I would appreciate it as I am sure Vermax will. Would you join me on in ensuring he settles there? ( Surely, the great Lord of the North would not fear to venture close to a dragon? )
I am not so sheltered that such a thing concerns me. The hot springs on Dragonstone were not private baths.
( But only used by his immediate family... so.... )
[ Taunt for taunt, feather ruffling for feather ruffling. Personally tending to the prince's mount? At one time the question might have been is the Lord of Winterfell stupid enough to draw near a dragon, until a two-legged one appeared at his door. Now his brief pause is more out of consideration for the benefit of time spent in each other's company, to ride out together. ]
If you wish it.
[ Deliberately chosen wording. If he wants him to—then he'll meet the beast that's been flying over his lands. ]
I see. [ Oh, is that a fact? ] And snow wouldn't bother you?
Thank you, my Lord. ( And if that is said with a private smile, there is no one to see it. )
Even when your true snows are falling? Or only the summer snows you claim are not yet truly storms?
If the pools provide refuge, I will not mind the chill before they warm my bones. Which pools do you favor? Are those less traversed the secret treasures of Winterfell?( He is not afraid of a hike, even if the coat he has with him will not keep him warm against the chill of summer snow. )
Perhaps I'll learn something of dragons in turn as my forebear did.
[ Meanwhile questions, questions from the student of the North. ]
Even then.
And I don't claim it, that is a fact. Flurries at most. [ As is the Wolf of Winterfell's undeniable amusement each time Jacaerys' considered poise meets a new and unfamiliar facet about the lands he now tolerates with an admirable amount of grace—to the prince's credit, he swallows his complaints well. Added to the list of things sight unseen: the stoniness worked into the lord's grain cracking around his grin.
He won't let him freeze, will keep the furs and fires in abundance in the warmest rooms in the keep, but he can still take some enjoyment in the other flexing his diplomacy with a reddened tip to his nose. Possibly an act of mercy that he thinks his answer over a moment or two. ]
They're one and the same, in some respects. [ His favorite places and what he considers his home's treasured places. ] I'm partial to visiting the godswood. Few ever venture so deep, it's as privy as anywhere can be. I find the dark parts of the forest comforting. Others disagree.
But for you, maybe somewhere more to your liking. Below the castle. A short trek and indoors, protected by the rock and the walls.
Vermax's temperament is not the best to learn from, I fear. But if we bring his favorite meal with us to your introduction, I am sure you'll win him over. ( strange how he gets along best with creatures considered temperamental and grumpy. )
Flurries that still chill the bones and cover all the lands.
Would it be too much for this prince to ask to see both? The hot spring beneath the castle and then the treasure in the godswood when these flurries pass?
Surely he doesn't mean him to actually get that close in leading a proverbial dragon to water. ]
Where livestock is concerned, it will be done. I'll trust the rest to you, dragonlord.
[ One has to wonder about the nature of a bond like that—do Vermax's moods reflect his rider's, or do the prince's reflect his dragon's? ]
Ah, but snowflakes on steaming skin is the best part about it when the weather abides. As perhaps it is with the rain on Dragonstone.
[ A beat, to allow for something softer. Winterfell runs in him as much as its heated waters, as much as Old Valyria for the last of its people. Sharing its privy, lesser known parts is like sharing parts of himself, opening up under the other's curiosity. ]
Then we'll go. I'll take you wherever interests you.
( Oh, surely he does. The thought has taken root, the seed starting to grow into a sapling. He thinks he would like to see them interact. For Vermax is not his blood but his closest friend, Cregan growing into something close to that. )We will need a sturdy goat brought before him. A meal such as that will keep him away from the forests where Northmen hunt for a few days.
Ah, I see your point. That is a pleasure I agree with. Though it takes quite a bit for my skin to steam and blood to run warmer than it already does.
Anywhere? And if I wish to see so much of Winterfell and its lands that I overstay my welcome?
