I woke up from a deep slumber, my mind seemed clear at last, although my head felt still a bit dizzy. I tried to remember where I was and what happened. All I could recover at the moment were images, small flashbacks. Snow, freezing cold, then a silhouette with those calming silver eyes and then warmth. The eyes kept popping up a lot in my mind. Who was it? How long have I been out? I must have been sick for days and someone looked after me all that time. 

More and more tiny bits started springing back to place in my mind. I did not open my eyes, I just listened to my surroundings. I could not hear anything besides what was apparently a huge fire crackling in a fireplace. The cold that seemed to have imbued itself into the marrow of my bones was gone. I felt comfortably warm, more on the side where the fire was. All around was very soft, like silk. I was naked and wrapped in some sort of soft fabric. I moved my arms, rubbed my face and slowly opened my eyes. 

The bed I was lying in looked more like a box, but I still felt comfortable. I tried to focus my eyes on something outside the bed, but it was difficult as if everything else was very distant. I tried to sit up, but the sudden spinning of my head made me lay back. I was still very weak. Getting some more sleep seemed like a good idea, so I closed my eyes again and soon fell asleep again. This time my sleep was not so deep, I dreamed about a giant womanly shape reaching down to me and again those silver eyes. 

The sound was subtle, but enough to bring back my consciousness, a door opening and closing, followed by footsteps. I tried sitting up again and this time I was successful, no spinning head anymore, I could also finally make out the enormous room I was in. Well, a room may not exactly describe it. To me the room looked big enough to contain all the lands of a small count back in my homeland, including farming fields and a bit of a forest for game hunting. To my left was a huge ornate fireplace. Behind me to the right stood a dark brown armchair with red, silver and golden weaving. Those two were the closest things I could see, with the exception of some kind of stool under the box that I was in. I did not try to get up. There was no way I would make it down to the floor in my current state. It would be pointless anyway as I had neither clothes nor any reason to run. Further away behind me I could make out a globe on a stand with a map of some sorts, a desk with books and scrolls and two rows of bookcases. There was a window behind the desk showing dark grey sky, it must have been evening. There were several more rows of bookcases in front of me, but I could not see how far the aisles between them went or if the room continued behind them. In a distance to my right was a carved wooden door. The room, apparently a library, must have been a part of a large mansion or maybe a castle belonging to someone from nobility. 

The footsteps were getting closer until the library door opened and a giant woman dressed in dark red robe came through. She was carrying a steaming bowl with a spoon. Her eyes fell upon me just as she closed the door behind her. She had those silver eyes from my dreams and flashbacks, the shape must have been her, only in the dreams the she had no clothes. I was not sure what to do so I at least waved my hand. Her expression showed a lot of relief as she smiled. 

"You woke up at last! I was getting worried. You had fevers ever since I brought you in four days ago," she said as she walked to the fireplace and set the bowl on a step next to it. 

I had so many questions on my mind I was not sure how to start. "My lady, if I may, what is this place, where am I and what happened?"

She turned to face me. "Not so fast, you have to eat something first." Then she reached to the ledge above the fireplace, opened a little box, took out what looked like a thimble and then sat down on a cushion on the floor next to me and the fireplace. She stirred whatever was inside the bowl, tasted it and poured a drop into the thimble which she set on to the fabric in front of me. I tilted the thimble took a sip. It was a strong soup, warm, but not boiling hot. As I ate I felt a bit of strength coming back to my limbs. When I finished she took the thimble and put it next to the bowl. 

"There, that should get you back on your feet. Feeling better now?" she said. I opened my mouth to speak, but she was faster. "Oh and you can drop all that 'my lady' or however else you wanted to call me. I have already had fairly enough of all the formal language. And you had already shown that you know how to behave in front of a lady. Just call me by my name, Lyanna." 

