Chapter Text
She awoke, walking at a steady pace under a warm yellow light. Her mind reminded her was the sun, warm and healing.
I’ve not been under the direct sun in months, she thought to herself. Perhaps years.
She had always enjoyed being outdoors, but her health made it such she sat under pavilions or in airy breezeways. Always preciously sheltered, she had been. A beloved daughter, a cherished princess, in a land with harsh climes and vivacious people.
She walked.
Her memories came to her, as if reliving her life, a slow recall that tantalized her as much as it uneased her. She recalled being bounced on an older man’s knee and smiling up at him when he called her name. Her father…Callyn Fowler…yes yes she could recall now. He was from House Fowler but carried his mother’s Rhoynish look, rather than the First Men of his father’s house. He had been a fiercely passionate man, but no less intelligent than a lord ought to be. He had stepped down from being his father’s heir to marry her mother and not cause a succession dispute. A tactical decision. A decision made with love.
She walked.
And like a sigh, memories of her dear mother came to her on the still air. Princess Eudora of House Nymeros Martell. The name was like a shiver down her back, a warm hand stroking through her heavy dark hair. Dark almond eyes beneath a widow’s peak.
Her mother had treasured her greatly, she remembered, and she had loved her mother fiercely in return. It brought her comfort to recall that face, that name. With it came her whole life, wrought in blood, tears, and laughter. Her brothers, so different but so clever and united in their love for family. Her cousins, her people, those sunbaked sands she saw from her childhood bedroom. It all rushed over her like a wave, and she nearly collapsed from the sudden onslaught.
She walked.
She was coming up on it now. She remembered her husband, ever an image of spun moonlight, with a sweet melodic voice, but so somber as to carry it with him. Steel clouds, she used to muse to herself. It hurt and infuriated her to think of him, so her mind simply did not. Instead, her sweet babes and all their innocent joy filled her body.
Yes, them. The delightful ones she’d made of her own flesh and risked death twice just to bring them to life. The memory of their vitality brought her strength as she finally braved to look to her right. A vast river was laid out before her; rushing blue waters, burbled and crashed against the sandy shore closest to her, but to her fascination she couldn’t even see the other side. It went on for miles it seemed, and she could see mountains rolling in the distance with the sun’s light illuminating everything in warm yellows and oranges, and pinks.
Sunset, glorious and disappointing in its ending.
She walked.
To her other side there was an endless valley which rose and dipped, like all the curves of a woman grown and lush greens and browns filled the landscape. She had never seen a place like this with her own eyes, but she could recall the stories of this land, passed down by her ancestors.
The Rhoyne was beautiful in the afterlife, she mused wryly. Oberyn told her once that he saw the mouth of the Rhoyne where it met Volantis, but he said the river was diminutive now, and a shame compared to its storied glory.
Wherever she was now, it was beautiful and otherworldly. The home of Nymeria of Ny Sar before she became the Princess of Dorne was apparently the afterlife she’d earned. And yet, her mother, her father, her children—none of them were here to greet her.
Her hands created a cradle, as if wishing hard enough would make her children appear in her arms but they remained empty and cold. She looked to the side once more and jolted.
There was a mountain in the river, and it was moving—and yet even as she had the thought, the form stood upright and her face blotted out the sky and cast her face in darkness. Elia stopped walking and the figure leaned down so that she was leaning against the shore, her large, graceful hands formed a cup as if to scoop up some of the water she waded in, but instead she offered her hands to Elia.
“Climb,” the figure said, her voice rumbling like an earthquake. Elia climbed uneasily into the figure’s palms, though in her heart, she already knew who this was.
“Mother,” she said as she was brought face to face with a goddess.
“My daughter,” the Mother Rhoyne sighed. “Blood of my waters, you are home.” She cooed.
“Dorne is my home,” Elia said sadly. “Home is my children in my arms, and my brothers and nieces all around me.” Home was with him too.
The Mother Rhoyne was impossible to perceive, Elia found. She was familiar yet she had a face Elia had never seen. She stared long and hard at that face, but only got the soft feeling of love and light and the cool sensation of water on nearly sunburnt skin.
“Home is where your line began. But you are not finished. I have tired of seeing my children’s children perish.” The Mother Rhoyne rumbled. “You are to return and protect your children—my children.”
“How can I?” she asked softly. “I am clever, but my children need a protector, someone strong enough to defend them from the physical harm of the realm.”
She had always had a frail constitution, but she had only lamented it after the birth of Aegon. Elia remembered spending her last days almost entirely bedbound, with few days where she was able to truly stand and move around. That beast…Gregor Clegane…she didn’t have the strength to kill him with her own power, but perhaps she could save her children if she sent them away in time, let a healthier person take them away. Let her be the sacrifice to end the Targaryen dynasty.
The Mother Rhoyne looked at Elia with warmth and encouragement.
“You can. You will find a way, because you have another chance, because I have given it to you. Do not fail me or them, my sweet girl. My light,” the Mother Rhoyne sighed, and her voice reminded Elia of water rushing from the sea onto the white sands of a beach long abandoned by man.
“You’re right. I will save them.” She told herself, willed herself to believe it, to manifest it into existence.
The Mother Rhoyne set her in the water and Elia drifted in the waters, and she could hear, as if underwater, the voices of her family. She turned onto her stomach and swam, as she never could have in life to the shore, and when she reached that dark brown shore, rich with the promise of life, she clawed her hands into the ground and made her body, laden with duty and love, stand. She panted as she found her gaze fixed on the distant horizon.
She ran.