[ The last... the last is as much a surprise to him as anyone, to find the protest earnest that the Targaryen prince could be a burden on his time and company. ]
I'll be sorry to see you go.
Perhaps you'll come again one day. It would please me if the North leaves a welcome impression.
As long as our friendship does not take a sudden, sour turn, you will be fine. My lord.( He's joking. )
The same magic that tells the dragons that I am one of their own. The magic of old Valyria or so the tales say.( If it is truly Valyrian blood magic, Jacaerys knows not. But he is glad for it, for the bond. It gives him Vermax, yes, but it also solidifies his claim as his mother's heir when his plain features do so much to bring question to it. )
I would like to, once my mother's throne is secure. I hope this is not the last time I see the North, nor do I plan to remain on Dragonstone or the Red Keep like a stranger to the kingdom I will one day rule.
My sense is you are not so fickle as that. [ In friendship, or in temperament—or perhaps more to say... he wants that not to be the case. That his instincts about the crown prince aren't wrong. That his friendship—not lightly given—isn't to be pettily misspent.
Is it foolhardy to hope for in so short a time, to lean into his gut impression? Possibly, yet the majority of him doesn't believe so. It's been more difficult to put his finger on things about Prince Jacaerys that would sourly curdle his company. ] Nor am I.
[ All to say, no promises.
His temper runs just as hot and should he make Cregan wroth, who's to say if a dragon-blooded boy will learn what cold is truly like with closer inspection of snow and ice. Mayhaps a jaunt during the snowfall would sound very nice, accompanied by that dragon's rumbles and whines? A toothless jest to match, of course. (Or is it.) ]
That is more than the mutters of old children's tales, then?
[ Also not quite what he had half wondered with his query.
No matter. ]
Under better circumstances, you'll have a proper cloak, heated quarters, and the breadth of Winterfell's lands on your return.
I am not to be.( but Jacaerys is still a dragon, the son of a legacy of blood and fire, even if the blood in his veins does not solely weave back through the ages toward the glory of Old Valyria. )
No, not quite. You'll see soon for yourself.
( And that is a promise. After all, upon daybreak the next morn they will visit his oldest friend and Cregan will show him the hot springs that have now captured the prince's imagination.
The thought of a visit with a proper coat, with gloves made for him is another thought that warms his chest. Just as the thought, unbidden, of Cregan visiting his own home. Not the Red Keep, appropriate as that would be, but Dragonstone. That is the place Jacaerys wishes to show him, from the views of the Sea Dragon tower overlooking the Blackwater to Aegon's Garden. One day, he hopes it may be so.
The thoughts warm his chest through the evening, as their conversation lulls with bids of restful sleep.
In the morning, Jacaerys dresses in more layers than previous days. He feels prepared until he steps out into the cold air and knows his ears and nose grow red, does his best not to shiver or scowl when he notices the amusement on Cregan's handsome face. The ride to the caves is not a long one and Vermax finds them quick enough, drawn by bond and hunger. )
He'll always find me, ( Jacaerys answers when Cregan asks how the prince means to call him, eyes crinkling at the corners with mirth.
The growing dragon is won easily by the promise of food, allows the Lord of Winterfell closer than most when Jacaerys attempts an introduction. Not close enough to touch, no, but close enough to feel the warmth of him as the dragon nuzzles his great snout into his rider's chest.
After all that, it seems the hot springs are a perfect way to ease what tension may have drawn into the elder man's muscles from his brush with a Targaryen dragon and to warm Jacaerys' bones. He tries to hide the need to rub his nose as they ride back toward Winterfel, missing the warmth of Vermax's frame already. The snow had melted where the dragon had landed, the ground warmed.
