A Feast for Dragons

sun was only just coming up. A few bright stars lingered
in the cobalt sky.
Perhaps one of them is Khal Drogo, sitting on his
fiery stallion in the night lands and smiling down on me
. Dragonstone
was still visible above the grasslands.
It looks so close. I must be
leagues away by now, but it looks as if I could be back in an hour
.
She wanted to lie back down, close her eyes, and give herself up to sleep.
No.
I must keep going. The stream. Just follow the stream
.
    Dany took a moment to make certain of her directions. It
would not do to walk the wrong way and lose her stream. “My friend,” she said
aloud. “If I stay close to my friend I won’t get lost.” She would have slept
beside the water if she dared, but there were animals who came down to the
stream to drink at night. She had seen their tracks. Dany would make a poor
meal for a wolf or lion, but even a poor meal was better than none.
    Once she was certain which way was south, she counted off
her paces. The stream appeared at eight. Dany cupped her hands to drink. The
water made her belly cramp, but cramps were easier to bear than thirst. She had
no other drink but the morning dew that glistened on the tall grass, and no
food at all unless she cared to eat the grass.
I could try eating ants
.
The little yellow ones were too small to provide much in the way of
nourishment, but there were red ants in the grass, and those were bigger. “I am
lost at sea,” she said as she limped along beside her meandering rivulet, “so
perhaps I’ll find some crabs, or a nice fat fish.” Her whip slapped softly
against her thigh,
wap wap wap
. One step at a time, and the
stream would see her home.
    Just past midday she came upon a bush growing by the stream,
its twisted limbs covered with hard green berries. Dany squinted at them
suspiciously, then plucked one from a branch and nibbled at it. Its flesh was
tart and chewy, with a bitter aftertaste that seemed familiar to her. “In the
khalasar
,
they used berries like these to flavor roasts,” she decided. Saying it aloud
made her more certain of it. Her belly rumbled, and Dany found herself picking
berries with both hands and tossing them into her mouth.
    An hour later, her stomach began to cramp so badly that she
could not go on. She spent the rest of that day retching up green slime.
If
I stay here, I will die. I may be dying now
. Would the horse god of
the Dothraki part the grass and claim her for his starry
khalasar
,
so she might ride the nightlands with Khal Drogo? In Westeros the dead of House
Targaryen were given to the flames, but who would light her pyre here?
My
flesh will feed the wolves and carrion crows
, she thought sadly,
and
worms will burrow through my womb
. Her eyes went back to Dragonstone.
It looked smaller. She could see smoke rising from its wind-carved summit,
miles away.
Drogon has returned from hunting
.
    Sunset found her squatting in the grass, groaning. Every
stool was looser than the one before, and smelled fouler. By the time the moon
came up she was shitting brown water. The more she drank, the more she shat,
but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew, and her thirst sent her crawling
to the stream to suck up more water. When she closed her eyes at last, Dany did
not know whether she would be strong enough to open them again.
    She dreamt of her dead brother.
    Viserys looked just as he had the last time she’d seen him.
His mouth was twisted in anguish, his hair was burnt, and his face was black
and smoking where the molten gold had run down across his brow and cheeks and
into his eyes.
    “You are dead,” Dany said.
    Murdered
. Though his lips never moved,
somehow she could hear his voice, whispering in her ear.
You never
mourned me, sister. It is hard to die unmourned
.
    “I loved you once.”
    Once
, he said, so bitterly it made her
shudder.
You were supposed to be my wife, to bear me children with
silver hair and purple eyes, to keep the blood of the dragon pure. I took care
of you. I taught you who you were. I fed you. I sold our mother’s crown to keep
you fed
.
    “You hurt me. You frightened me.”
    Only when you woke the dragon. I loved you
.
    “You sold me. You betrayed me.”
    No. You were the betrayer. You turned against me,
against your own blood. They cheated me. Your horsey husband and his stinking
savages. They were cheats and liars. They promised me a golden crown and gave
me this
. He touched the molten gold that was creeping down his face,
and smoke rose