In this world, the seasons lasted for extraordinarily long stretches of time.
Summer could continue for years, or even a decade. The maesters called such a period the Long Summer. Though the snow in the Riverlands had melted a year ago, the weather still felt like early spring.
Harrenhal had no farmers.
Across the plains surrounding the castle for several miles, wild grass had grown taller than a man. Snakes, insects, and rodents battled constantly within it, struggling to survive and reproduce.
The waters of the Gods Eye were still icy.
But children rarely cared about such things.
With Rhaegar leading the way, the boys all jumped into the lake to swim. Only Jocelyn and the maids carrying blankets remained on the shore.
A dozen knights stood watch nearby, scanning the surrounding plains while debating whether they should cut down the wild grass around the castle.
Two Kingsguard knights had removed their armor and stood waist-deep in the water, holding Boremund and Baelon by the stomach as they taught them how to swim.
Rhaegar and Aemon had already swum more than twenty meters from shore.
Beneath the water lay a large rock. Sitting atop it allowed them to keep their heads above the surface.
Rhaegar looked up toward Harrenhal.
"Aemon," he asked suddenly, "have you ever seen a dragon drink water?"
Aemon thought for a moment.
"…I don't think so."
When he and his younger brother Baelon were infants, dragon eggs had been placed in their cradles, but the eggs had never hatched.
They would need to travel to Dragonstone when they were older and claim dragons of their own.
The dragons belonging to the king and queen did not tolerate strangers either, so Aemon knew little about the everyday habits of dragons.
Rhaegar had asked the question because something unusual had just happened.
In their line of sight, Dreamfyre, who had been resting atop the Tower of Terror, suddenly spread her wings and leapt into the air.
But instead of flying upward, she glided downward, descending toward the shore of the Gods Eye.
Her forelimbs sank into the shallow water as she folded her wings.
She lowered her head, sniffed the lake water briefly-
Then raised her gaze and stared directly at Rhaegar.
The sun stood high overhead.
Light shimmered across Dreamfyre's pale blue and silver scales, reflecting from the rippling surface of the lake.
Nearby, several large fish-eating birds cautiously approached the dragon, pecking curiously at the massive creature that had fallen from the sky.
These birds stood nearly a man's height.
They had migrated from the south as the weather warmed. Their enormous beaks were always testing things to see whether they could swallow them whole.
Cats and stray dogs along the lakeshore had already been devoured by them.
Some stories even claimed they sometimes ate children.
The birds were fearless around humans, relying on their size and numbers.
Rhaegar had often been harassed by them while swimming, they would clamp their beaks onto his head. He would have to grab their long necks and twist them away while they squawked wildly, feathers flying everywhere.
Rhaegar absolutely hated these birds.
BOOOOM-!
A stream of golden-red dragonfire roared across the surface of the lake, rolling forward for dozens of meters before finally fading.
A vast cloud of white steam exploded into the air.
The maids on the shore screamed in terror.
The knights immediately drew their swords, thinking raiders had attacked.
The two Kingsguard quickly told them to lower their weapons.
"The dragon is hunting."
Steam drifted across the water.
The foolish birds, still pecking everywhere, had finally encountered something they could not challenge.
Dreamfyre usually slept lazily atop the tower and ignored the birds that wandered along the lakeshore.
But now a dozen charred bird corpses floated upon the water, waiting to be swallowed.
"Dreamfyre is so beautiful!" Aemon said dreamily, already imagining which dragon on Dragonstone he might someday claim.
Rhaegar said nothing.
He simply reached up and touched the brand on his left shoulder.
The burning pain within the mark never stopped.
Over the years Rhaegar had grown accustomed to it, even learning to sleep through it.
But whenever he came near fire, the pain intensified sharply.
The worst moments came when Dreamfyre breathed dragonfire nearby.
Once, the agony had been so severe that Rhaegar had rolled across the ground screaming.
Now he clenched his teeth and splashed lake water gently against the mark.