Cregan leads him underneath the castle, away from where the servants walk about. There Jacaerys finds himself standing before a sight that reminds him of Dragonstone, of the hot springs below the castle warmed by the volcano and dragons nesting beneath. the steam rising from the pool calls to him and Jacaerys, despite the insistent nagging in his mind to glance over at Cregan as he strips his own layers, hurries to strip bare. The water may be too hot for some, but the sigh he lets out as he wades into the water is close to a moan. )
[ A promise made is a promise kept—they part ways in the evening only to reconvene the next still and clear morning. A common occurrence, or on its way to becoming one, many days—most days—spent in each other's company to some degree, driven here and there by making introductions, or appropriate courtesies, or more laid-back entertainments in the times between.
Their ride out sits somewhere between the last and cautious intrigue borne from his first brush hosting a dragonrider and all it entails. It's one thing to have learned about King's Landing through his father, a place where dragon cries raining down from the clouds is a given, to hear Jacaerys' dragon at a distance, occasionally breaking up wolfsong outside the keep's walls with trilling draconic notes.
It's another, quite another, to stop the horses and the soon-to-be meal in the grass a ways from the rocky cavern leading deep into the steaming bowels of the earth and witness the prince greet his dragon in flowing Valyrian, close at hand for the halfway familiar smell of ash and brimstone to hit his nose, sharp like the most earthy, pungent hot spring but different, too. Being in their presence is invitation to a singular, special kind of moment, he realizes, pulling his eyes from Jace's gladsome expression to the powerfully built creature. An opal of rolling fire comes to mind—a sheen of shifting greens and oranges atop scale and claw and muscle. Comparatively Vermax is small, he understands, still building up to his full size and might next to what his ancestor must have seen of the Black Dread.
Yet—however and wherever dragons first originated in history's misty memory, it's not so surprising to see why Valyrians would turn to veneration, being near one. Cregan had been raised to respect the wild and untamed things in the places men were careful to tread, as all things similar in the North. Here is a wild thing, an untameable thing, belonging to the indomitable beauty of predators.
Still watching, still fascinated, as the green dragon finally slinks out of sight inside the cave dragging the goat's carcass behind: ] He's impressive in his way.
[ And he's grateful, in the aftermath, to have been allowed—and dared to step close to—the sight.
That is how it comes to be he leads another dragon to the warmth of another hot spring, though this one he enters along with, trekking down stairs beneath Winterfell itself. Not so deep as Winterfell's crypts, deeper and more vast still, but down until the man-made symmetry of carved castle stone begins to give way to natural, untouched rock. Places the builders had built around, or above, or subservient to the land, such as this. Even so, there are signs belonging to the passage of many hands over many hundreds and thousands of years—lit torches in sconces rim the cavernous pool, casting dappling, dancing shadows on the water's surface, the rock spring's edges worn smooth from long use. Neatly folded stacks of towels for drying and changes of clothes wait, along with wine, honey soap, and a basin of clean water for rinsing.
The other has eyes for one comfort above all, swiftly discarding clothing as he goes. A hum of some amusement from Cregan at the prince encountering a facet to Winterfell that genuinely pleases him is lost to the swish of feet parting water, accompanying the prince's enthusiastic descent into the hot springs.
Slower, a step behind as he had been in meeting Vermax, he has the time and view to watch the prince do so—slim and fair-skinned wreathed in steam, exchanging the last stitch of clothing for a purring pleasure. ]
You do like it hot, don't you. Does it suit? [ Thick-soled boots make a heavy tread on stone in the quiet posed by just the two of them and the lapping water. He bends to release the laces. ]
( Jacaerys waits for Cregan to reveal more of himself. It is said that Northmen are sturdy, are more beasts than men. Yet no matter what is revealed, the crown prince knows that he is eager to see more of pale skin and what hides underneath Cregan's cloaks.
It is not as if he has not seen him in various states of dress, without the cloaks and in but one layer in front of the hearth. Yet there is much left to the imagination still and Jace's has run hot as the blood within his veins. He finds himself wishing to hoard the site, as Vermax had hoarded the meal they'd offered him. He has drifted off in thought when he hears the timber of Cregan's voice, the northern drawl with which he speaks. ) Hm?
