[Chapter Size: 2900 Words.]
Third Person POV
North, 95 AC.
A week had passed since Lord Stark had left the small farm, and Rowena couldn't stop watching the carts arriving that morning with the wood to begin building the house, while her husband and his brother were leveling the land so that Roman and his family could settle there along with her own family.
Her husband had used the gold dragons without thinking twice so that his brother could be there; it was enough money for them not to go hungry for years. However, Garren needed his brother more than the money, and Rowena saw it that way as well.
Her eyes left Garren, who was now talking to the men who had brought the materials in the middle of the dug and leveled land. Her gaze returned to her two sons, watching them from a distance.
Ghost was not among them. In fact, they had established a rule that the wolf should not appear to the villagers for now, since there were rumors that he should already have died. But Garren said that, somehow, he had survived and was still bedridden, as he could not show such a quick recovery in nearly two weeks. And many people had seen the wolf injured when they brought him from the forest
The villagers even wanted to see him, some saying they had experience with injured animals and wanted to see if they could help, but Garren said everything was fine, with a few excuses, to avoid curious eyes.
Rowena's gaze remained fixed on Jon, who had Sam by his side, while he talked and answered the younger one's questions. Rowena couldn't help but form a small smile as she watched Jon explaining some things to the younger boy by the way he was behaving beside his brother, as his lips moved and Sam's gaze was full of admiration for the older one.
Sam was quite innocent and inexperienced, but Jon was always by his side, teaching him everything he could. Jon had always been independent and learned everything at an abnormal speed.
Sam relied on his brother more than he sought her or Garren, with Jon having much more ease in explaining things that a boy of almost three namedays could understand. Jon had a lot of patience with Sam, and she couldn't help but feel proud of the older one.
She knew that Jon liked to be alone sometimes. This could be quite annoying for Sam, who was always on his brother's heels, seeming more like his shadow all the time. But Jon always had patience with him, always played or helped. Despite being able to see Jon's annoyance many times when he just wanted to think.
Her son sometimes behaved like a boy who wanted to stay away from everyone, he always had that thoughtful face even while keeping a cheerful look, Rowena never quite understood her son's traits, but Jon had always been like that.
Rowena couldn't help but tilt her head to the side and try to listen to her two sons. She caught at least the words "beam" and "structure." Jon was teaching how a house could be built, while watching the men begin to pick up the pillars and divide them across the land.
Rowena could see that he observed far more than a child of five namedays could.
He had always been so intelligent... so intelligent that it was frightening.
So intelligent that it was dangerous.
And that was the smallest of the problems about Jon.
She had begun to feel very afraid in the past few days. Everything that had been happening, and the attention he had been receiving from the lords, had also drawn the attention of other people. The villagers were beginning to ask questions.
She had not gone to the village anymore, but she knew they had suffocated Garren with questions. Questions about the boy's well-being, about what he had done to draw Lord Stark's attention, or even what they had done, since even Garren had become a kind of guide for hunts for the great lords.
That was not normal at all among common folk. Not when even the Lord of the North came to their region to meet him. Or rather, to meet Jon more than to meet her husband...
Of course, many had their eyes directly on Jon. They said he was the source of the great Lord Stark's attention, especially when he himself had invited him to take part in a hunt as dangerous as the last one.
In any case, she and her husband, along with his brother's family, were trying to protect Jon.
'Dragons...'
He said he had dreamed of dragons and said he had healed them in front of the sea. Rowena couldn't help but shiver upon hearing her son say such things. A child could have a vivid imagination, but it was limited to what they had already seen in life.
Jon had never seen the sea, much less a dragon.
How could he know these things, especially shortly before, suddenly, all of Ghost's wounds had magically healed, as if they had never existed, except for the flaws in the white fur, which was still growing in the places where the black bear's teeth had marked him?
"Rowena." A slightly louder voice interrupted her thoughts, as she looked to the side and saw Sara with some pots.
"We'll have to take this to the stream to wash," she said.
Rowena nodded. Sara was getting closer to the end of her pregnancy each day. Her belly was already quite evident. She would give birth to Rowena's second nephew, while Jon's mother helped her through the pregnancy for obvious reasons. After all, Sara was also helping in Jon's case.
