so i listen to the    wind for an answer

She can’t say she makes a habit of being awake at midnight. Normally, she is not. But sometimes, even still, the dreams are vivid and the wounds tear open again. In those evenings she stops trying to sleep because there is no point. Closing her eyes is quiet torture, because the images flash back. Images of things she never saw, but in that way, it might be worse. Her brain conjures new and more gruesome images of her family’s death. Every time, though the basics are the same, they die in a slightly different way. Her brother’s throat is always slit, but did they come from behind? Did they attack in his sleep? Defenseless and unarmed as he would have been in either of those scenarios, she suspects one must be likely. He was powerful, and they would have stood little chance if they fought honorably.

Sometimes the nightmares are less nightmare, more dream. Still gruesome, still horrific, but in some variations her brother wins. His attackers scream and flail as the fires char their flesh, and she watches them burn with both horror and a grim satisfaction. When she wakes, she cannot sleep then either. Yes, she prefers these dreams. Prefers the world her mind creates in which her brother still lives. But she cannot reconcile her own feelings after this either. Cannot entirely live with herself for the pleasure she finds in watching her brother’s murderers die. Cannot get their screams, though imagined, out of her head.

It is one of these sorts of nights that finds her wandering through the dark, the world cold but somehow pleasant. Snow falls gently from the sky, turning her coat a different color, making her anything but the forgotten Princess of Morham. It feels fitting, right now. Her mind wanders in a direct so very different from her feet. Her feet move of their own accord, taking her to the places they know well. The garden would be their first choice, likely, but everything is buried in snow. So instead, she finds herself at the greenhouse, that still unfinished building that eventually, will be a refuge in weather such as this.

She is not alone tonight though, and the realization that someone else is there startles her mind back to the present. The form is familiar, but she looks like she’s working, so Lyanna remains quiet and out of the way, watching as their Glazier builds a wall from mist. It is an impressive thing to watch, the glass forming from nothing, sealing itself to the other walls by Glasgow’s intent and the Moon Goddesses patronage only. When the work is done, Glasgow remains, almost a statue beneath the snow that falls along her already pale form.

Lyanna finally nickers, coming out of the darkness and closing the distance she had left between them so as not to disturb her friends work. “Glasgow,” she says, her voice quiet but friendly. There’s a mix of reverence (for the night, for it seems too peaceful to disturb) and excitement (she has not seen her friend in some time) in the one word. “That’s rather impressive,” she says, nodding to the wall. “I’ve never seen our crafters at work quite like that.”

lyanna