OPEN; how could anything bad ever happen to you?

[clothed]

Who: Sansa and others
What: test drive catch-all and may event threads
When: throughout may for the event
Where: all over!

Content Warnings: Will add as things progress!

We all have a hunger.

It's easy to fall back into rhythm with Lady. The direwolf is a miracle, even though Sansa's stopped believing in things like miracles; she knows it is her, and Lady remembers her. During her first few nights in Milton Sansa slept with the wolf curled against her body, the two of them nested together like they used to do back in Winterfell.

Warmth, especially body warmth, can spell the difference between life or death during winter.

These days Sansa finds herself in something of a routine: she wakes early, lets Lady out to do her business and stretch her legs, and then says a quiet prayer to both the Old Gods and the Seven. For her father, and her mother, and her brothers and sister and everyone else who have died.

Then she goes through what reading material is available at the community center. She'll run out eventually; it's a lot like studying, only without a septa or a maester guiding her, but she'll make do.

Sansa's easy to find like this: either walking with Lady as the direwolf maps out the town, sitting by a window and reading, or trying to help with something. Anything.

Just try not to come up from behind when approaching her; she always has her knife with her.

[ Happy to write a closed starter for the event! Send me a journal PM or ping me on plurk (weirwood) to plot something out. Also moving test drive threads here just to keep things neat. ]

Comments

> community hall! lmk if this works (also feel free to splash him with doggy shakes tbh)

[wingbound]

It's during the first few days that Levi takes it upon himself to scrub the main areas of the community hall clean top to bottom, irritated by the general state of abandonment and dust around town. He's just finishing the lobby when out of the corner of his eye, he sees a teen with what he assumes is a large dog trek back in from the outside, covered in snow.

"Hold up," he barks, holding a hand up as if he's able to stop them through willpower alone, and stomps up to them with a cleaned doormat which he promptly lays out in front of the door before them so they're not stepping directly on the floor. Then he crouches down -- or maybe just leans slightly, depending how big she's gotten, not to mention he's only three inches over five feet -- in front of Lady and holds a hand out, a rag in the other one, staring at her seriously as if he expects her to understand him. "Give me your paw."

He will not have snow and water dragged in immediately after he'd just wiped the whole place down, thanks.

lady obliges!

[clothed]

The large dog is a young direwolf named Lady, and her teenaged human companion is Sansa, presenting herself under a poorly-cobbled alias and story.

They've been playing in the snow for the better part of the morning: Sansa packs soft snow into small spheres that she lobs into the air, Lady chasing after each one and snapping at them. Most times she catches them, and the snowballs break apart against the direwolf's teeth; other times, Sansa's throws catches the wolf in the face or body, though Lady seems not to mind. Most people think wolves bark, but in truth, they don't - not the way people would think.

When a wolf barks at you, it means trouble. When a direwolf barks, it's a threat.

That said, it's been a while since Sansa's had to entertain an animal companion, and by the time Lady's ready to trot back indoors and nap for the rest of the day, Sansa herself is well and truly tired out.

Trudging back to the community hall finds them stopped by a young-looking man, who—has been cleaning?

Sansa frowns delicately. The place has the look of a common inn, or shared quarters; Sansa would not have expected it to be kept in pristine condition, even if she were inclined to cleanliness herself. She starts to speak when the man gives Lady a command, and for a brief moment both girl and wolf are huffing in disbelief at the audacity.

Lady sneezes. It sends ice water and specks of sludge in through the door. When the wolf looks at Sansa questioningly, then at the man holding out a rag, Sansa takes a quick second to think. "Alright," she says more to herself than anything. She gestures with her hand, raising it as if to knock on air. "Raise, Lady."

Then she turns to the strange cleaning man and says, "Be gentle, please. She's a sensitive girl."

aww~

[wingbound]

Levi grimaces slightly at the sneeze, but he's apparently willing to pick his battles at the moment. Most of it lands on the doormat, luckily, though he's aware it won't keep the place as fresh as he'd like. Well, hopefully it will stay dry and clean for today, at least, and that should help his stress levels somewhat. Tidy environment always helps him calm down when he's feeling out of sorts, and ending up in a different world is certainly an out-of-comfort-zone experience.