( And then he is glad that the steam rising from the pool gives him a flush. One he hopes the lord before him will dismiss. It takes a moment to remember himself. ) I am quite pleased.
Though, do not fret. I will not forsake the rooms you've given me for this place. ( Jacaerys glances around the cavern, though his gaze does drift back to his host. And when he speaks it is in teasing tones, ) Will it not be too hot for you?
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no subject
Date: 2025-05-17 05:35 am (UTC)I am not so sheltered that such a thing concerns me. The hot springs on Dragonstone were not private baths.
( But only used by his immediate family... so.... )
no subject
Date: 2025-05-19 08:50 am (UTC)If you wish it.
[ Deliberately chosen wording. If he wants him to—then he'll meet the beast that's been flying over his lands. ]
I see. [ Oh, is that a fact? ] And snow wouldn't bother you?
no subject
Date: 2025-05-23 12:50 am (UTC)The snow would not be in the hot springs, would it? ( that wouldn't make them very warm, Cregan!! )
no subject
Date: 2025-05-26 05:08 am (UTC)Very well. Then I'll take you on the morrow.
[ Today is for hidden smiles at the plight of other wary warm weather creatures. ]
Pools in the yards and the godswood are exposed to the elements, my prince. Some larger, some smaller, some less traversed than others.
They're good to soak in even when the snow is falling.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-26 05:16 am (UTC)Even when your true snows are falling? Or only the summer snows you claim are not yet truly storms?
If the pools provide refuge, I will not mind the chill before they warm my bones. Which pools do you favor? Are those less traversed the secret treasures of Winterfell? ( He is not afraid of a hike, even if the coat he has with him will not keep him warm against the chill of summer snow. )
no subject
Date: 2025-05-26 11:02 am (UTC)[ Meanwhile questions, questions from the student of the North. ]
Even then.
And I don't claim it, that is a fact. Flurries at most. [ As is the Wolf of Winterfell's undeniable amusement each time Jacaerys' considered poise meets a new and unfamiliar facet about the lands he now tolerates with an admirable amount of grace—to the prince's credit, he swallows his complaints well. Added to the list of things sight unseen: the stoniness worked into the lord's grain cracking around his grin.
He won't let him freeze, will keep the furs and fires in abundance in the warmest rooms in the keep, but he can still take some enjoyment in the other flexing his diplomacy with a reddened tip to his nose. Possibly an act of mercy that he thinks his answer over a moment or two. ]
They're one and the same, in some respects. [ His favorite places and what he considers his home's treasured places. ] I'm partial to visiting the godswood. Few ever venture so deep, it's as privy as anywhere can be. I find the dark parts of the forest comforting. Others disagree.
But for you, maybe somewhere more to your liking. Below the castle. A short trek and indoors, protected by the rock and the walls.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-26 10:48 pm (UTC)Flurries that still chill the bones and cover all the lands.
Would it be too much for this prince to ask to see both? The hot spring beneath the castle and then the treasure in the godswood when these flurries pass?
no subject
Date: 2025-05-30 04:16 am (UTC)Surely he doesn't mean him to actually get that close in leading a proverbial dragon to water. ]
Where livestock is concerned, it will be done. I'll trust the rest to you, dragonlord.
[ One has to wonder about the nature of a bond like that—do Vermax's moods reflect his rider's, or do the prince's reflect his dragon's? ]
Ah, but snowflakes on steaming skin is the best part about it when the weather abides. As perhaps it is with the rain on Dragonstone.
[ A beat, to allow for something softer. Winterfell runs in him as much as its heated waters, as much as Old Valyria for the last of its people. Sharing its privy, lesser known parts is like sharing parts of himself, opening up under the other's curiosity. ]
Then we'll go. I'll take you wherever interests you.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-30 04:55 am (UTC)Ah, I see your point. That is a pleasure I agree with. Though it takes quite a bit for my skin to steam and blood to run warmer than it already does.
