the tale. “I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost; for none now live who remember it.”
Many of the Stark children would listen to the opening lines with rapt attention as she put down her knitting needles and began one of the North’s most told stories. But as they grew older, one by one they would begin to roll their eyes and maybe even leave the room to go riding or pursue some other worthwhile task like training at swords or sewing. But Bran never left; he always listened to the tale in full. The scary ones were his favorite. “Keep going, Nan,” he’d say.
“All right, little lord,” she’d comply with the continued click of her knitting needles.
“It began with the Children of the Forest. They had dwelled in the deep woods for untold ages, living off the land and carving faces into their weirwood trees. The Children made peace with the First Men...at first. But they were all of them deceived.
“For the men built permanent settlements and brought with them bronze weapons, great leathern shields, the first horses, and their own gods. And they cut down the Children’s trees.
“One by one the forests were felled for the sake of cities and fires, and the war began. The Children were outnumbered and losing strength with the loss of their magic and their trees.
“But there were some who resisted. They needed a weapon. A pack of Children found one of these men lingering in their forest and captured him. Leaf, the leader of the pack, plunged her obsidian dagger into the man’s heart and witnessed as his eyes turned blue and his skin transformed from flesh to ice. In that moment, the first White Walker was formed, the Night King, who would lead the army of the dead and bring about the Long Night.
“This would be a winter worse than all the rest. A winter when the snows fall a hundred feet deep, when the sun hides for years, and children are born and live and die, all in darkness. That is when the White Walkers move through the woods. Kings froze to death in their castles, same as the shepherds in their huts, and women smothered their babies rather than see them starve, and wept and felt their tears freeze on their cheeks. The White Walkers swept through cities and kingdoms, riding their dead horses, hunting with their packs of pale spiders big as hounds...”
“All right, that’s enough,” Robb would usually interrupt.
“No!” Bran would protest. “Robb—Nan—please I want to hear the rest!”
“And wake up from nightmares about the Others in the middle of the night like I used to about the blue-eyed giant Mecumba? I think not,” Robb would reason with a good-natured laugh. “The White Walkers aren’t real, Bran. There is no Night King coming for us.”
But Robb was wrong; winter was coming and the dead with it. Not that Robb had lived long enough to see it. He’d died in the Twins with their mother when word of the return of the Night King and the Long Night were yet naught but whispers in the dark.