Nerd In the North 5-6B

Jon woke with the weight still on his chest, though there was no hand there, no blade, no storm overhead—just the kind of silence that stayed too long after dreams. The fire was down to coals. The shelter he’d built—bent branches, hide stretched tight, packed snow at the edges—had kept the wind off his face, but not much more.

The cold had yet to bite him in moons, simply settling on his body like a cloak of its own. Truly, that was in its own way worse.

No matter how much ice a Stark had in his blood, the cold was a constant, familiar thing. It reminded one of their limits, of nature, of the possibility of death. Without it…

Jon shook his head.

The dream lingered as it usually did, into his waking moments, refusing to drift away, as if smoke caught in his chest. Vast wings, a sky split by fire, and wind that wasn’t wind, but breath that could shudder entire trees. He didn’t flinch at waking, didn’t gasp either despite the dream and its contents.

No, the bastard son of Eddard Stark simply opened his eyes and held still, like maybe stillness could keep it from following.

Ghost was already watching him.

The direwolf’s eyes, always red, had started to reflect light wrong lately. Not just catching firelight—holding it. Jon smiled his partner’s way and rubbed his hand into the furt atop Ghost’s head, the wolf silently huffing at his actions.

Jon moved past Ghost as he rose, slow and deliberate, and pulled the furs aside, before checking the sky through the narrow slit of branches. Dawn. Or near enough, at least this far North. The sun would not truly rise for quite a time, but it was near enough that he knew when it would have been dawn by Winterfell’s reckoning. The snow outside sat fresh, soft on the pine-needles, undisturbed.

His breath should have steamed in the air. It didn’t.

The sword lay at his side, scabbarded in worn leather, castle-forged and unremarkable. It hadn’t changed shape or weight. But sometimes when he held it, he felt heat on the hilt. Not from the blade. From himself.

He’d stopped asking questions. There weren’t any answers to be found up here. Just trees and wind and the thing that pulled him north.

Jon stood, joints stiff not from cold but from travel, from sleeping with one eye open and a hand always near the blade. He moved like he had since he crossed the Wall—quietly, with purpose, not wasting steps. Ghost stood beside him, taller than he’d been even last week. His limbs moved with weight, not effort. Jon didn’t know when the change had started, only that it hadn’t stopped.

He didn’t speak to Ghost anymore unless he had to. Words got smaller in this place. So did questions. It had been moons—three, maybe four—since he’d left Castle Black. Since he’d taken nothing but the sword, the pack, and the silence that had begun in his bones before the fire ever touched his skin.

He remembered the breath of that fire now the way a man remembers a drowning—dim, distant, but the heat of it still lived somewhere under the ribs. He hadn’t burned. Not truly. But the cold hadn’t taken him either. 

And that was where it began.

The dreams had started before he crossed the Wall. At first, they came with sleep. 

Then they followed him into waking—shadow-wings overhead, deep snow underfoot, eyes that burned without heat. The more he walked north, the louder the pull became. A weight in the chest, a hum in the marrow, like something old wanted to see what he’d become.

He packed quickly. It didn’t take long. He kept little. He moved like a soldier without a war—efficient, careful, quiet. Every noise carried too far in the trees, and the silence that followed felt like it was listening.

The trail Ghost followed wasn’t marked. No tracks. No broken branches. But the wolf moved like he knew the shape of it. Jon followed. He always did. Some part of him didn’t know where he was going. Another part always had.

By midmorning the trees had thinned, the snow deeper where wind hadn’t cleared it. They moved without speaking. Jon felt the dream gnawing at the back of his teeth again. Wings above him. Fire in the sky. Words he couldn’t make out but somehow remembered. Not meant for you, but close enough.

He didn’t know if that thought was his.

The cold didn’t touch him, hadn’t in weeks. It was the absence that bothered him most. He still wrapped his cloak close. Still checked his hands for frostbite out of habit. But the pain never came. Only the quiet.

He didn’t think of Winterfell anymore. Not directly. But sometimes he remembered the weight of Catelyn Stark’s eyes. Not what she said. Just what she never gave him. That cold had never been physical. That one had lingered longer.

He hadn’t spoken aloud since the second moon of travel. Maybe longer. There hadn’t been anyone to hear, and even if there had, what would he say? That his eyes had gone purple. That his dreams flew over mountains no map marked. That he no longer feared fire but felt it waking under the skin.