Anywhere? And if I wish to see so much of Winterfell and its lands that I overstay my welcome?
1/2
Date: 2025-06-02 07:13 am (UTC)[ Not for a moment forgetting that is no docile hound on a leash, but a wild predator flattening trees with the beat of his wings.
If he's being honest, Jacaerys feels no safer—warmer and more likable than proven to be ill-natured, and making tempests of his own. ]
What then heats your blood?
2/2
Date: 2025-06-02 07:19 am (UTC)I'll be sorry to see you go.
Perhaps you'll come again one day. It would please me if the North leaves a welcome impression.
no subject
Date: 2025-06-11 04:00 am (UTC)The same magic that tells the dragons that I am one of their own. The magic of old Valyria or so the tales say. ( If it is truly Valyrian blood magic, Jacaerys knows not. But he is glad for it, for the bond. It gives him Vermax, yes, but it also solidifies his claim as his mother's heir when his plain features do so much to bring question to it. )
I would like to, once my mother's throne is secure. I hope this is not the last time I see the North, nor do I plan to remain on Dragonstone or the Red Keep like a stranger to the kingdom I will one day rule.
no subject
Date: 2025-06-17 04:12 am (UTC)Is it foolhardy to hope for in so short a time, to lean into his gut impression? Possibly, yet the majority of him doesn't believe so. It's been more difficult to put his finger on things about Prince Jacaerys that would sourly curdle his company. ] Nor am I.
[ All to say, no promises.
His temper runs just as hot and should he make Cregan wroth, who's to say if a dragon-blooded boy will learn what cold is truly like with closer inspection of snow and ice. Mayhaps a jaunt during the snowfall would sound very nice, accompanied by that dragon's rumbles and whines? A toothless jest to match, of course. (Or is it.) ]
That is more than the mutters of old children's tales, then?
[ Also not quite what he had half wondered with his query.
No matter. ]
Under better circumstances, you'll have a proper cloak, heated quarters, and the breadth of Winterfell's lands on your return.
text → action
Date: 2025-06-22 05:30 am (UTC)No, not quite. You'll see soon for yourself.
( And that is a promise. After all, upon daybreak the next morn they will visit his oldest friend and Cregan will show him the hot springs that have now captured the prince's imagination.
The thought of a visit with a proper coat, with gloves made for him is another thought that warms his chest. Just as the thought, unbidden, of Cregan visiting his own home. Not the Red Keep, appropriate as that would be, but Dragonstone. That is the place Jacaerys wishes to show him, from the views of the Sea Dragon tower overlooking the Blackwater to Aegon's Garden. One day, he hopes it may be so.
The thoughts warm his chest through the evening, as their conversation lulls with bids of restful sleep.
In the morning, Jacaerys dresses in more layers than previous days. He feels prepared until he steps out into the cold air and knows his ears and nose grow red, does his best not to shiver or scowl when he notices the amusement on Cregan's handsome face. The ride to the caves is not a long one and Vermax finds them quick enough, drawn by bond and hunger. )
He'll always find me, ( Jacaerys answers when Cregan asks how the prince means to call him, eyes crinkling at the corners with mirth.
The growing dragon is won easily by the promise of food, allows the Lord of Winterfell closer than most when Jacaerys attempts an introduction. Not close enough to touch, no, but close enough to feel the warmth of him as the dragon nuzzles his great snout into his rider's chest.
After all that, it seems the hot springs are a perfect way to ease what tension may have drawn into the elder man's muscles from his brush with a Targaryen dragon and to warm Jacaerys' bones. He tries to hide the need to rub his nose as they ride back toward Winterfel, missing the warmth of Vermax's frame already. The snow had melted where the dragon had landed, the ground warmed.
