we know no king but the king in the north (ota)

[tooktheblack]

WHO: Jon Snow
WHERE: woods; inn
WHEN: 4 March
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: TBD

---

As the weather had been a bit milder these past few days, Jon had taken the bow and been ranging more than he had when the snows were thick and coming down on a regular basis. It was easier to find game when fresh shoots were pushing up through the earth and there was one clearing in the forest that was especially good for hunting; deer liked to gather around a small pond and drink and it was easy to bag at least one before the others scattered in panic.

One buck would be enough to feed people for several days, even if the whole village ate from it, and while he still hunted birds and the like it was a good target to have. Approaching the watering hole, he nocked an arrow in his bow and aimed, only to be startled out of the shot by being in Winterfell again.

Winter is here.

Sansa looked at him with grim determination, the girlish features of her face hardened now into stone. She'd gone through so much in the last several years, changed so much, and yet beneath it all she still had what made her a Stark. He was a Stark too, he guessed, after having been crowned King in the North but he didn't feel it. He would never feel like a true Stark in these walls.

When he came free of the memory, the arrow was lodged in a tree and the deer were gone. He headed back to the village empty handed and went to get something to drink. He wished it were ale, considering, but it was only tea because they had nothing stronger. Why would that have felt so real? Why would he be standing on the battlements at Winterfell with Sansa - a Sansa that was older than the one here? It made no sense.

"Something queer is going on in this place," he said, speaking loud enough to be overheard by anyone else who might be walking into the Inn. "I've never had a vision of home before."

Comments

the inn

[cleptes]

Bela was glad for the slight change in the weather, even if it still meant having to wear a few layers to keep out the chill. She was ready for the summer to roll around and for the temperature to go up, for the snow to disappear. It would mean less trips to the forest to gather firewood and that was something Bela was looking forward to.

The inn is still a place that she planned to visit as much as possible, knowing that it was a way of getting food and a decent cup of tea. It also gave her an opportunity to talk to the other villagers and be sociable - better than being cooped up in her house by herself. Bela isn't quite sure how she fits into the community, even after being in the village for four months. Perhaps she didn't want to fit in. It was so much easier for Bela to be aloof.

She enters the inn at her usual time to grab a cup of tea, overhearing Jon after closing the door behind her. Bela doesn't know him but his words catch her attention regardless.

"A vision of home? That's the first time I've heard of anything like that."

Re: the inn

[tooktheblack]

"Neither have I." Jon hadn't realized someone had walked in but it was hardly surprising; the Inn was a place that had heavy traffic even on days of inclement weather and with milder weather, even more traffic.

Bela was a face he knew just from having been in the village as long as he had but he had never spoken to her before and couldn't say he knew her so far as that went. Still, he owed her the explanation for his words.

"I was in the woods earlier and for a brief moment, it was like I'd stumbled back to home. It's never happened here before."

[cleptes]

Bela knows there a lot of people she has yet to meet properly and introduce herself, learn a few things about them. So while she may have seen Jon in passing, he was going to be a new acquaintance to her now.

"That is strange." She says, looking thoughtful for a moment. "Should we really be that surprised though? Considering the things that have happened in the village." Bela has only experienced a couple of them, but the longer she remains here, the more she was likely to go through.

"Do you think something triggered it?"

[tooktheblack]

"No, I'm not terribly surprised. I've been here long enough to know that the strange is common currency around here," Jon said. That, at least, was a bit of truth that seemed to have carried over throughout his entire stay here in this village and had come to be the only thing he could depend upon to remain the same day to day: change was inevitable.

"As to triggering it, I don't know. I hunt on a daily basis unless the weather is just too foul for me to go out safely. There was nothing new or different about what I was doing in the woods today compared to what I normally do. That's what is so strange about it."

[cleptes]

Bela doesn't want to jump to any conclusions about his experience before getting all of the facts first. In case it happened to her and she could be at least a little prepared for it.

"Okay, so this incident may just be a one off thing. Or it could have happened to someone else recently and we don’t know about it yet." But from what being in the village had taught her, strange occurrences like his happened for a reason.