"Good morning, mother." A tired voice came from one of the rooms, as Mari left Jon's room, where they had placed another bed after Garren bought some fabrics in the past few days, after requesting them in the village when a merchant passed through, heading toward Wintertown.
"Mari, is this the time for you to wake up?" Sara said with dissatisfaction, looking at her daughter.
"But Jon didn't even wake me up, he was supposed to wake me up!" Mari complained.
"You shouldn't rely only on others, Mari," Sara said, still with a dissatisfied look.
"Alright, sorry, mother..." she replied, a bit displeased.
Sara said nothing more, while Rowena gave a small smile.
"Well, how about you come help us, Mari? We're going down to the stream," she said.
Mari seemed a bit hesitant, but nodded. Clearly, she wanted to see what Jon was doing together with Sam.
Her head quickly turned to the window. Hearing the sounds, she saw the men, her father and her uncle working, and people from the village unloading the carts with wood. She saw Jon too, with Sam in a corner far from the place, talking, and she huffed.
"Boys' conversations were boring..." she immediately muttered, and Rowena laughed at that. Clearly, a girl her age was not interested in understanding how a house is built.
"Ghost must be in the forest then... alright, I'll help you," she said in the end, picking up some pots while the women left, passing by Jon and Sam.
"Behave yourselves, children," Rowena said, touching both of their heads before following Sara, while Mari came right behind, sticking her tongue out at them.
Jon mocked her, and Sam also retaliated, sticking his tongue out.
"You're disgusting! You spit on me!" Mari said to Sam, who began to laugh.
Rowena brought everything they could clean at home, plus some metal plates that Garren had bought in the village from the blacksmith. Since he had a bit of money left, it would be useful for cooking.
The stream there was used to clean the plates, pots, and utensils they used for cooking. Further up the stream, they bathed.
"You're very distracted today. You're thinking about your eldest son, aren't you?" Sara said beside her. Rowena usually talked quite a lot; she wasn't the gossiping type, but she always liked to comment and talk about her children with Sara.
Mari was working, washing things in silence.
"Well, I'm worried about him, of course... but I think I'll bring him to take a bath in the late afternoon. It's been a few days since he last bathed," Rowena said.
She also wanted to spend some time alone with him, she wanted to understand her son better. He was usually with Garren and with Sam, and Jon had always been open, but he didn't go as far as talking about deeper things. In Rowena, she could see a strange look in his eyes, a caution that hadn't been there before.
"He's stinking, then! I thought I smelled something awful last night, I thought he had farted!" Mari said beside them, while Rowena and Sara laughed at the girl's remark.
The day passed calmly as they made lunch. After Mari went to see the other boys, they went to play, while the men continued working.
Afterward, everyone was called to the table and ate. In the afternoon, the husbands continued working to build the first pillars of the house, while other shipments would come from the village, with the blacksmith bringing some nail pieces he had made.
In the late afternoon, Rowena went to Jon and asked if he wanted to go with her to take a bath in the stream and cool off a bit. While Sam was with his father along with Mari, Jon ended up accepting when he saw that his mother didn't want to go alone.
Mother and son entered the stream with their clothes on.
Jon couldn't help but play around with Rowena, splashing water at her, while she retaliated, hitting the water and splashing it over him. He laughed in a childish way.
"Come here, son, let me just give you a hug," she said in the end, as Jon approached with a cheerful face and hugged Rowena tightly.
"I love you, mom," he said in a sweet tone.
Rowena held him even tighter. "I love you too, my son, my beautiful boy," she said.
"Do you know why mom called you here alone?" she asked.
Jon just shook his head. "I don't know, why, mom?" he asked, looking at her with his green eyes almost shining.
"Jon, I want you to be open with me. If something is happening, you can talk to your mother. I'll try to help however I can. I know something is bothering you, son. I know you're happy about Ghost, but your eyes tell me you have something else to say," she said carefully.
She knew she couldn't pressure Jon too much, even though her instinct was to demand that he tell everything. That would be cruel to a boy.
Jon looked at her while receiving a kiss from her. He hesitated a little, but decided to speak, feeling safe to do so. Only with his mother. Rowena could see that he was calculating whether or not he should tell something.
"I've been having dreams..." he murmured carefully.
"Dreams like the one where you saw dragons?" she asked, worried, although she didn't want to show it to encourage her son to speak more, while he nodded somewhat hesitantly, fearing being judged.