Cregan leads him underneath the castle, away from where the servants walk about. There Jacaerys finds himself standing before a sight that reminds him of Dragonstone, of the hot springs below the castle warmed by the volcano and dragons nesting beneath. the steam rising from the pool calls to him and Jacaerys, despite the insistent nagging in his mind to glance over at Cregan as he strips his own layers, hurries to strip bare. The water may be too hot for some, but the sigh he lets out as he wades into the water is close to a moan. )
💖
Date: 2025-07-11 03:29 am (UTC)Their ride out sits somewhere between the last and cautious intrigue borne from his first brush hosting a dragonrider and all it entails. It's one thing to have learned about King's Landing through his father, a place where dragon cries raining down from the clouds is a given, to hear Jacaerys' dragon at a distance, occasionally breaking up wolfsong outside the keep's walls with trilling draconic notes.
It's another, quite another, to stop the horses and the soon-to-be meal in the grass a ways from the rocky cavern leading deep into the steaming bowels of the earth and witness the prince greet his dragon in flowing Valyrian, close at hand for the halfway familiar smell of ash and brimstone to hit his nose, sharp like the most earthy, pungent hot spring but different, too. Being in their presence is invitation to a singular, special kind of moment, he realizes, pulling his eyes from Jace's gladsome expression to the powerfully built creature. An opal of rolling fire comes to mind—a sheen of shifting greens and oranges atop scale and claw and muscle. Comparatively Vermax is small, he understands, still building up to his full size and might next to what his ancestor must have seen of the Black Dread.
Yet—however and wherever dragons first originated in history's misty memory, it's not so surprising to see why Valyrians would turn to veneration, being near one. Cregan had been raised to respect the wild and untamed things in the places men were careful to tread, as all things similar in the North. Here is a wild thing, an untameable thing, belonging to the indomitable beauty of predators.
Still watching, still fascinated, as the green dragon finally slinks out of sight inside the cave dragging the goat's carcass behind: ] He's impressive in his way.
[ And he's grateful, in the aftermath, to have been allowed—and dared to step close to—the sight.
That is how it comes to be he leads another dragon to the warmth of another hot spring, though this one he enters along with, trekking down stairs beneath Winterfell itself. Not so deep as Winterfell's crypts, deeper and more vast still, but down until the man-made symmetry of carved castle stone begins to give way to natural, untouched rock. Places the builders had built around, or above, or subservient to the land, such as this. Even so, there are signs belonging to the passage of many hands over many hundreds and thousands of years—lit torches in sconces rim the cavernous pool, casting dappling, dancing shadows on the water's surface, the rock spring's edges worn smooth from long use. Neatly folded stacks of towels for drying and changes of clothes wait, along with wine, honey soap, and a basin of clean water for rinsing.
The other has eyes for one comfort above all, swiftly discarding clothing as he goes. A hum of some amusement from Cregan at the prince encountering a facet to Winterfell that genuinely pleases him is lost to the swish of feet parting water, accompanying the prince's enthusiastic descent into the hot springs.
Slower, a step behind as he had been in meeting Vermax, he has the time and view to watch the prince do so—slim and fair-skinned wreathed in steam, exchanging the last stitch of clothing for a purring pleasure. ]
You do like it hot, don't you. Does it suit? [ Thick-soled boots make a heavy tread on stone in the quiet posed by just the two of them and the lapping water. He bends to release the laces. ]
no subject
Date: 2025-07-28 02:23 am (UTC)It is not as if he has not seen him in various states of dress, without the cloaks and in but one layer in front of the hearth. Yet there is much left to the imagination still and Jace's has run hot as the blood within his veins. He finds himself wishing to hoard the site, as Vermax had hoarded the meal they'd offered him. He has drifted off in thought when he hears the timber of Cregan's voice, the northern drawl with which he speaks. ) Hm?
( And then he is glad that the steam rising from the pool gives him a flush. One he hopes the lord before him will dismiss. It takes a moment to remember himself. ) I am quite pleased.
Though, do not fret. I will not forsake the rooms you've given me for this place. ( Jacaerys glances around the cavern, though his gaze does drift back to his host. And when he speaks it is in teasing tones, ) Will it not be too hot for you?