His hand rested on the sword hilt. A habit. A tether.

Ghost stopped.

Jon’s body moved before his thoughts did. Weight shifted to the balls of his feet. Hand tightening around leather-wrapped wood. The air ahead had gone still—more than still. Dead.

Then came the scream.

It was a woman’s voice, rougher than most. Raw terror in the throat, and little strength behind it. The sound was not far. That was worrying on two fronts; he hadn’t realized how close he was to Wildlings, for one, and a Wildling screaming like that meant other Wildlings were attacking.

Despite himself, Jon was already moving, higher thought forgotten as he gave way to instinct and pull. He may have been raised a Northman but Eddard Stark had raised his blood with more honor and goodwill than almost any Southern night could claim and that had yet to fail, even for Wildlings. Ghost flanked him, white blur against trees. They moved fast—faster than should be possible—but the forest parted for them now.

Or maybe it just didn’t try to stop them.

Branches tore at him. Snow cracked beneath his boots. The cold didn’t slow his breath and failed to touch the sweat already cooling on his back.

The clearing came sudden, like falling into silence.

The edges of the camp was torn with tents on the border caved in. The flimsy wall of wood breached as blood soaked into packed snow, dark and quiet.

The bodies weren’t still.

He soon stopped short, his sword half-raised as breath stilled in his chest.

They were moving despite clearly being dead, no natural life tot their bodies as they jerked wrongly forwards.

The name rose slow in his mind, or it may have been that the world was moving too fast as he tried to reconcile what he was seeing. Old Nan had told many stories about the North and it’s past, from the Age of Dawn to the Age of Heroes.

Wights.

He’d heard the stories.

But seeing them—blue eyes burning with cold light, flesh rotting yet still moving—made his stomach clench.

The trees broke into ruin before Jon even saw the settlement. The snow held blood like sand holds oil, soaking deep in patches where limbs no longer stayed attached to their owners. Tents had collapsed in on themselves, sagging under the weight of snow and whatever horror had passed through before. Smoke twisted faintly from a fire too old to warm and too weak to warn. It curled past shredded hides and shattered stakes like breath drawn in after the scream has died.

In the center, wildlings still fought—if desperation counted. A red-bearded brute swung an axe near big enough to have built ships, and when it struck, it did the work, splitting a dead thing in two with a grunt and a curse. A girl near him—young, fast, hair like the flame it shared a name with—moved in jagged, darting rhythm, bow discarded somewhere behind her, spear now in hand. She didn’t scream. She didn’t pray. Her arm moved like the spear knew what it was for. Still, it wasn’t enough. The dead didn’t fall right. Not unless the fire took them.

Jon stood at the tree line, sword at his hip and breath steady in his chest. They were wildlings, the lot of them. Raiders. Killers. Thieves. The sort the Watch was made to keep out. He should’ve turned away, let the snow finish what the dead had started. That’s what the old vows had taught him. What Ser Alliser had hissed in his ear every chance he got. But none of those voices carried here.

Ghost moved before he did. No growl, no snarl—just speed. White blur across trampled snow, jaws wide and red within moments, tearing a rotted neck in half before the wight had time to turn. Jon followed.

Steel cleared leather, nothing fancy in the draw. His grip was already tight. His arm already burning.

He struck the first one low, spine to stomach. It turned. Dead eyes, blue as anything beyond the Wall, fixed on him as if sight still mattered. Its hands twitched forward, fingers like branches stripped of bark. Jon stepped back just once.

Fire. They burn. Not a story anymore. A fact.

Heat ran the length of his arm, muscle to knuckle, pulse to edge. The blade caught it. Just a flicker—like a candle breathed on, then reborn. Not imagined. Not hoped for. Real.

When the wight lunged, Jon met it. The fire surged. The sword hit bone and didn’t stop. The dead screamed like glass breaking underwater. Its insides caught flame before it hit the ground.

There wasn’t time to watch it die.

He turned and struck again. Again.

And yet again.

With each swing of his sword, the fire grew inside him and atop his sword, flame burning without going out on simple castle-forged steel. Not brighter, but louder, like it was learning him. Ghost stayed near, carving a path in red and white. They moved as one—blood, breath, motion. Jon didn’t think. Thinking was behind him now, with the Wall.

