THE DRAGON QUEEN [ Jon Snow ]

XV.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
[ the dream ]

THE DREAM WAS NOT UNLIKE THOSE SHE HAS HAD BEFORE. A dream that felt so true, so vivid, that she could not help but feel it was real. She has had these kinds of dreams a few times before, though not for many moons. Always distorted, never entirely clear, but always true. Her dreams always come true.

The dream began with a biting cold. It was brought in by a bitter wind, the kind that even the North in the winter of her childhood had not seen. It was the kind of wind, the kind of heart-rending cold, that seemed like it may never end. On that wind, bringing in this ruinous forever winter, rode something wicked and terrible, come to Westeros to destroy not only all human life, but all life as they knew it.

When she woke, it was with a quickened heartbeat and a sheen of sweat across her brow. She trembled in utter terror as she remembered, then, something that her brother had told her when she was young. A memory long stored away in the recesses of her mind.

"Visenya," he'd begun, sitting her down on his bed and kneeling down on the floor in front of her, "Little Dragon, there is something I must tell you. It is not fair to you, no child of five should have to bear such a burden, but if I do not return, you must know."

"If you do not return?" She'd questioned, a young girl so unlearned in the ways of the world and the war, that she did not understand why her beloved brother might not return. "Why would you not return?"

He did not respond. Could not. Instead, he told her, "you know of Aegon the Conqueror, our ancestor, I know you do. But you do not know why he conquered Westeros. It was not for power or fame or glory. It was because he had a dream. A dream, Visenya, of a long winter. The longest, coldest winter, with a bitter wind gusting in from the north. On that wind rode a great evil, come to destroy the world of the living. Aegon called this dream 'The Song of Ice and Fire.'

"Since Aegon, every Targaryen king has told his heir of Aegon's dream. Our father told me when I came of age, and had I more time, I would tell Aegon. But he is only a babe. You, Visenya, are our family's only hope to carry on this warning. You are my heir, and I am telling you. If I do not return, you must know."

She, a child, had not known then her brother's plans. She knew not his scheme to take the throne from their father, who had become increasingly unhinged, if he managed to quash the rebellion and live to see the end. She knew nothing of the weight on Rhaegar's shoulders, nor that he himself had dreamt Aegon's dream.

Back then, she did not stop to wonder why Rhaegar might name her his heir until Aegon came of age, rather than her older brother Viserys, who though only a child, had begun exhibiting rather worrying fits of rage and bouts of pure cruelty.