"Oh, my son... do you want to talk about these dreams?" she said, caressing his cheek as they sat by the bank. She kept her son on her lap, hugging him while stroking his cheek and hair to make him comfortable.
Her beloved son, her sweet Jon. She wanted him to open up to her. She wanted to help him.
"I dreamed I was flying in the sky... while I saw only snow around me. It was... there was more snow than the very winter we have here," he said carefully.
"You were flying?" she raised an eyebrow.
"No... it wasn't me flying. I was on something... on a dragon. A white dragon, the same dragon I had healed in the other dream. But he wasn't wearing armor anymore, and we were flying... we were just enjoying it. Like it was me and Ghost playing in the forest, when I climb on him and he runs through the woods," he tried to explain.
"A dragon again..." she thought. Where were these dragons coming from? How could he be dreaming about this?
"What else happened, Jon? Not every boy dreams that he is flying on a dragon. Even those who see the dragons from the south, of the royal family, might even wish for it... but not as if they were living it in their dreams," she said.
"I don't know... I flew with him for a while, and then we went to a place called... A-A...", he tried to say the word "Arctic," but couldn't quite remember. However, when he recalled another dream, from when he was in a strange meeting and looked at the city with a giant tree in its center, the word finally came.
"Arctica... I was going to a place called Arctica," he announced.
"Arctica?" his mother raised an eyebrow.
There was no such place that she had ever heard of. In winter, the snow fell even in the south, but there wasn't as much snow as in the north.
And Jon said he had seen more snow than in the north itself during winter... Where was he? Further north, beyond the Wall, flying on a dragon, in a place called Arctica... that didn't make sense to Rowena. She would have to ask Garren later. He kept himself better informed with the merchants who passed through the village.
"I also had another dream... I was on top of a great mountain, and I was holding a strange sword. It shone like a sun, mother. It was me... more or less. It wasn't, because my body was much bigger. It seemed like I was older. I was talking to myself. I said something about Asshai... the Shadow Lands. Do you know it?"
A chill ran through Rowena the moment he said that. She didn't know why, but an instinct of protection made her hug him tightly.
"No... I don't know it. I've never heard of that place, son," she said. Only sailors who ventured into Essos might hear about Asshai, and even then, most would never know what that place was, apart from the great lords who studied the whole world.
"I said something like 'the origin of all evil.' What does that mean?" Jon looked at her seeking answers, but she seemed even more worried.
"I don't know, son... we can ask your father," she said carefully.
Her son nodded, still clinging to her embrace.
"I also had another dream this night," he said carefully, but he didn't seem as cautious as before.
"And what would that dream be, my son?" she asked, stroking him again, hoping it wasn't something as disturbing as the previous ones.
"Mother... I was in a big room with several... what is the name of that thing that is a bunch of stacked written pages that people study? Father said it once when we went to the village...", he said. Since they lived very isolated on that farm, books were not something that was part of their vocabulary, much less something they had access to.
But Rowena understood. "Are you talking about books?"
"Books! That's right!" Jon's face lit up. "I saw thousands of them on shelves... I've never seen anything like it! I was sitting in front of them, reading... Mother, can I ask father for a book?" he asked enthusiastically.
Rowena pressed her lips together. "Well... we'll have to see. Books are quite expensive," she said carefully. It certainly wouldn't be something easy for them to buy, but there was still some money left from what Garren had received from the nobles.
It was at that moment that a sound caught their attention, and Jon and Rowena looked at Ghost heading toward them.
"Wait, Ghost!" Rowena said immediately, already knowing what he wanted to do.
Ghost didn't think twice before simply jumping over the mother and son and throwing himself into the water, scattering droplets everywhere. Jon immediately began to laugh at the giant wolf, and soon after, the wolf's body appeared, moving easily in that shallow place, coming toward them.
Sam came running right behind on his little legs.
"Ghost showed me where you were!" the boy announced with breathless and slurred words.
"Do you want to bathe too, son? We have some time before the sun sets," Rowena said with a motherly smile.
Sam looked with a bit of envy at Jon, who was still being held by their mother, and immediately jumped into the water as well.
Jon let go of his mother's embrace and began to play with his little brother.
Rowena watched the two having fun, and couldn't help but feel her heart warm. Life wasn't just worry and problems. Seeing her children playing made her happy, like any mother in her place, as she watched them play.
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