No squall could frighten Dany, though. Daenerys Stormborn, she was called, for she had
come howling into the world on distant Dragonstone as the greatest storm in the
memory of Westeros howled outside, a storm so fierce that it ripped gargoyles from the
castle walls and smashed her father’s fleet to kindling.
The narrow sea was often stormy, and Dany had crossed it half a hundred times as a girl,
running from one Free City to the next half a step ahead of the Usurper’s hired knives.
She loved the sea. She liked the sharp salty smell of the air, and the vastness of horizons
bounded only by a vault of azure sky above. It made her feel small, but free as well. She
liked the dolphins that sometimes swam along beside Balerion, slicing through the
waves like silvery spears, and the flying fish they glimpsed now and again. She even liked
the sailors, with all their songs and stories. Once on a voyage to Braavos, as she’d
watched the crew wrestle down a great green sail in a rising gale, she had even thought
how fine it would be to be a sailor. But when she told her brother, Viserys had twisted
her hair until she cried. “You are blood of the dragon,” he had screamed at her. “A
dragon, not some smelly fish.”