Hands closed on him from behind, harder than dead things ought to manage. He twisted but couldn’t pull loose. Not fast enough.

The cold didn’t come. Ice did.

His free hand burst open, palm against rotted chest. Frost bled outward like it had been waiting there, hiding beneath skin. It spread across the thing’s arm, its shoulder, its throat. When Jon tore free, the creature shattered with a noise like frozen stone breaking beneath an axe. He turned, not to stare but to strike.

The flame still rode the edge of his sword, hungrier now. Ghost was circling. The center of the fight was pulling them both in.

More dead than living. That was clear.

The red-bearded man still held the line, axe rising and falling, no rhythm to it—just refusal, even as blows from his fist sent wights flying back with strength more than a man should have. The flame-haired girl had shifted back to her spear, each thrust sharp and sure, and when Jon drew close, they turned to face him.

Their eyes found his sword, then his wolf, then him.

Not friend. Not yet. But not enemy.

“Behind you, crow!” she called, voice tight with urgency, not fear.

He turned before the sentence finished.

The thing in the trees wasn’t a wight.

It stepped into sight like the wind made room for it.

Tall, taller than men should be, armor of unnatural make gleaming with a strange stillness. It didn’t reflect light so much as bend it, a shimmer that slid sideways from its form. Its skin was the blue of fresh-frozen ice, with a face that was near-featureless in it’s beauty, mouth a pale suggestion, nose aquiline and ears unnaturally long and slender.

Tts eyes burned without flame. Blue—not the blue of frost or sky or even the ice of it’s skin, but of something older. Something so cold it had forgotten how to melt.

It carried a sword. The blade was long and thin, curved subtly like something that had never needed to learn mercy. Ice, perhaps. Or something ice had wanted to become.

Jon didn’t move. The fire didn’t waver.

The Walker’s head tilted. Not in confusion, no.

Rather, a clear confused interest. Its mouth opened, and the sound that came wasn’t words. It was breaking, cracking, the sound of a frozen over lake giving way under a foolish man’s feet. But Jon understood it all the same.

You do not belong here, warm thing. You are neither Ice nor Fire, yet you carry both. Abomination, you are. Remnant of your dead betters and foolhardy ancestors.

The cold should’ve taken him in that moment. The fire should’ve burst outward, burned him hollow. Instead, Jon stood taller.

“I belong where I choose,” he said. His grip didn’t tighten around the hilt of his blade. It was already right.

The fire gathered. The sword pulsed.

“Monster.”

Ghost snarled low in his throat, body tense and coiled, hackles bristling like a ridge of snow-driven pines. He stood tall as a small horse now, yet beside the figure in ice, even Ghost looked diminished. The thing—blue-skinned, armor like frozen light, blade honed from winter’s heart—stepped into the ruined camp with the stillness of something ancient. Its gaze passed through the living without interest. Until it found Jon.

It moved without warning. A shift more than a strike. Jon’s sword rose before he thought to lift it. Ice met steel. Flame flared where they kissed. The sound was not steel clanging but the snap of something sacred breaking. Frost hissed, vapor burst, and the cold staggered back a pace. Its expression—if it could be called that—twitched. Surprise. Maybe even doubt.

Jon Snow didn’t think as he stepped forward again, the fire in his blood rising sharp and hot as he moved with knowledge he knew not where from. Fire flickered atop his blade in light that flickered from gold to red and the White Walker’s blade lifted again, elegant and ancient, but slower now.

Not out of fatigue. Out of caution.

Boy and demon circled each other as they fought in silence, broken only by the crash of their weapons and the hiss of flame meeting rime. Each strike carved steam into the air, each blow met with heat that turned the ground to slush beneath their boots, snow melting in jagged lines where fire licked and ice sliced.

Each movement chipped away at the breath Jon didn’t realize he was holding. He could feel the strength in the Walker—inhuman, exacting—but his own limbs didn’t falter. His breath didn’t freeze. And his blade didn’t break.

It burned.

The next strike came too fast. He parried high and caught the blow, but the Walker twisted under, blade flicking low like water slipping beneath stone.

Ice kissed his side.

