Ch 1- I died or... did I — Part 2

The morning sun had not yet fully risen on the horizon and yet the temperature was still too much for the two men who were from the north of Westeros. The place where a lone tower used to stand, now only graves marked with stones from that same tower could be seen.

The Dornish midwife could be seen feeding a newborn on the remaining rubble of the tower while the two northerners were discussing over a cart.

"When I went to get the cart from the nearby village and sell the extra horses, I also took the liberty to buy us enough supplies to last for a while, My Lord" Howland said while wiping sweat from his brows.

For most of his life, he'd never left his home, The Greywater Castle, so these past months have been tiring on his body. Trying to adapt to all kinds of different environments from the constant rains of Stormlands to all that greenery in Riverlands and now the scorching heat in this desert has been a nightmare.

"That was smart of you Howland, I'd been so caught up in my thoughts that I only remembered about our dwindling supplies after you'd already left,"

"You give me too much credit My Lord," Howland replied while bowing slightly.

"Now, open that map you bought yesterday. We should decide on the path we are to take, I don't want to get lost in these cursed red mountains" Eddard said while looking around the sand dunes that looked indistinguishable from one another.

Howland went and got the crude map he got from the nearby village as well as their map of Westeros. He spread both maps beside each other on the cart. There were two paths leading toward the North from where they were, one along the western side of Westeros via Starfall and the other one along the eastern side. Eddard looked at the map for a while before speaking.

"If we take this path then it should eventually lead us to Starfall," he said while drawing a line along the said path.

"If you want Ned I could return the Dawn to Starfall and come back here..." Howland said while not looking into Eddard's eyes, "I thought after what happened in Harrenhal you wouldn't want to meet Lady Ashara,"

"I've already broken my promise to her once and now with her brother's death..." Eddard took a deep breath, "The least I could do is not dishonor her by hiding like a coward"

"As you say, Ned but does that mean that we will not be going to King's Landing and heading straight toward North"

"No, I will have to bring the news of Lyanna's demise to Robert myself and be present for his coronation and if Tywin had managed to convince Lord Arryn then maybe attend Robert's wedding too," He said while making a sour face at the thought of attending a wedding with Tywin.

"Will it be alright to bring little Jon to KingLanding?" Howland asked hesitatingly.

"NO! Jon and Robert will not be in the same room ever if I can help it. The atrocities committed there still haunt me to this day, even the thought of Jon anywhere near Kingslanding makes me..." Eddard closed his eyes while repressing a shudder.

They were silent for a moment while looking at the midwife fussing over little Jon who had just now woken up. Little Jon was apparently hungry because the midwife pulled down her blouse to feed the toddler without hesitation. They both looked away awkwardly at the same time and without saying anything went back to the maps.

"I think after I've returned the ancestral sword to the Dayne's we should part ways at the port, you can take Jon and head straight towards Seagard and from there towards The North, while I can go towards that snake's pit of a city and try to make polite conversation with people I want to kill," Eddard said while making a tight grip on his sword and looking as if he was looking at their faces. He shook his head for a moment and after gathering himself, he looked towards me solemnly.

"Will you make sure that Jon reaches Winterfell safely Howland?" Eddard said while looking Howland in the eyes.

"I will protect your nephew with my life, My Lord. And even if you had not asked me to do so, I owe too much to Lady Lyanna to let any harm come to her son."

"I am so glad you came with me Howland, you are a good man" Eddard smiled while putting a hand on his shoulder.

"It was an honor, My Lord," Howland replied with a small smile.

"Now when we reach Starfall, I will request their maester to send a letter to Benjen at Winterfell. So you can expect either an escort of guards or Benjen himself at the neck."

"That would be helpful, My lord." Howland paused for a moment and hesitatingly asked "What are you going to do about Lady Catelyn, Ned"

"What about her," Eddard asked while tilting his head.

"Well, you told me that you are going to claim that little Jon is your bastard and from what I've heard, the Faith of the seven is not kind towards bastards and Lady Catelyn is as faithful as they come. So are you going to tell her the truth about Jon's parentage?"

"While I would like to think the best of her, I think the fewer people that know about this, the better. I will tell her that he is my bastard and beg her forgiveness for straying from our marriage and even if she doesn't accept him, at least I will make sure that he has a father's love if not a mother's. And if she is a little less cordial towards him then I think that would be another form of protection for him, as because of her no one will suspect that he is anything other than a bastard"

"If you would be alright with it, I could take him with me to Greywater's watch, My Lord"

"No, while that is kind of you Howland. Little Jon has the blood of Starks in him and I want him to grow up in his Ancestral home with his siblings, like his mother and I were bought up. I will love him as much as my true son and make sure to raise him into an honorable man," Eddard said, his voice thick with emotion.

"You are right My Lord, I think Lady Lyanna will be happy with that," Howland said while bowing his head.

"And when we were in Kings Landing, I had gotten the news about Catelyn being pregnant, so hopefully by the time I arrive at Riverrun, she'll have already brought our child into this world," Eddard looked toward the horizon with hope in his eyes.

They packed up after that and started their journey toward their home, The North.

...

Since my reincarnation in this medieval world, I only woke up sporadically for a handful of minutes, and that too with only the desire to eat and shit and then go back to sleep after a few minutes.

As days passed, my control over my body as well as my eyesight improved gradually and I was starting to be able to see some colors too. The only thing I had been able to gather in between my frequent visits to the dream world is that I was in the company of three people.

