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When she closes her eyes, screws them shut tight, lets the feeling wash over her in slow, tangible waves of heat, she can almost see it. The blinding, scorching light. The endless billows of flames. The clarity, hidden beneath stretches of burnt earth. She can feel the scratch of scales, the feverish warmth, the sting of a sword sliding down her young, supple flesh.
But she never senses the burn. It never lasts long enough to feel. With her eyes sealed shut, she can pretend. She is ten, and supple, and young. She is beautiful, blinding. A fragment of the patchwork of generations of Targaryen beauty. She has a world before her, inviting, open. Before she plummets into a land of scorched earth, clutching onto the back of her monstrous beast, the only family she has.
When she opens them, she is a scarred girl again.
Her room in Dragonstone is as bare as it could be. It's not especially intentional, the way she leaves her walls empty and colourless, bed barren and often cold. She just cannot muster the strength or interest to collect. She cannot think of a moment she wants to savour, apart from all the time she spends in Dragonstone.
She curls beneath her covers, feels tainted skin brush against the goose-feathers leaking from her mattress. She rips them out, often clutching the fabric to the point of tearing, when she is seized in a dream, a memory from the past.
In this morning, it is silent. She can feel the minutes eeking by, with nothing to disrupt the stretch of quiet time. Her mind wills her to move, but her body remains still, ensnared by the past, reeling from a memory she cannot properly discern from reality.
The croak of a door forces herself into the current, eyes peering up from her bedsheets to locate the early morning intruder.
Rhaegal Waters, bastard son of Prince Baelon Targaryen, younger brother of Daemon and Viserys Targaryen, had been somewhat of an enigma for the years of his life prior to Aerea's disappearance. He had only emerged from the shadowy crevice he hid in following her sudden disappearance, vowing himself to his elder brother as his loyal servant, and offering himself as a scout to investigate every claim of a possible sighting.
No one could figure what would've motivated him to pledge himself to such a cause, but it was true that in the months following Aerea's reappearance, there was only one presence she could stomach for long.
It so tragically happened that it was him.
"Fair morning, my lady," Rhaegal cautiously pushed the door closed behind him with a light thump. "How are we?"