Blood spotted Jon’s side before he registered the cut, a slice too fast to see that slid beneath his guard. It wasn’t a slice. That sword was no simple ice and Jon knew that like he knew his name as he felt the chill cut into his being , cold he hadn’t felt in moons sliding past flesh like a poision as it aimed for bone and heart both.

The bastard son of House Stark felt his breath catch—but didn’t freeze. The heat inside surged up like a tide crashing against the cold.

Ghost lunged from the side, jaws clamping around the creature’s sword arm. His boy made a noise, pained and whimpering, as something else sounded off in Ghost’s body like ice cracking under weight, before the direwolf was flung away like a sack of driedmeat. Wood splintered under Ghost’s weight, part of a collapsed structure giving out with a groan.

Purple eyes shone bright as rage burst through his focus, all pain forgotten in the moment.

The fire didn’t climb. It spilled from skin, from breath, from grip, and flooded into his blade as the sword ignited in truth. Not flaring with flickers, but wreathed in true flame—a light so bright and heat so intense it bent the air around it. Jon Snow’s feet moved without command, rage in his bones, the same as the flame in his hands, overwhelming and powerful.

The Walker raised its blade. Jon didn’t falter.

And neither did his blade as he struck through it.

Steel met ice, and the ice failed. Shattered.

The Walker met him, blade rising high. Jon struck straight through it. Ice shattered like old glass. The sword didn’t stop. It plunged into the creature’s chest, flame blooming inside the wound like a second sun trying to be born. The Walker looked down at the steel in its heart. Cracks spread from the wound like spiderwebs catching light.

It made a sound—not pain, not fear. Something closer to resignation.

Then it broke.

Shards fell, gleaming, melting before they hit the snow. The heat warped the air. The silence that followed rang louder than the battle ever had.

Jon stood in the middle of it, the sword still raised, the fire flickering lower with every breath. The wights collapsed like broken puppets, blue light snuffed from their eyes. The dead were dead again.

He turned. The red-bearded man, axe dripping gore, watched with his mouth half-open. The woman with the spear had not lowered it. Her knuckles were white on the shaft, though her stance had shifted. Not an attack. A question.

“What in all the frozen hells was that?” the man asked, voice raw and too close to reverent.

Jon meant to answer. Or at least open his mouth. But the wound tugged deep now. His side burned at the edges and froze at the core. The fire, whatever had held it, began to gutter. His knees buckled without permission. The sword slid from his grip, fire vanishing before it hit the snow.

Then nothing.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

Jon dreamed of ice and fire.

He stood atop the Wall, but it wasn’t the Wall he remembered. This was older, rawer, carved directly from living ice with no wooden structures to mar its perfect line. Below him stretched a landscape of white.

Untouched by human hands, a true wilderness of ice and snow as far as the eye could see, trees growing far on the horizon as tall as mountains as they rose even higher into the sky.

And yet, he burned. Heat coursed through his veins like molten metal, like summer lightning. It should have been agony, but it felt right. Necessary. As if the fire had always been there, waiting to be acknowledged.

Above him, vast wings beat against an iron sky. He couldn’t see the creature they belonged to—only the shadow it cast upon the snow, large enough to swallow villages whole. But he knew what it was.

Dragon. 

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

Jon’s eyes opened like the sky just before a storm—slow, heavy, wrong. His hand moved before the rest of him did, reaching for the sword that wasn’t there. The weight of furs clung to his chest, smoke in the air, musk of hide and meat clinging to his throat. A tent, not the one he’d built. The ache in his ribs sat deep, old, but dulled. The wound hadn’t festered. It should have.

“How’s that for timing?” a girl’s voice cracked across the silence, northern and quick, the words too sharp to be soft. “Thought Tormund had the right of it. Said you were too burned to keep breathing. I said no—men who burn like that don’t go out so easy.”

He turned his head. A girl crouched near the tent’s flap, red hair catching a thread of firelight from outside. Young, younger than him maybe, but only just. Fourteen, with eyes that watched like they’d already lost too much to blink. Knife in her hands, but not raised. She sat like she knew she could be dangerous anyway.

Jon’s throat worked before his voice did. “Where’s Ghost?”

Her grin came fast, sharp as the knife. “Out there.” She flicked her chin toward the flap. “Growled at any bugger who tried coming close. Yours then?”

Jon nodded, slow. He tried sitting. His muscles didn’t argue much. That was wrong too. The Walker’s blade had reached him. He’d felt it in the ribs, deeper than skin. Like it wanted to settle in the marrow and make its home.

