The Provenance || Jon Snow | Game of Thrones

8.01

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Author's Suggestion: 

Adjust your settings to view this story in dark mode, or read this update at night to facilitate the perception of darkness that this chapter encompasses.

Enjoy!

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Her irises rise, and what they reveal are the blue beacons to the salvation of men itself. Her eyes shine not with the intentions of humanity, but everything else...antonymous to men in all reality, and yet that's perhaps why her actions are so hard to understand. She has never been like man—unpredictable and wily—but strong against the currents of whim and wind and pervasively constant in her ways. What happened to uproot the tree in the river of wrongs and sweep her away to the madness not true of herself but to the failings of humanity? She was not human—but perhaps, nurture had won out in the age-old competition with nature that undermined the sentiment that people were both created and shaped...no more than she.

But in that moment, all she wishes is to feel the cold—to know this is real—with the rain pounding upon her back, soaking through to the narrowing of the tunic about her shrunken waste, strung tight like the midnight circles beneath her eyes from a lack of food and rest. It should quake her to the bone and numb the very existence of her being. But as the woman she is—the monster who's hidden beneath human flesh—the rain serves not to bear a burden upon her quivering form, but immediately rises as frost or steam upon contact with her harrowed skin. And she wonders whether it is the fire or ice of her identity that makes it so. Does it rise as steam at the heat of her spirit, or as frost at the chill of her skin?

And yet, what does it matter when the world has tumbled into chaos at her own hand? 

As she cannot quite spare a thought over the monument of self-hatred to make herself less volatile to Mother Nature, she lets the water turn to mist upon her back and the thumping of her heart—abnormal in its quivering since being stabbed by her father—th-thump thump-thump...fills her ears as the darkness of evergreen forestry in midnight turns into the streets of Riverrun, lights chasing out from ahead of their galloping horses, orbs so strong as to light their way.

And despite the time, the eve in which they ride, people come upon those streets like moths to a flame, their heads softly swiveling after the flying orbs, and then to the following riders as the rain soaks them head-to-toe—a forgotten notion when something so unnatural occurs...and they know who rides on in that eve.

Of course, the children chase them into the puddles, gullies, roads, and ways as they make their course through town. But those first ones are now far behind them, the speed of their gallop forcing the horses to breath heavily, and she knows they will need to rest soon—once they storm the Castle like old-begotten knights to Harrenhal. She has a hard time understanding his decision to mark this course towards their target, seeing as this has drawn far more attention than either could ever want. But she supposes that it is the fastest path—in their mad rush to correct her mistakes—and he is hooded anyways. Indeed, of the two riders, only the flash of white hair, flowing mist off her, and flying of blue orbs marks any notion of identity—Gabrielle Baelish, the Mock Queen.

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