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IV SANSA "the peace of prayer" ⚜️
Sansa woke to a lick to the face. When she opened her eyes, Lady was staring down at her, moved from where she usually warmed her feet to sit with a paw on either side of her face. She smiled, digging a hand into the direwolf's soft coat. Her head followed next, leaning upwards to connect with the side of Lady's head. Sometimes it felt like they were connected, Sansa thought. That Lady was so gracious and gentle and loving because she could feel that Sansa was too.
It wasn't very ladylike, to cuddle her direwolf in the warmth of her bed chambers. She heard what the southern ladies said about her around the Keep when they thought she couldn't hear. At times it made her upset. Those were the ladies that she would soon live and dine with in Kings Landing, and already they saw her as an outsider, as different. She'd tried so hard to appear as one of them, with lighter colour dresses and intricately styled hair.
Yet her mornings with Lady were often her favourite part of the day until the maids came in with heated water, ready for bathing. Lavender would be soaked, along with flowers she herself had picked from the edge of the Godswood, and by the time Sansa left her rooms she smelled like a northern garden, and only faintly of wolf.
With the King's visit, Winterfell was hardly ever quiet. The boys trained in the yard with Ser Rodrik and the girls would spend their mornings with the Septa. Beth and Jayne would hover by her side until noon, by which time Sansa was left to her own devices. Her lessons had been cut short and her two closest friends would return to their families, never straying too close to the southron party.
Stuck in her solitude, Sansa would usually rescue Lady from the stables and her direwolf would escort her across the Great Keep to the lower courtyard, taking the long way past the sept. Sometimes they would sneak food from the kitchens- lemon cakes for Sansa and a meat cake for Lady- ready to eat when they reached their destinations.
More often than not, it was the glass gardens they went to. With summer closing, over the past year, they had become busier, with more plants bedded until the pathways were overflowing with greenery. Above the wide doorway, etched on a stone slab, were the words Winter is Coming. The words of her family, forever foreboding amongst the edges of trees of the Godswood.
Still, it was somewhat comforting to pass through the doors into the walls of the glass garden, feeling the thick cloud of warmth, the words Winter is Coming etched on the brain. There, she felt untouchable by the cold. It was proof that they were not to be defeated by the coming winter.
Sansa loved the snow. She liked how it glittered in the winter sun, like crystals, and she liked how the starkness of it could make anything dull seem alive. From the small wooden bench that her father had set for her, Sansa could look through the fogged windows straight into the Godswood, to the snow and the sun and the cold, and not be touched by any of them.