"Got it," he says, his tone quite flat but as it turns out it's not him being dismissive after all; his movements slow a little, and he indeed seems to be minding the girl's words as he gently wipes the direwolf's paw dry, then lets it go and holds a hand out for the other one.

At closer inspection, she may notice that while he does have a youthfully round face, there's a few lines around his eyes that suggest he's older than he looks at first glance. Maybe in his thirties. It's somewhat hard to tell with his small stature.

While he's taking care of the wolf, he beckons at Sansa with a tilt of his head as well. The mat is there for a reason and her shoes don't look muddy; small mercies of this cold weather. "You can come in too. Wipe your feet."

[clothed]

"Thank you for your generosity," Sansa replies with a little bit of attitude, if only because—well, she was going to do it, but now she almost doesn't want to.

Her desire to be polite is far stronger than her desire to act like a child, though, and Sansa dutifully wipes her shoes on the laid-out mat, careful to check that her skirt isn't dragging in any mud or snow sludge too. Lady, meanwhile, is all too happy to have a man waiting on her paws, cheerily proffering her front paws to be wiped, though it takes a bit of maneuvering to get her to turn and offer her hind paws to the man.

When the man is done - and upon a closer look, there are lines on his face that may mean he's not so young as Sansa first judged him to be - Sansa nods at him politely and thanks him for attending to Lady.

It's almost a bow; the man is rather short. Not as short as Tyrion, but still short.

"Have you been cleaning all day?" She asks with no small amount of bemusement. "Is... is it entertaining for you to clean?"

[wingbound]

He's used to attitude. If he does notice, it seems to roll off of him like water from a duck. At least the (what he considers a) dog is well-behaved, and while it does take some gentle wrestling to wipe down her back paws, it's overall pretty quick and painless. He gives Lady an awkward pat on the withers and stands back up, stepping out of the way so she can trot inside.

The almost-bow seems to make him uncomfortable, or maybe a bit confused. He's earned respect among plenty of people but nobody was bowing to him, he didn't even care much about the salutes. But this girl is treating him like the Queen. Why?

"Yes," he admits, frowning a little at the idea of it being entertaining. It's not quite the word he would choose, but it's not necessarily wrong either. "Something like that. I find it calming. A lot of weird shit has happened."

Like waking up in a world of snow that's apparently called Canada, for one. He's never even heard of such a place.

[clothed]

“I understand,” Sansa answers, not understanding, but she is accepting of the answer all the same. It makes sense, she supposes, that something so repetitive as cleaning would feel calming. Like embroidery, she thinks, or knitting, or any of the crafts skills she knows to knows to do.

“We didn’t mean to interrupt your cleaning,” she continues, sincere in her explanation of things. She hadn’t, truly, and she also had every intention of cleaning up after Lady once they were settled from their morning trek. Sansa didn’t expect to have been out for as long as they had, or for someone to take over cleaning duties in the interim.

She nudges at Lady to trot over to where Sansa had set down a bowl for her, for water and for chopped bits of meat when she’s not out hunting. She’s been fastidious in cleaning the bowl, so it’s quick work to excuse herself for a moment and pour fresh water into the thing.

Still holding a pitcher, Sansa returns to the man with a cup in hand. “Water? You seem to have been at it a while. You must take a moment to rest, too.”

“I’m Lyanna, as well. Thank you for attending to Lady; you didn’t have to extend us the courtesy.”

[wingbound]

Perhaps she should teach him knitting sometime. He'd probably take well to it.

"You're not interrupting," he mutters, feeling increasingly awkward. It hadn't been his intention to make the girl or her maybe-dog feel unwelcome; he'd simply seen a potential issue and solved it before it could evolve into something that annoyed him. But maybe they took it in a different way. "It's no trouble."

Frankly, they owe him nothing. He would have done it whether or not anyone else shared the space; he can't even claim it's for the community. He just needed something therapeutic and this was that.

He still sort of just stands there before finally remembering to pick up and put away the broom and the bucket, but before he can get to it, he's having a cup offered to him. He'd rather have tea, but it's pretty scarce around here, so he accepts it, taking the cup in a slightly odd manner by the rim.

"Thank you," he grouses, "but really, I'm fine. We all live here."

Only makes sense they would all do their part in making the space inhabitable. For a few moments, it seems that he's chosen to ignore her introduction completely, but after taking a sip of water and frowning at the cup for a few moments longer, he offers just his name in return;

"...Levi."