"Can you remember what you were thinking about prior to the vision? Maybe that set it off."

[tooktheblack]

"Truthfully, I was only thinking about how best to get my shot off. I wasn't thinking about anything other than my aim at the time," Jon admitted. "So I don't know if it's a matter that you need to be thinking about home or that you need to be actively thinking about something else. I have no idea."

It seemed to have happened on accident, truthfully, and Jon had no idea if he could make it happen again. He wanted it too, though, if only to prove he was not mad.

"We could go there and see if it happens again?"

[cleptes]

Bela had no idea either, but she's interested to find out. If she managed to learn something from this experience, then perhaps it could be useful to her in the future.

Which is why she isn't going to say no to his suggestion.

"That's not a terrible idea. But first, I think an introduction is in order. My name is Bela; what's yours?"

The Inn

[iron_beneath_beauty]

Hunting had been difficult that morning, as much of the bigger game had been scarce. While she had managed to catch a pair of rabbits, it was frustrating to return home without something that could feed them for the entire week. After cleaning the rabbits, she retreated to the inn, preferring to mend her clothes there, having company and noise around her.

She wasn't far behind Jon, stopping in the doorway at his comments, confused and apprehensive. "You have visions of home?" There had been talk about the recent letters, what the Observers would give them for harming a creature. Jon hadn't said anything about receiving one, but Ned had been fairly quiet about his for awhile as well.

Shifting her basket in her hands, she placed a hand on Jon's arm, glancing up at him in concern. "Did they send you one of the letters?"

Re: The Inn

[tooktheblack]

"The letters? No, nothing like that." Jon knew of a few people who had gotten them but he hadn't been one of those. He was glad he hadn't - given the opportunity in those letters, he wasn't certain he'd make proper decisions about the welfare of people here in the village if he were promised something to help Winterfell.

"I was in the woods trying to track a deer when suddenly I was at Winterfell again. I was on the battlements looking down at the bailey and Sansa was with me but she was older than she is here and the whole castle was covered in snow. It was Winterfell as it is, not as it was."

[iron_beneath_beauty]

While she had received one some time ago, she had kept the matter to herself until the town meeting. It hadn't been her intention to actually follow through on the conditions, but her conversation with Ned had been painful and unknowingly fulfilled the demands. She was rewarded for it, but much like the letter, she had kept her gift from home to herself. She had wondered about whether Jon might be interested in seeing Rhaegar's armor, but thought better of it for now. It wasn't the time.

Her focus was instead largely on him and the vision he received. There was no question about whether it was real. After so much else in this village, it was clear the Observers were doing something to toy with them. "Do you think it's a look into the future? For when you return home?" Because he would return home someday, she had no doubts about that.

[tooktheblack]

"I'm not sure. I've had a conversation with Sansa like that before, standing up on the battlements at Winterfell. We'd had one shortly after we liberated the castle from the Boltons - it'd been snowing and we'd talked about how winter had finally come. The flash of it was so short that I cannot tell you if it was that conversation or another one," Jon said.

"If it was the future, I don't know how to trigger it again. We need to find a way to do it, though. It could be important information for me to know if I ever do return to Westeros. It could be what I need to know for the war against the Night King."

[iron_beneath_beauty]

"I thought no one remembered this place when they returned home?" For those that had come and gone and come again, that seemed to be the case. Arya had apparently been here before, but when she returned home, there was no memory of being in this place or how they were subjected to the strange whims of the Observers.

This was almost teasing them. Offering them glimpses of home, but being unable to see for very long what happened or what was said. "It could be a game for the Observers." She didn't want him to take it so seriously that he was setting himself up for disappointment.

But that was forgotten in an instant. "The Night King? You mean those stories Old Nan would tell?"

[tooktheblack]

"No, I might not remember this place but I might remember something of Westeros. It isn't tied to this place necessarily." Jon was grasping at things in sheer desperation, wanting to do what he could to help Winterfell and the North while he was exiled here. When Lyanna mentioned Old Nan's stories, he nodded gravely.