"Thank you very much, my la... errr, Lyanna! My name is Cale." I had the noble title on my tongue almost before I realized it as this was the way people from my class were supposed to talk to noblemen. "I am in debt to you. I was sure I was going to freeze out there. However, all that happened out there is a bit blurry to me. Your eyes are the only thing I remember clearly." There were a few other things I also remembered, one of them being that she had no clothes on out there and the other, which I realized a while ago, that it definitely was not a pocket in which she carried me here. But I just could not bring myself to ask her right away. 

She laughed at my 'my lady' hiccup when saying her name, but she let me finish what I was saying. Then she moved closer to the stool, put one arm on it and rested her head on top of the arm. Her face was now just a few meters away from me. She had long fair hair that went well with those big silver eyes. I started getting nervous as she kept silent, but the next second I found myself lying on my back with her index finger slightly pressing against my chest, pinning me into the bed box. "You are in debt to the winter goddess, she is the one who saved you!", she said in a strong, but somehow friendly tone, producing a wide grin. 

"The winter goddess? I thought that it was you... but your voice... and your eyes are the same that I saw out there…" I was still weak, not only my body, but my mind as well. 

"Easy now, you will get to meet her tomorrow. Now you should get some more rest. And you are not the only one. I did not sleep much either, I watched over you the whole time. Would you like a bit more soup before we go to sleep?". I nodded and she poured me another thimble, then took the bowl and started eating. 

We sat there in silence, each slowly eating our share. Lyanna sat on the cushion in a not very ladylike way, one leg stretched in front of her, half sitting on the other one. She was clearly a noble, but seemed bored or tired of sticking to the etiquette. I slowly sipped from my thimble and admired her. There were orange lights dancing along the side of her body facing the fireplace. They dyed her hair, the skin of her arm and the stretched leg. She did not wear any socks or stockings, her bare feet were very familiar. Aside from her beauty and the fiery dancing colors, there was something about her that seemed to touch me inside. No matter how strange and unbelievable this situation was, it felt very good to be with her here by the fire. 

As if she was reading my mind, she said, "You know, Cale, it is nice to have a company here, someone nice to talk to after all this time…". She suppressed a yawn, put the bowl aside, stood up and changed the topic. "I know you feel better, but I still would not like to just leave you alone all night. I am going to take you to my room with me." She did not wait for my response, turned around and reached into the fire with her hand. The fire slowly subsided until it vanished. She did the same with the lights on the walls, but the room did not become entirely dark. There was a bit of yellow glow from a few crystals attached to the walls, which I did not notice earlier. After putting the last candle out Lyanna came back, picked up the bed box I was in and headed out of the library. 

As she walked, the walls went by so fast that I had to lay down to stop my head from spinning. We passed a few doors and corridors until we ended up in a small but comfortable-looking bedroom. One wall contained a fireplace similar to the one in the library. The window in this room was bigger and much wider than the one in the library and was decorated in gold. There was not much furniture apart from a huge wide bed with a canopy and a small table beside the bed. The floor in front of the bed was covered with a dark blue carpet. The rest of the room as well as the bed were toned into shades of dark red and violet, a similar color to that of Lyanna's clothes. She put me with the box on the small bedside table and walked towards the fireplace. With a similar gesture that she used to put out the fire earlier she made the flames spring to life on the logs. Then she reached behind her back and undid the buttons on the backside of her robe, which gracefully slid down onto the ground, leaving her completely naked. As if she did not realize that I was there, she picked up the robe, put it on a chair under the window and put one more log into the fireplace. I could not keep my eyes off her, the sight was stunning. 

"Good night, Cale," she said in a sleepy voice as she slipped into the bedsheets. 

What I was about to do was apparently impolite and inappropriate, but the big and quiet room and the height of the table made me feel like sleeping on a rooftop. 

"Lyanna?" 

"Yes?"  

"Would you mind if I slept closer to you on your pillow?" 

She chuckled, "I wanted to keep you closer myself, but was not sure if you would like that and I did not want to take advantage on you in your state and, well.... size. Come here.." 

She reached into the box, took me into her hand and gently set me onto the pillow next to her head, then covered by body with the soft cloth from the box and rested her hand next to me. With my exhaustion taking over again, I soon fell asleep listening to her heartbeat and breathing.