One was the olive-skinned woman who I first saw when I was bought into this world, so I would hazard a guess and conclude that she is a midwife, because from her absence I can conclude that my mother didn't make it past my birth.

The other two were both men barely out of their teenage years, one of them was a bit taller than the other. The tall one had a long handsome face and soft brown hair as well as a solemn face with his dark grey turning soft every time he held me.

The shorter one of the two was a weird amalgam of contradictions, he looked like a child but had the voice of an adult and his eyes were a bit too big to be considered normal.

The mystery of the world I had been reborn into was solved by me picking up some words from the conversation between the adults, particularly "Stark", "Dorne", "Lyanna", "Ned" and most damningly "Winter is Coming".

It was not long after that, that I was able to put together my background in the world of planetos. I was born as Jon "You Know Nothing" Snow, the son of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen and the bastard of Winterfell.

A few days after that revelation we reached some kind of a castle on an island that I think was Starfall. Only Eddard went in there, while we stayed in the nearby village because I don't think he wanted anyone to ask too many questions about me.

When Eddard came out of the castle he was even more moody and grim than before. At first, I was confused about his behavior as I had no idea what could have happened but then I suddenly remembered that Ashara Dayne had committed suicide around this time. Then it all started making sense because it was rumored in the books they became a thing for a time in Harrenhall.

We reached the port the next day and I found out that Lord Stark was not coming with us to Winterfell directly because he had to go to King's Landing. We had to part ways immediately because our ship was set to leave that very day. Ned held me in his hands for a few moments and kissed my forehead before giving me to the midwife.

After some time ship had enough time to supply itself and the captain started calling all the passengers to start boarding. We had barely climbed the ship when it started to sail away from the port.

The time spent onboard the ship was very boring to me, even though I slept most of the time. Howland was not much of a talker and the midwife who was called Wylla spent most of her time knitting something. She had heard some things about the cold in the north and wanted to knit some clothes for me.

The ship only stopped for resupply two times after we started our journey, once in Oldtown and the other time in Lannisport. Both times only Howland went into the city to get some necessary supplies while Wylla and I stayed cooped up in our cabin.

I had wanted to go into those towns to check them out but when I cried aloud to make my voice heard the only thing I got for my trouble was a nipple in my mouth. I sighed and thought 'Well, what can you do when life gives you lemons you suck on them,'

A couple of weeks must have passed by before I was jostled awake by Wylla. We were finally going to go down from the ship. We went toward the front of the ship and eagerly waited for it to dock, I heard from the nearby talking sailors that we had reached the port of Seagard.

If I remember correctly then it is the seat of House Mallister who were sworn directly to House Tully of Riverrunn. It would mean that we are not that far from the north now. We went down the ship immediately after it had stopped, and Lord Reed started leading us straight out of the market at the port. I tried to keep my eyes open as much as possible and to look at every single thing I could at the same time, and because of that, my head kept swirling around from left to right. Wylla tried to keep me still as she tried to follow the unusually fast crannogman through the crowd of peddlers.

When Lord Reed took us straight out of the walls of the city without stopping for resupply, I thought he had forgotten about it, and from the looks of Wylla, she thought the same. But the second we had passed some distance from the city and were in the shade of trees, out of nowhere we were suddenly surrounded by a handful of people covered from head to toe in green with bows on their backs while holding some kind of a trident weapon.

Wylla screamed when one of the small people started running towards us and attacked Lord Reed by jumping on him and the lord instead of running stood still with his arms wide open. It took some time for us to understand that they were the people of Lord Reed and that the person in Lord reed's arms was his fiance. Apparently, Lord Reed had somehow gotten the message to his people while we were on our way to ask for an escort.

The journey towards the north got a bit interesting after we gained our new companions, we never took the main road and only passed by unused paths that were only known to crannogman. Lord Reed's fiance played with me sometimes when the midwife got tired from the walk and I always smiled whenever she made some faces at me to try to keep me entertained.

I had barely felt the cold when we came closer to the Neck but, the way Wylla kept shivering I think she must have been feeling the cold a lot more than me. After thinking about it, I felt that it made sense because, in the place where she had been born, people had to be more used to the hotter climate so her genes may have evolved that way. And because I had the blood of the starks who had been living in harsh winters for thousands of years, our genes must have evolved in the opposite direction so that we can feel almost comfortable in cold.

There was this one time when I saw a documentary about how there was a place very high up in the Tibetian plateau where only the natives can survive comfortably because their bodies have evolved to be able to live with the concentration of oxygen in the environment much lower than a normal person is used to. It made sense for people with this much history in Westeros to evolve if even the people on earth with barely centuries of history could somewhat evolve to adjust to their surroundings.

A couple of days later we came across an escort of guards waiting outside what seemed like a ruined collection of huge towers that I later learned was The Moat Callin. The escort was led by a young boy who had a remarkable resemblance to Ned, he had a huge smile on his face and relief in his eyes when he held me. Wylla and I parted ways with the company of crannogman after that and started the last part of our toward the castle of Winterfell.

As days turned to weeks I saw more and more vast empty wilderness, forests, pine-covered hills, and snow-capped mountains and the beauty of it started to grow on me. We very rarely stopped on the way because I think uncle Benjen was really eager to get to his home. It was a couple more weeks before we saw the huge castle of Winterfell in the distance.