"Aye, they're not just stories. I've seen them with my own eyes, Lyanna, and I know them to be true. They'll consume the whole North if we don't stop them."

[digging]

Paused in the open doorway as she stomps the mud from her boots, Karen's head snaps up. That 'something queer is going on in this place' is definitely the understatement of the century, but there are levels to everything.

"Did you get a letter?" she asks, giving her boots one last, hasty scrape before stepping fully inside, head tilted as the door swings closed behind her. "A letter that asked you to do something in exchange?"

[tooktheblack]

"No, no letter." Jon knew about the letters if only because his lord father had received one but the contents of it were kept quiet; Ned Stark wasn't the sort of man to tell his business to many and Jon hadn't pressed. He hadn't received anything in a long while, actually. He'd gotten gifts before of clothing but never a letter.

"I was simply in the woods and for a half a moment, I wasn't. I was back home in Westeros. Has that happened to you at all?"

[digging]

"No," Karen admits with a slight shake of her head, and then frowns, her lips pressing into a thin line. "But I got a letter telling me I could go home if I..." She sighs. What point is there to not just coming out with it? Nobody can keep secrets around here anyway. "If I killed something. Or someone, I guess." Not that she'd ever considered that particular option, even when the broader notion had still been on the table.

"I know this might be seem rude, you don't even know me, but is there any way you could show me where it happened?"

[tooktheblack]

"I can show you. I don't know if it will happen again, or not, but I can bring you to the place where it happened." Jon stepped forward just a bit and offered his hand to her, wanting to greet her properly.

"I'm Jon Snow, by the way. I don't know you except by your face and I thought we ought to know names before we go out into the woods together."

[digging]

"Karen Page," she replies with a nod. "Thanks. I know it's probably naive to think any of us could ever make sense of this place, but I'm stubborn," she adds with a wan smile. "Especially when it's trying to get me to commit homicide."

She pauses, patting the pockets of her coat until she finds what she's looking for: A journal with a pencil wedged between the pages. "Where's Westeros?" she asks as she shoves the little book back into her pocket.

[tooktheblack]

"Far away from here, Karen," Jon said, letting out a sharp, short laugh. He had gotten used to no one other than his kin and friends knowing where it was and her question wasn't unusual to him in the slightest. Still, he smiled a bit and decided to explain a bit further.

"From what I've gathered talking to other people here, it's not Earth. Westeros is one large continent spanning from the Wall in the North where I'm from all the way down to Dorne and deserts in the South. It's a lot different than this place. Our seasons don't change so quickly."

[dann_0]

"A vision of home? Like a dream or.." He glances over as he walks in, quite intrigued at that. Maybe he could get something like that.

[tooktheblack]

"A vision, only a moment's flash and then I was back here," Jon elaborated. "I've never experienced anything like it in the entire time I've been here." It had been near upon two years now that he had and he'd thought he knew all there was to know about the village. He'd been wrong.

"Has this happened to you?"

[dann_0]

"Not yet." Danny admits. Not that he would mind if it happened, getting to see his daughter again, seeing if she is alright, yeah that would be worth whatever the cost was. What was the cost, though?

"How did it happen? Did you have to do something for it?"

[tooktheblack]

"No, I didn't do anything. One moment I was in the woods here just outside the village and the next I was on the battlements of the castle. I can't say how or why it happened, only that I know I didn't do anything to make it happen. It just did."

That was the strangest part of it. Nothing in this village happened without a price. What price had he inadvertently paid to get that vision of home?

"I could show you the place, if you wanted to see it? Maybe the same would happen for you?"

[dann_0]

"You know. I think I would. I have people I would like to see if that is possible." He smiles warmly. "A daughter mostly. I am a little worried I won't see her again."

[tooktheblack]

"If I had a child, I would be beside myself if I had to leave her. Leaving her against my will would be worse," Jon said, frowning deeply.

"I'll take you to the place. Hopefully you'll be able to see her and know that she is safe where she is now."