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

[tinstar]

"Your father is right, always winter or not." It was just solid Winter advice that Raylan could easily agree with. "And I got a feelin' we've got wildlife to worry about. I hope y'all have some rifles - pistols are gonna eat up more ammo.."

He glances around, looking for the hints of modernity that would confirm that they'd have rifles. If this was the 1880s they were still okay.

"They all had to fit on a massive boat, and only a set were required for.. repopulation once the Great Flood ended. Lived off food stores they brought with them. Keep in mind that this story also says that the whole of humanity currently are descended from Noah's three sons, and I can promise that is not the case."

[clothed]

That word again - rifles. They must be the preferred weapon in these parts; Sansa thinks she might want to learn to wield them, if they're as light as the one Constable Fraser was carrying. She's not the swordfighting type, not even the knife-fighting type, but if it's anything like a bow, then maybe she can learn.

She's done little but learn over the years, and about things her mother would never have thought her ready for.

This story, however. About a great flood, a large ship, and food stores and sons and children. Sansa's confusion is clear on her face, bordering on disbelieving, and she doesn't quite manage to keep her confusion out of her voice when she speaks again.

"And their wives?" It stands to reason, if this Noah's sons have seeded the rest of the lineage, that they would have wives, but— "If it's only in pairs, then are men and women not counted into it? What of children? Did their get simply marry one another? Or did they have sisters that became their wives, and then—"

It would certainly keep the bloodlines pure, but the madness in the blood would've risen quickly. Within two, three generations, at least. "This is a very strange story."

[tinstar]

Raylan firmly believed that everyone could learn. If they could shoot a bow, they were already halfway there, but he had been an instructor at one point in his life. He knew what he was doing in that department. Frankly, anyone who doesn't know how to shoot here should probably learn. For emergencies and considering the accessibility, if nothing else.

But he's sure some smart capable soul here is already working on that.

He can't help but huff a breath and smile at her questions and confusion. "Faith often has a way of brushin' those lack of fuller details under a rug. Or three. Noah and his family, wives included went. And then they repopulated," he drawls, long fingers fanning out in a gesture reminiscent of a storyteller sprinkling flavor over an ending.

"I've never been a believer myself and generally, frowned upon in conversations lest someone get offended. But there's all sorts of strange stories everywhere, right?"

Always something unknown, always something to learn. Folk Tales were right next door to fiction, right next door to science fiction and not something Raylan was uninterested.

[clothed]

"I suppose that's true," Sansa agrees, nodding at Raylan Givens' remark. "The Faith of the Seven tells of a god with seven faces. That must've been strange as well, when the first of the faithful came to our kingdoms."

The Starks are descended from the First Men, worshipped the Old Gods, kept to the sacred covenant of protecting the weirwood trees for hundreds of years. She thinks of the godswood in Winterfell, with its grim face carved into the ashen bark; thinks of her father and the many stilted conversations they've had in front of the tree.

Thinks of the last time she'd stood before the weirwood, and how she bled after.

She tries not to let the memory sour the conversation.

"They must have had so many children, and so quickly. Their wives lived long?" Poor women, if so; their bodies would've been ravaged by so many childbirths.

[tinstar]

"Seven faces? Like all at once?" Sounded like an acid trip, to be honest, and it was the only flavor of image that he could imagine.

He didn't really care for religious talk - he'd rather learn about the religions of her place than talk the specifics of his, it made him a little uncomfortable, but it was his fault. He was pretty sure he'd opened this door.

"The math doesn't work out on this fiction, even if they had babies every 9 months and lived a hundred and twenty years. Science informs a lotta that statement too by the way. Humans as a species don't work like that. We've got different geological records that go It serves the faithful I guess, and they've got their well thought out arguments about it all. I never much understood the answers they'd give to those kinda questions."

He didn't want to ask if her kingdom had science. It'd be rude, right? Suggest something he didn't mean? Surely. But god did he wonder.

"So long as we don't get any floods here, or any folk with more than the face they're born with, I think we'll be okay." He was so confident, completely unfounded considering he's only been here a few hours. Fake it til you make it.

[clothed]

“It wears many faces,” Sansa answers with the same plainness as she had heard when the tenets of the faith was taught to her. “It is seven as it is one. I don’t think it’s meant to reflect on the reality of it.”

Unlike the Old Gods. The Old Gods are as real as the Children of the Forest, even though Sansa can’t quite take them so seriously. She can accept that they’ve existed a long time ago, certainly, but like as not they’re just stories made to seem more powerful than they truly were.

That said, Marshal Givens continues to throw out words that Sansa only understands the half of, and she’s feeling a bit under-prepared for the conversation. She’s making a note of it, to read up on this place if she can find the texts for it. If it’s in letters she cannot read, she’’ll find someone to teach her.

