An older couple sit at a table in a diner, gazing at each other like there's no one else in the world.
This despite the boy three tables over yelling at his Game Boy while his parents are trying to have a civilized conversation.
The man at the next table glares.
"Ramsay, volume," scolds the boy's father. The boy, Ramsay, rolls his eyes and whispers, "Yeah! Headshot!"
"Roose, dear, leave it," says the woman with the glaring man, smiling apologetically at Ramsay's mother.
Two teenagers sit at the counter, eating ice cream and laughing.
The girl dips her spoon into the boy’s ice cream and comes away with a big spoonful of whipped cream. "Tisha!" he protests.
"Reminds me of us, those two," says the older man fondly.
"That's Ty Lancaster's son, isn't it?" asks his female companion worriedly. "I don't recognize the girl." Her husband squeezes her hand.
"If we made it, Jenny, then so can they," he says softly. “Or, rather, so can they until their relationship falls prey to teenage angst.”
Jenny giggles. "And times have changed since we were young and you had to browbeat your family into not throwing a fuss every holiday when I showed up with my discount store clothing and diner-bought pies! Well, changed somewhat, anyway."
"If the Lancasters still don’t like her, she could always save the house from being burned down!" They laugh; it must be an inside joke.
"This is my favorite diner."
"I’m glad, but we talk about this a lot, why are you telling me a-"
"Thanks for coming with me," says Jenny simply, kissing him. The kids at the glaring man's table giggle and point.
"Duncan?" says Jenny abruptly, pulling back.
"I changed my mind. Let's go to one of your fancy restaurants that cost more than my father made in a year."
"Good idea," says Duncan, pulling out money to pay a tip for their glasses of water. Jenny chuckles fondly.
A family with three boys and a girl - teenagers, or perhaps college-age? - takes their place.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to beat up Cat Tully for you, Brandon? Now that I’m a black belt, you can’t tell me I can’t do it!” the girl is saying.
“No, Lya,” the boy who looks like the oldest responds firmly, but he is smiling. Their mother chuckles, too.
A group of young men walk by their table. One of them glares at Brandon, who ignores it, and then starts ranting to his friends about how his parents are making him go to therapy because Brandon Stark stole the girl he was in love with.
One of Brandon's brothers shivers at the look in his eyes.
"You okay, Ned?" asks his father.
"Yeah," says Ned, looking around as if in a daze and smiling ear to ear. "Yeah, I'm okay."
(That night Jenny dreams that she loses her husband in that fire, and Ty’s older son kills her nephew because he wants to blow up the city, and her great-nephew runs off with Lya Stark and they both die and so does nearly all the family, and Jay has more grandkids who live in exile and the one sells the other to a warlord, and some unholy fusion of the Game Boy kid and the giggling kids tries to kill her great-great-nephew, which she does not even (yet) have, and there are armies and swords and rape and torture.
But at the end of the dream, she looks up, and this great-great-nephew and another young woman- a niece, that's who she is, a great-niece- are riding upon two dragons through the blue sky, and there are people all around her gazing up at them with reverence and live in their eyes, and her heart fills with pride and wonder.
When she wakes up, she grieves for all the people she met in her dream as though she had known them for real.)
