Song of Life
Nineteenth Day of the Twelfth Month 292 AC
You offer a bow to the Singers, in return for their acceptance of your 'proposal', strange though it may have been. "A sad day it would be when man's first teachers would pass out of the world, leaving it a poorer place. My realm, small or large, shall ever be open to your kin, and aid I pledge in helping to turn back the twilight of your race."
There is no surprise in the near-score pairs of glowing golden eyes, though you can read there trepidation, excitement, and of course,
hope. Seven-and-ten of the Children of the Forest join you as you enter the presence of the Last Greenseer one final time, and without a single word they set themselves in a wide circle around you, waiting.
With trembling fingers you draw the bone you took from your mother's grave in Dragonstone and place upon the ground before stepping back. You feel Dany's small hand slipping into yours, then a squeeze of encouragement.
"Lord Bloodraven," you speak at last, glad that your voice does not shake. "Know that if this does not go as I hope I shall not blame you for it. I know that the magics of life can only return the willing. If my mother is satisfied to be wherever her spirits rest then I will be glad for her." The words are perhaps the hardest you have ever spoken, yet speak them you must, for your sake as much as his.
"Wisely spoken, young king," the ancient greenseer replies. "Know that I too hope for your sake that such bitter wisdom is not needed."
For a moment there is silence unbroken by even a single breath. Then softly a song begins to echo through the chamber, in voices pure as a mountain stream, at times deep as the bones of the earth, and at others high an piercing as an eagle's call. At first you think the Children sing, yet they are silent still... and so you understand. It is indeed the singers you hear, but not those who yet walk in flesh, but those who have passed into the trees and the earth, they who dream the Greendream.
Then the ground ripples where you had left the bone like water in a gentle wind, and slowly black earth begins to cover it. You do not know how long the song lasts then... heartbeats, minutes, hours, the words lose all meaning.
A mound of earth rises up before you and then so gradually it seems more like the work of ages than that of a a sculptor's hand it becomes the silhouette of a woman and then a woman in truth, her hair of silver, her dress of simple black silk and her face as familiar as a thousand dreams.
The song trails off into echoes once more, a question and a promise both as silence falls again... to be broken by a single startled breath as the woman...
your mother, at last you can think it, opens her eyes and awakes from eight years of death into a world stranger than she could ever imagine.
What do you do?
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OOC: The next part will be an interlude I've been waiting to write for quite some time.