“You heal quick,” she said, studying him like a puzzle she half-understood. “Too quick for a boy that bleeds. But then, boys don’t make swords burn, do they?”

He didn’t answer. She didn’t press.

“Who are you?” he asked instead.

“Ygritte.” She said it like a challenge, tongue curled around the name with the rolling burr of someone raised where mountains spoke louder than men. “And you’re a crow. Or you were, anyway.”

“I never took the oath.” He meant it flat, but it cracked at the edges. Meant to be a shield. It came out sounding like failure. He’d wanted it. Belonging. But the dreams had clawed that from him. He’d left before the words ever left his tongue.

“Still south of the Wall, aren’t you?” she sniffed. “But you fight better than most kneelers I’ve seen.” She stretched, stood, the knife gone like sleight of hand. “Tormund wants to talk. Says any man who kills a Walker ought to get a drink before we gut him.”

He moved to stand, and the pain didn’t stop him. That scared him more than if it had. He felt the scabbing ridge under the bandages. It should’ve been worse.

His sword leaned beside the hide wall, ordinary now. No glow. No flicker. Just steel and memory. He picked it up anyway. It felt warmer than it should in his palm. He didn’t let go.

Outside, the wildling camp moved like ants after a flood. Tents stood crooked. Bodies lined the snow. Some burned. Some waiting. No one spoke loud. Children carried buckets. Men hammered stakes. One woman sharpened a bone-bladed spear with red still drying at the tip.

They all stared.

Ghost padded toward him with a gait too smooth for something that size. No limp. No blood. Just shadow and ice in motion. The direwolf stood at his side, shoulder nearly even with Jon’s own. His presence changed the air. Made room.

“That beast of yours,” Ygritte said behind him, “ate half a deer and scared the life out of two lads. Never seen a wolf that big.”

“Direwolf,” Jon said. Habit. Truth.

She eyed him, not mocking. “And you’re not a common crow, then, are you?”

Another voice broke in—loud enough to shake snow from branches.

“Not by half.”

The red-bearded man who approached looked carved out of mountain and fed on bear fat. Taller than the gateman at Winterfell, and even bulkier. The wildling’s eyes were bright under a brow like a sudden snowfall, thick and dangerous if you were caught in it. He thumped his chest and grinned like a man about to tell the best lie you ever heard.

“Tormund Giantsbane,” he said. “Tall-talker, Horn-blower, Breaker o’ Ice, Husband to she-bears, Mead-king o’ Ruddy Hall, and once—or so they say—lover to a frost-maiden with teeth like spears and breath like winter’s arse.”

Jon blinked once. “Jon Snow.”

Tormund laughed, full-bodied and loud. “Snow, is it? That a name or just the first thing ye thought of?” He circled once, inspecting. “You’ve the look of a southron bastard, that’s plain. Too pretty for summat else. But you don’t carry yourself like a green boy. Not now.”

Jon didn’t answer. The memory of flame in his hands was too near. The shatter of the Walker. The way the fire hadn’t asked permission before it came.

Tormund scratched his beard. “Well, we’ll see what you are soon enough. Killing a Walker with a flaming sword?” He spat into the snow. “That’s a tale worth a drink.”

Tormund led him to the fire at the center of the camp, where shadows danced long and the smoke clung low. Wildlings watched them pass. Some with narrowed eyes. Others not bothering to hide the weight in their stare. Ghost moved beside him, quiet as ever, too large now for the firelight to ignore. His presence bought distance.

The flames were high, fat logs snapped down the middle, hissing sap and heat amd sparking with warmth that made Jon more comfortable despite not feeling the cold. Tormund pointed to a log, and Jon sat. Ghost curled to his side like a pale sentinel. A horn cup pressed into Jon’s hand, sloshing thick, white liquid that steamed. The smell turned his stomach before the taste had the chance.

He drank a quick gulp, swallowed the mouthful whole at one, and tried not to cough.

It burned like sourwine laced with grease and rot. Or worse. Gods, what is that? His throat tightened.

Tormund’s laugh rolled out like thunder against the frost. “Southern stomach too soft for proper drink?”

Jon drank again but didn’t flinch this time as he let the burn settle behind the ribs like penance.