The icy water eased the pain slightly.
The scarred skin was uneven and dark red.
Anyone who saw it agreed it looked like a brand made by heated metal.
But its exact origin remained unknown.
The mark covered his left chest, shoulder, and part of his back in the shape of a handprint.
It resembled both a human hand and a dragon's claw.
The fingertips ended in sharp points instead of rounded human nails.
Yet dragons had only one claw on each forelimb, the other digits extended into the wing bones. Their powerful hind legs had four toes, arranged three forward and one back.
No one could explain the shape.
The theory most widely accepted, proposed by the Grand Maester, was that it came from some ancient ritual practiced by Rhaegar's father's family.
Rhaegar himself had arrived in this world as an infant.
No one had ever asked him about the brand.
And he certainly had no intention of telling the truth.
That he had received it while two cosmic beings fought during his transmigration, when a glowing tentacled creature grabbed him.
Rhaegar was convinced the mark had something to do with dragons.
Aemon noticed Rhaegar clutching his shoulder, his face twitching.
"Rhaegar… is it hurting again?"
There was only one medicine in this world capable of dulling such pain: milk of the poppy.
It was a powerful potion prepared by maesters.
Effective... and sweet like milk.
But Rhaegar knew enough to recognize the danger in the name alone.
"It's never not hurting," Rhaegar said.
Then he suddenly grinned.
"Forget it. Come on, I'll take you all to catch birds and roast them!"
Watching Dreamfyre devour the birds had made him hungry.
"Long ago warriors dug bullets from their bodies while distracting themselves," he declared dramatically. "Today Rhaegar will cure pain with bird-catching and barbecue!"
"Wait for me!" Aemon shouted, twisting his body and swimming after him.
Whether they could actually catch birds didn't matter.
Aemon had long believed that anything Rhaegar claimed he could do would eventually work.
After all, Rhaegar could make small stones disappear beneath wooden bowls.
To the other children, that alone seemed like sorcery.
The maids dried the children with blankets and helped them dress.
Then Rhaegar ordered the adults to stay back and led the four children into the tall grass outside Harrenhal.
"Here's good," he said.
They stopped atop a small mound where several flat stones lay scattered.
"Cut down the grass around here," Rhaegar instructed.
While Boremund, Jocelyn, Aemon, and Baelon hacked away at the weeds with wooden swords, Rhaegar began digging into the soil.
Soon he unearthed a dozen wriggling earthworms.
The others gathered around him.
"That's disgusting," Jocelyn said, shuddering as she watched the writhing red worms squirm in Rhaegar's palm.
Rhaegar laughed.
"Relax. We're not eating these."
He pulled several large green leaves from the grass and snapped a few thin but sturdy stems.
Threading the fattest worms onto the stems, he rolled the leaves into cone-shaped rings, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom.
Then he fixed the worm-baited stems inside the leaves.
Within minutes, he had assembled five simple bird traps.
Rhaegar placed the traps upright on the ground.
The remaining worms he chopped into pieces with a wooden sword and scattered nearby.
Then he led the others to hide behind another mound some distance away.
"Will this really catch birds?" Boremund whispered, peering through the grass with one eye.
He had seen birds hunted with bows or caught from nests in trees-
But never like this.
"As long as there's no strong wind, it'll work," Rhaegar said confidently.
In this world, where population and technology had not yet devastated nature, animals feared humans far less.
Birds especially gathered quickly wherever food appeared.
Otherwise, why would farmers bother placing scarecrows in their fields?
"There they come!"
Rhaegar suddenly stood and rushed forward through the grass.
The others followed.
A flock of birds feeding on the ground panicked and took flight when they saw him.
But five birds had already grabbed the worms inside the traps.
Refusing to release the food in their beaks, the leaf cones covered their eyes.
Blind and confused, they could not take off.
They hopped wildly across the ground.
Rhaegar simply went down-
And grabbed them.
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