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The wind is blowing in his ears when he hears it.
He hears a faint heartbeat in the distance. It is beating fast and frantic, like the clanging of iron on iron in battle.
He turns his head to the side from where he is sitting on the ground. It is not Jojen’s, Meera’s, or even Hodor’s. They are all too far away, all sleeping too soundly to match the sporadic beat that is ringing in his ears.
For a moment he thinks that it might be Summer, that their hearts are starting to beat together as one. But the heartbeat does not match with his and he is left in the dark of night listening.
He tries to close his eyes to sleep but it is all he can hear, all he can feel.
When sleep finally starts to dawn over him he can see the frozen wanderers, the flapping leather-like wings of a huge creature, and dragonglass digging into flesh.
Then there is a flash of long red hair, so similar to his own, so similar to his mother’s. He feels his own heart beat faster, until it’s almost in time with the far off sound.
Meera shakes him awake and he exhales, and he can almost feel her.
He does not tell his companions.
She is something that is all his. So close to his heart yet so far away from him. He feels like he knows her, like she is something that he has been missing.
He finds himself unable to put a face to her hair, a name to her heartbeat.
Yet he continues to dream of her. He thinks of her hair, how it reminds him of his mother and of simpler times back in Winterfell.
Before everything changed and the world turned dark.
In his dreams one night he thinks he sees his mother’s face with her, except it is not the face he looked to every day.
The eyes are blue, but they are dead. The skin is not soft, but brittle and weathered like a corpse.
Then he hears her whisper and this corpse of his mother turns red with blood and he can almost see her face.
The sound of her tears is almost soothing, almost like a lullaby he knew when he was only a boy.
He thinks they must be close to the wall when he figures it out.
He dreams of his father’s face and his mother’s voice. Of Robb’s smile and the laughter of Theon. Jeyne, barely a vision to him, looks at peace. Arya and Rickon flash by his vision and he finally sees her.
She has red hair and blue eyes that looked like they had once held joy, had once held warmth.
These eyes, so similar to his own, are not blue like the sky like he thinks they should be. Instead her eyes remind him of the dull colour of water underneath a frozen lake, more like ice than anything warm and inviting.
He looks on her and knows that she is not like him. She is a winter’s child, whereas he is a child of the long summer.
Meera shakes him awake and he exhales.
Sansa he thinks.
Her heartbeat becomes steady like the distant beating of a drum and he knows that he must find her.