Tormund grinned wide, then lowered himself across from him with the grace of a falling tree. “Now then, crow,” he said, leaning forward, elbows on knees. “How’s a black brother end up wandering past the Wall, burning Walkers to ash like a bloody legend out of old songs?”

Jon let the fire fill the pause, let it crackle while he chose the shape of what truth he could give.

“I’m not a brother.” His voice came low and raw, unable to fight the pride at making a decision for his own freedom and will rather than that of honor. “I never swore.”

Ygritte, crouched nearby sharpening flint-tipped arrows, snorted. “Clever. Can’t hang a man for breaking vows if he never made ‘em.”

Tormund’s eyes didn’t leave Jon. “Why’d ye leave, Snow?”

Jon stared at the fire. “Dreams,” he said.

The word didn’t echo but it somehow sunk between both him and Tormund.

“Wings,” he added. “Dark wings. Fire and shadow. Something calling.”

Across the circle, an older woman with grey eyes and braids tight as bone lines spoke without turning her head. “Blood calls to blood,” she said, voice like wind through dry trees.

Jon blinked. “What do you mean?”

“The old songs stir again. Ice. Fire. The deep ones listen. You hear them both,” she continued, sounding like any woodswitch he had ever met.

Jon followed her gesture to the fire. The flames leaned toward him—not wildly. Not high. Just subtly off-center, as if the wood had bent wrong. Or the air had turned.

“I don’t understand it,” Jon said. The words didn’t come with shame. They fell clean. I’ve been waiting to say that.

“It started with the dreams. Then the cold stopped biting. Then came the heat. Then…”

“Then fire answered,” Tormund said.

Jon met his eyes. “And ice.”

The older woman nodded once, firm. “Both.”

Tormund scratched his beard, rubbing the truth raw beneath his thumb. “Your blood runs hotter than wildfire, Snow. I’ve known men with gifts. Ygritte could shoot the eye off a winter hare with her eyes closed if she wanted. Me, I get strong when the blood’s up. But you…”

Jon didn’t answer. He stared down at his hands. One had frozen a wight solid. The other had burned through a blade of ice like it was straw. Both. Always both.

“Have you heard,” he said slowly, “of a dragon? Past the Frostfangs. Or something, anything old? Hidden?”

The shift in Tormund’s face was instant. “North of the Frostfangs is death.” His voice wasn’t mocking now. “The cold there bites deeper than steel. The Others don’t hide. They rule. No man lives past that line. Not for long. No dragons, either. Not anymore.”

“I have to try.” The words surprised even him.

He thought Tormund might scoff. Might laugh again. Instead, the wildling leaned back, arms folding across his chest like the words needed shelter to settle.

“You and that beast of yours killed enough dead to fill a pyre,” he said. “And you slew a Walker. I saw it.” He nodded once. “You might just make it.”

Jon didn’t speak.

“We head north,” Tormund said. “Not all the way. Just far enough to reach Mance Rayder’s camp. He’s gathering the free folk. Every clan. Every banner. Something’s coming. Something worse.”

Jon looked up. “And what does your king want with me?”

Tormund laughed again, but it didn’t carry the same ease. “What he wants?” He grinned. “Boy, when Mance hears a crow killed a Walker with a burning sword, he’ll either name you brother or burn you for luck. Might be both.”

“I’m not a crow.”

Ygritte’s arrow paused mid-sharpening. Her voice slid in sharp. “No. You’re not.” She studied him. “So what are you then, Jon Snow?”

The fire popped. Ghost stirred. Jon didn’t look at her.

What am I?

He still didn’t know. Stark blood in his mouth. Dragon heat under his skin. Dreams that wouldn’t let go. Purple eyes that had no place among wolves or men. Cold that didn’t hurt. Fire that did.

“I’m Jon Snow,” he said.

It wasn’t an answer. It was a tether. “And I’m going north.”

Tormund stood, brushing snow from his knees. “North it is,” he said. “We leave at dawn. The dark don’t like the sun, but it don’t fear it either. Keep your blade close, Snow.”

The others drifted. Ygritte went last. She didn’t speak. Just looked at him once more, then followed the rest into the dark.

Jon stayed.

Ghost pressed against his leg. The fire flickered and leaned again. He didn’t move.

In his mind, vast wings beat against an iron sky.