Merys lay awake at High King's Crossing for a time, staring up from her bedroll at the roof of the tent above. In the distance, she heard some wolves howling in echoes to each other. Turning her head, she looked at the wolf lying beside her. He moaned out low notes in fitful sleep, occasionally twitching a leg or the edge of his muzzle. Though cleaned of the blood that once drenched him, and properly bandaged on his leg, it would be a long time til the Pup accepted the loss of his Lossoth companion. As Merys began to drift away to sleep, she wondered if she could accept it herself.
In the blurred darkness of a dream, Merys sat on the bridge of High King's Crossing, looking out over a fog-filled river. The howling of young wolves filled the night air, shuddering through the empty stonework. Off different pitches, off different wolves, the song they sung was full of woe.
Merys reached out to find Pup, for her comfort as well as his. The wolf cub swathed in bandages lay naturally within reach, nudging into her hand as she stretched it out. She breathed in some relief and drew him up to her lap.
Whispers whipped through the chilly air. They mutter the name of the man lost, and soon the high murmurs lower to Jhaqun's own tone of voice, rich and deep.
Merys buried her face in Pup's neck, closing tight her eyes. She clung to the wolf cub, as if holding him would make her fears subside. And they did, a little. Until she thinks she heard Jhaqun's voice.
The voice grew louder, gently calling his own name, or beginning his own sentence. Soon the voices subside and a pale, stoney Jhaqun stood before her, vacant of expression, a shade of his former self.
When her eyes rose to meet his, she felt her veins go cold. Merys released her grip on Pup and fell backward, scrambling away from the bridge's edge. Thrashing out her arms, she wished she had a weapon or something to protect her, but she cannot find anything in the fog. There is only her… and him.
Suddenly, he blinked away from the bridge's edge and appeared behind her. She whipped around to face him, eyes wide with terror. His own eyes remained vacant, though his hands cup together peacefully. The blood and wounds are gone. Still, she trembled at the sight of him, unsure of what she was seeing, or why. For awhile all she could do was gaze wide-eyed and silent at him, till she finally whispered, "Jhaqun?"
The man blinked slowly, unfazed by her fear or her very presence. He retained his calm expression, and turned on the spot. His attire creased with slow strides as he slowly began to walk away. A short distance away, he stopped, then turned. He looked to her calmly and silently, perhaps expecting her to follow. She hesitantly trailed after him, her legs seeming to obey even as her mind questioned it.
As they walked, the past words of Jhaqun echoed around them, giving the cold wind an extra chill. 'Jhaqun travels to return Pup... Pup needs Pup's kind, not Jhaqun.'
Bowing her head, Merys remembered the living Jhaqun with pain and difficulty. Already she had been trying to close up her thoughts and push them away.
Snowflakes gently fell around them, and the scenery before them shifted to the whitened wastes of Forochel. The ground became thick with snow, and the green trees became heavy with a thick coat of white. Instinctively, Merys wrapped her arms around herself. Her bones still remembered the cold.
Now they stood in Forochel, and small caves stood out from the blurring blizzard. Jhaqun turned, staring at Merys, and from behind a snow capped hill, Pup padded down toward them with a howl in the distance. He circled Jhaqun and then sat beside him, looking regal to Merys, with his silvery fur billowing in the wind. A smile came across her face and she sighed at the comforting thought. All too easily, she felt ready to call Jhaqun's death a dream and assume he'd been there, in Forochel, alive, all along. She bowed her head in greeting to Pup, then looked up at Jhaqun, forcing the mental image of his dying face from her mind.
But eerily, he stared vacantly through her, and Pup now did as well. In unison, they slowly turned toward the caves. Jhaqun brought a crossbow from his back, and knelt to a tree, whilst Pup, oddly, padded on slowly without him, towards the caves. The willingness of their parting cast a tension within the dream. From the blackness of the caves, yellow, circular lights blinked into existence, lights that would soon turn the dream into a nightmare.
Merys swallowed, then moved to chase after them. "Jhaqun, don't go... where are you going?" In her thoughts were echoes of when she awoke in Forochel and found out he was gone.
The shadows of the cave gave birth to grey masses of fur, vicious predators looming forth. They growled and slowly encircled the innocent Pup, who so graciously padded near to them in the hope of attaining acceptance.
"No…" Merys whispers. "No, please... don't go, please..." She knew Pup couldn't understand her gentle, heart-aching pleas, but she stood there shaking her head nonetheless.
Jhaqun knelt ready, crossbow loaded and primed for firing as he hoisted the sturdy weapon to his shoulder. Pup sensed the impending danger, as the pack leader emerged from the mist. He nudged Pup roughly with his nose, sniffing him, judging him. To the right a yap, to the left, forward, behind. Jhaqun's voice filled the air, but his lips did not move. 'Jhaqun loves Pup... and Pup loves Jhaqun.' The vicious, black-furred pack leader growled and opened his jaws wide, with the promise of death for Pup. A crossbow bolt tore through the air and struke the Alpha Wolf's eye, immediately toppling him dead into the snow. Suddenly the howls of war sounded, and the lesser wolves lunged forward for revenge.
Merys wanted to lunge forward herself, to grab up Pup, to pull Jhaqun out of the inevitable, but she could not. She could not even move. All she could do was watch and gulp back the tears that returned to her eyes.
Pup was tragically charged to the ground, having never wished a fight to break out. However, his animal instinct kick in, and the two predators' jaws and teeth rip chunks of fur from each other as they rolled through the snow. Jhaqun loaded, fired, and ended a second wolf. A third. A fourth. But too many. They whipped through the night air, leaving their paw trails and slobber in their wake.
