━ in which; Sansa Stark, Queen in the North, receives a raven from across the sea, speaking of how her dear sister had come into contact with another race of people from the mysterious, rumoured magic of the sea on Arya's desire to answer the age o...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The fur under her fingertips felt warm and soothing. Earthy. Almost like a cord, tethering her to the earth. Sansa sighed. feeling the rise and fall of Lady's breath against her palms, the sound of her breath being the one thing she was able to focus on. Her eyes stung, as they so often did after crying. She used to cry so much, now, having sat back under the tree, so far from her home, so far from any inkling of family or past trauma befallen on her in her own home, perhaps she had not cried enough since moving on.
The line between a bleeding heart and a stone heart were thin. Two sides of a coin. Like madness or greatness. What constituted love, or hate? Purity and impurity? Did they matter? Was honour real? It had to be, so many had died for honour, for duty. Her father had died for honour. Small flakes of snow floated lazily down, sticking to red eyelashes. The direwolf sniffed at her face, rubbing her fur against Sansa's soggy cheeks and licking at her fingers. She let out a wet laugh, "Thank you, Lady."
Lady pressed her head up into Sansa's palm, like a pup overeager for pets. It put a smile on the woman's face, making her giggle. A steady breath. She had to go back soon. She had to apologise to Dagny and Alva. She had taken their space, their resources and materials and food and had the audacity to rage despite Dagny's attempts to help.
Sansa grimaced, a hand swiping at her cheek, rubbing the tear streaks and the ashamed ache of her face away. She took a breath. She was an adult, a survivor of winter, not a silly summer child. Her voice wavered as the woman took the time to plan aloud, pacing in the snow. "Okay, I need to hunt down a genuine way to fend for myself here, until, until Arya comes, and I- We can go home." Sansa corrected at Lady's huffed breath, evidently disappointed, "I'm sorry, it's weird having you back, you were gone for almost eight years, okay. I didn't mean it like that."
A few minutes passed in the silence of the woods, the now grown woman, and the young direwolf had been given a second chance walked lazy circles around one another. The light snowfall of late autumn was nice. The winter blizzards not due for another few weeks according to Alva, despite this, many of those living near them had moved their small animals into their houses. Dogs, chickens and ducks, a few lambs and or goats, depending on the neighbour.
What would she do with Lady? Inevitably able to survive in the wilderness and winters, just as all direwolves could, but Sansa cringed at the thought of not seeing her. Her Lady, who's vaguely earthen, snow and sweet like honeydew scented fur she had just gotten back, so soft, like the finest velvet and smoothest satin, shiny like silk, with eyes of marigolds and the colour of the moon in the pink of sunset.
