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

[castitas]

"Lady? Oh, that is so cute." There's a little laugh, she very much approves! "I don't have a dog but.. I have a bunny, back home. She's called Alice."

She misses her a whole lot. She hopes someone's taking care of her.

Kate's eyebrows raise a little my lady? Like... no one's ever called her that before, and it surprises her. It sounds like something out of Shakespeare or something.

"I'm Kate." She nods politely with a small smile, her hands coming together in front of her. She wrings them a little. "It's nice to meet you both, although— it... kind of sucks more are getting brought here from their homes. This stuff's been going on for months, now."

[clothed]

"I don't mind being here," Sansa replies with sincerity.

Far away from Ramsay is better than almost anything - she would even accept returning to Petyr Baelish's predatory stewardship back at The Eyrie. Sansa understands Littlefinger's intentions with her, and can be reasoned with; Ramsay defies reason, and gleefully tears into people the same way beasts tear into prey.

She meets Kate's introduction with a smile of her own. "My mother was named Catelyn. I'm pleased to meet another with a name like hers.

"How long...?" The girl - Kate - says things have been going on for a while; has she been here since the beginning? "How many of us have arrived here under strange circumstances? Do you know?"

[castitas]

"Oh, well I'm glad it's not so bad for you." She still think it sucks, but... honestly, this place does have it nice parts. The people here are good, and really kind.

Kate smiles, a little charmed. Oh, that's so nice. "I... actually have a sister called 'Lynn' too." It's funny how things go, she thinks. But like, this is in a really nice way.

"Um, so I've been here about— eight months, I'd guess?" She counts on her fingers to be sure. Yep, eight months. Gosh, that's a lot. "We were the first group of Interlopers to come here. As for how many of us— I'd say maybe a hundred and fifty, total?"

There is definitely not a hundred and fifty people living in Milton. Not now. Kate would say no more than a hundred.

[clothed]

Sisters. Sansa misses hers in ways she never thought she would. Where is Arya now, she wonders? Hopefully doing much better than she does; hopefully, she’s not hurt the way Sansa has.

There are other things to wonder about too. Kate says she's been year eight months now; long enough to have known many of the residents here, if she were so inclined. Long enough to know how the culture and community works, certainly, if she’s the sort to survive with her cheery nature intact. Or maybe she’s just… cheerful?

Sansa can’t imagine it for herself. The spirit needed for that seems like a lot.

But if there are only a hundred and fifty men here - or not even men, but people, women and children accounted for - then Sansa has more questions. That many people could run Castle Winterfell, between the staff and the smiths and beastmasters, but that’s hardly a town.

“That’s rather thin for a town, far as a population goes,” Sansa remarks questioningly. “Are we interlopers the only ones living here, then?”

If that’s the situation, why? How far from the rest of the realm are they? “I don’t mean to ask something to serious so quickly. I haven’t seen any horses in town when I arrived.”

cw: mention of suicide

[castitas]

The question is a difficult one, and Kate's hands come together to worry themselves. Ah, yeah. About that. Milton had been home to some thousand people, give or take. And now there's less than a hundred living here.

"... Yes." Kate's mouth is thin line, and she's sombre for a moment. "When... when we first arrived, the townsfolk were— gone. Most of them dead. We buried who we could find. Something— weird happened here. The ones that were found I heard died in different ways — some with the cold, some fought each other, some... um, decided to take their own lives. Lots of them we don't really know how they died."

The Darkwalker, they suspect. The thing that's killed a handful of Interlopers probably killed the townsfolk, too. People don't just... drop dead.

"I.. think there's a man with a horse, here?" Her head tilts to one side in thought, and she makes a little face. She can't think of anyone else, that'll be the only one she knows of. "But, um— no, I don't think people really used horses much out here. They had cars and trucks. They don't work anymore, though."

no pressure to tag this back!

[clothed]

Gone, and most taken for dead or otherwise missing.

"The Stranger comes for us all. May their souls find peace eternal."

Sansa had heard rumblings of similar incidents back home, in the days leading up to King Robert Baratheon's visit to Winterfell. It had been in part the reason why Uncle Benjen had ridden south from the Wall; brothers of the Night's Watch were being taken by the dark, and the ranks were running thin, to say nothing of wildlings raiding closer to the Wall and the few villages nearby.

It worries her to think that similar things are happening here, too.

That said — she's never been so happy to hear about a horse. Something she can easily understand, for a change.

"I was told of cars, which are like horseless carriages, yes?" Thank you, Ser Darling, for giving her some much-needed context. "Why would they not work — oh, they would need something to propel them. Wouldn't they? Instead of a horse.

Are there other horses here?"