She’s not the quickest pupil, not like Robb was, but she learns.

“We’ll have bigger problems, either way,” she remarks with a soft sigh. “Winter is here, and that means less food as the days grow longer. Game will sleep for the winter, or travel southward. Fruit and greens will be just as scarce, and if the sun stays cold, drying meats will be a concern even if we can find game to hunt.

Have you ever hunted during the winter, Marshal Givens?”

[tinstar]

A fever ridden and acid trip, it sounds like. He was glad he didn't carry around the burden of faith and bending his common sense and touch of grounding to fit it. At least she's familiar with the idea of unreflected reality. He had plenty of stories that weren't from the bible but raised just as many questions. Stories of what lived under the mountain and what happened when men dug to deep.

"Never had to, thankfully. But I know mushrooms grow in winter and I have hunted. Though I got a feelin' we don't have a lotta rifles and ammo for it around. I'm thinkin' that might kinda put me back at square one with only the advantage of understanding the theory on my side. What about you? They let woman have arms in your Kingdom?"

He knew that some place where he was from was still on that kinda bullshit and it wasn't a big jump to guess anyplace that went by 'Kingdom' might fall into the same thing.

no pressure to tag this back!

[clothed]

Rifles and ammo - that first word again.

"Some women find it in their hearts to become knights," Sansa remarks, thinking of Brienne and her stiff armor. "But no, most girls think themselves to be wives of highborn sons. It's the ideal arrangement for them, for the daughters of common folk. Common law wives demand some faithfulness between man and woman, as well, but you can imagine that the rules are a little less enforced further down the hierarchy.

"To inherit a fortune is to be blessed, some might say." Sansa doesn't, but she knows from the stories of her mother's handmaids and the household service that they mean to catch the eye of a sweet knight, or a man of some standing. A higher standing means greater chances of earning coin, and good coin is worth a warm hearth and fresh food on the table.

The North demands survival. She doesn't think less of such girls anymore, marrying for privilege than love. Love won't feed mouths, after all.

"What is ammo?"

[tinstar]

"Mm," Raylan hums, lips thinning with the sound. "I'm sure there are just as many that call the waiting for it torture of it's own kind."

He was grateful that he didn't live in such times. He understood they did what they had to, what they had option to, but he was still glad to be born in a time where women could be more than wives and child-bearers. Where they could live and maintain themselves without the oversight of abusive men. He's seen what that's gotten a lot of women.

Ammo was a lot easier to answer. Raylan did so by pulling his service weapon and ejecting the clip, popping one bullet out with a practiced ease to hold it up between two fingers.

"Ammunition. The cannon balls of hand cannons." Raylan gives her the exact weight in pounds of the force that an arrow hits a man and the drastically larger weight of force that a bullet tears through a man. "Rifles make the range longer, putting guns on par with the bow and arrow while bein' significantly more deadly." He glances at her and finally thinks to define a rifle.

"A rifle is just a long barreled kind of gun. Better for hunting, you get a longer range. Us bein' where we are, you might want to consider learnin' how to shoot."

[clothed]

Arrow poundage is familiar to Sansa; her brothers and sister are capable archers, save for young Rickon. For something the size of her thumb to bear nearly five-and-tenfold the power of a loosed arrow is horrific to imagine.. Arrows are not toys, she’s been taught this well.

Should Westeros learn of such a weapon like this — it would make many men worse.

She suppresses a shiver as the thought flees her.

“Would you teach me to shoot one?” She asks him plain, but the shine in her eyes betray her. “I would like to learn.”

[tinstar]

His eyebrows lift a little, surprised by the glean in her eyes. Was it an affinity for shooting or something else behind that? But there's no hesitation in his nod. It would give Lyanna a security in more than one way. Women should know how to defend themselves and be able to hunt to survive if they have to. With the mutated beasts around, her knowing how to shoot could be the difference between life and death.

"I'd be honored to. It'd make me feel better, knowin' you've got the most modern gun safety knowledge under your belt. I'll see if I can get my hands on one and some rounds we can use. Give me a couple weeks to secure that then, we'll play it by ear? I'm gettin' a sense this place ain't all it seems."

and i think we can end here!

[clothed]

Modern gun safety knowledge — of the four words Sansa likely understands only two, and altogether understands little of the context. But there is warmth in the way he speaks that draws Sansa's trust out from her tight grasp.

She could trust this man, she thinks. He means her well at the very least, his demeanor speaks it true. She nods and musters a true smile, though small. Reaches out to him and touches his arm light and mindful, offering her silent thanks to his offer.

"I look forward to it, Marshal Givens."