A wholehearted rejection of this nightmare welled up in Merys. She clenched her fists at her side and screamed out, "Stop!" Whether she screamed at the nightmare, or the wolves, or all of it, even she couldn't say.
Jhaqun's crossbow swayed with inaccuracy as he watched his best friend being dominated by the large hound of the North. He pulled the trigger, but no bolt was loaded. A curse lifts through the air, though his lips again do not move, his expression remaining eerily vacant. Hurriedly, he knelt behind the bush he used for cover, and loaded his bolt. The bush seemed to grow fangs as the head of a great wolf sprung out between the reeds, snapping at Jhaqun. The man raised his crossbow in time to shield the blow, the jaws of the beast locking onto the wood and in consequence, cleaving it straight in two from sheer strength. However, the time taken to do so bought Jhaqun the opportunity to unleash his hand axe and bury it into the wolf's head.
Merys found some ability to move and sprung forward without a second thought. Without weapon or armor, she rushed towards Jhaqun to throw herself around him and somehow protect him from the attack.
Jhaqun slowly raises himself, his bloodied axe in one hand. He sprints straight through Merys to aid Pup. However, a wolf darts in from his right, and clenches its jaws hard around Jhaqun's leg, ripping straight through a major artery. He yelps in pain and falls to the ground, as the great wolf shakes its head in savagery, without mercy. The sound of Jhaqun's screams are heard but his expression, his lips, remain unchanged.
With tears streaming down her face, Merys just crumpled where she was, in the snow. She clutched her arms over her head and tightened into a ball. Fingers dug into her hair as she tried to drive the images out of her mind.
Pup raised his head, whimpering beneath the yapping elder wolf. With a lunge of his nuzzle, he clenched his teeth around the neck of his attacker, and pulls, removing the predator's throat. Pup wriggled up in victory, and quickly bounded through the blizzard toward his fallen master, diving atop his attacker with all his might, and tumbling with him down the slope.
Merys heard Jhaqun's panting and sobs, though she remained curled up, rocking in place. Her mind was a blur of these scenes and more, a torrent of fighting and men's yells and muttered complaints. It's as if she can think of nothing good, only every bad thing that has happened around her in recent days.
Jhaqun pressed a hand to his wound, like he did in his final moments. Eventually, Pup returned through the mist, now adorned with a fatal limp. Jhaqun leaned his head back, and the sounds of his cries of sorrow filled the air, along with his broken voice. 'Jhaqun is sorry! Jhaqun is sorry! Pup forgive Jhaqun!' Pup stared to him, stopping a short distance. He then turned, betrayed, and fled away from him, having never wanted to leave his true friend. Jhaqun cried pathetically, crawling after him in the snow, the charred remains of Jhaqun's village looming near them in the background. Suddenly, the snow began to fall upward, not down. The caves became cliffs, and the scrub became woodland, with Jhaqun sitting against the tree where he perished.
As the noises subsided, Merys unclasped her hair and raised her head to look around. Her heart sank as she saw Jhaqun sitting there, as he was when he died. But quietly, she climbed to hands and feet, to come close to him and sit at his side.
Jhaqun raised his gaze to her, and for the first time in the dream state, his face bears an expression. One of sadness, regret, of the void his best friend left within his dying heart, beating slower and slower. His face contorted as he verged on tears, pathetic in his abandonment and defeat.
Her mouth trembled with the tears still welling in her eyes. They roamed his face in desperation, as they did when he lay dying before. Then she looked down to his hand, remembering his final, failing, reach for her face. She lay one of her hands upon his and brought it softly up to her cheek. "Still here," she managed to say.
Suddenly, the purpose for his attempt to touch her face becomes clear. Gently, he draws her forward and presses their lips together, in a kiss full of meaning for him. With her heart breaking for him and wanting to do whatever she can to make the pain and death disappear, Merys sniffed back her tears and accepted his kiss. Her fingers curled around the hand she still held to her face.
His kiss gradually became wilder, a hidden passion fueling his heart. His hands ran through her hair, and his lips stroked hers with the promise of something more. Something only he wanted.
Merys, however, becomes rather startled by this, uttering a questioning moan into his mouth. Her eyes spring open and she barely manages to pull her lips from his with a gasp. "Jhaqun... what...?"
As soon as she pulled away from him, the light left Jhaqun's eyes. He died as he did before, with the hand once raised thumping onto the ground, and a sad sigh leaving his lips. The tale of Jhaqun, had come to a close.
Shocked by the sudden fading of his life, Merys lunged towards him, desperately stroking her hands around his cold face. "Jhaqun? Jhaqun, no, please... no..."
His face was lightly knocked side to side in her groveling, but Jhaqun was no more, reality bleeding into the dream.
Merys' arms fell useless to her sides. Sitting back, she could only stare in disbelief, even more confused than she was the fist time she saw him die.
Flames erupted to life and engulfed Jhaqun, charring his body monstrously, an echo of the burning body upon the fire Kaiju built for him. Merys fell backward with a blood-curdling scream. Overwhelmed with terror, she rolled to her feet and fled into the fog. The trees rushed by, the voices and cries drowned her thoughts, til she awoke from the nightmare with a jerk and a yell. She found herself sitting, panting, in her bedroll once more.
Curling her legs up to herself, Merys bowed her head into her knees and sobbed. Jhaqun was dead again, and once more she was powerless to stop it.
