Dragon's Fire

Wings of Hope

They're gathering around with all my friends

We're older now and the light is dim

And you are only just beginning

(O Children - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds)

Over the next week and a half Daenerys explored every hallway, room, hall and passage she could find. She had to find water the day after the discovery of the furnaces as she was getting dangerously thirsty. Her search resulted in the finding of a mechanical lift that took her all the way to the dragon caves as well as the top of the mountain where she found a natural spring that had been, and still was, providing fresh water throughout the entire mountain through a series of pipes and aqueducts!

The day after she found the kitchens in the caverns below the fortress by following a servant's passage. The day after that she stumbled upon hot springs. It was also the day the furnaces went out for the first time and she discovered that they could only stay lit by themselves for a limited period of time. Ever since then she had all three of her dragons go up to the furnace room every two days and renew the flames. Every single time, she stopped to stare at the mini mountain in the middle and contemplated what the line down the middle was, but she could never quite figure it out. So she did what she normally did with things she didn't quite understand, she put it at the back of her mind so it wouldn't distract from what she could figure out.

She found washrooms, small nooks, barren courtyards, baileys, grand rooms, the servants quarters, even a small library! Every night she would sleep on a chaise in the sitting room she had found on her first day, finding comfort in the room for some reason. During the day she would explore the fortress a little at a time. Sometimes it was just a room that would keep her occupied for hours. Other times, she could go through entire hallways. Some of the rooms even had jewelry still in them! One had a box made up entirely of hair accessories. Gold and silver braid cuffs, slender chains, dragon shaped hair pins made from different types of stone and metal, even simple hair sticks. They were only a little tarnished so of course she took the box and stuck it back with her trove of other finds after she washed them.

Daenerys had collected a myriad of things that she would use to make herself feel a bit more comfortable. They were things that she was able to restore with minimal effort or were already near perfect shape. She had books from the kitchen that, while she couldn't read them, had pictures of different plants that she would go out and look for some days. She hoped that she could use them in her food which consisted of meat and water at the moment. Whatever could help with the taste was welcomed with eager arms. She had already found two of the plants and it turned out they were tea herbs! A bit disappointing but she still appreciated it all the same.

Also among her collection were all manner of garments that she had found throughout the fortress. She discovered that the only things worth checking were stored in chests, which protected whatever was inside near perfection. It was always a thrill when she found a chest, nestled in a corner, or even halfway buried in the ground, although she nearly broke her foot when she tripped over it! She had a total of four chests in her collection, not counting the ones she had found on the first day. There was never a theme to what was in them, always a hodgepodge of things thrown or neatly placed together. But it did help her infer about who had previously owned the chests.

One was clearly a ladies chest, stuffed with night gowns made of soft, light fabric, a hair brush, an assortment of stays, and a simple length of cloth that Daenerys took to be a binder. There was even a pair of slippers at the bottom but they were a little too big for her feet. It was nice to have something to change into at the end of the day when she had finished bathing that wasn't the clothes she had been wearing for almost a whole week now. She had been mixing and matching her original clothes with the ones she had found in the four main chests along with the scarce few she had found during her exploring.