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

i think we can wrap this one up in a few?

[clothed]

Well, Sansa can't speak for much in the way of names; after all, she bears the name Stark. Snow now, too, for the foreseeable future. A man named Little would fit right in among the noble houses in the North.

She remembers herself enough to cross the threshold and carefully shut the door behind her, warmth kissing her skin almost immediately once the door's been closed. After so long walking through the cold outside, and the terror she'd left behind, relief comes to her twofold. Sansa sags a little against the door, braces one hand against the jamb before stepping back and looking around.

It's both familiar, and not. Wood fixtures, wood walls, and a high ceiling with exposed beams - all the trappings of an inn or cabin. But tables are different, with their sharp angles and plain frames, and other things too. She doesn't know where to look; doesn't know if she could touch anything.

She's a bit speechless, please forgive her.

sounds good!

[meadqueen]

Randvi remembers how overwhelming the first few days had been, barely surviving and then witnessing all of these strange things.

“You’re safe here,” she says, careful. “Lady can warm up by the fire while the two of us get something to eat.”

As fraught as these newcomer days can be, a feast should not be wasted.

[clothed]

It's a burst of emotion that Sansa will judge herself for later, but she reaches out quick to catch Lady Randvi by the arm, first with one hand then both. The words struggle to find their way out of her, but after a moment, she gets them out.

"Thank you," she whispered. "For guiding me here. I..."

She doesn't mean to choke on the words she wants to say. She doesn't want to feel the coil of a buried anger tightening around her neck. "You've been so kind, and I have not earned it yet.

"I promise I will, Lady Randvi. Thank you."

[meadqueen]

“It can be lonely here. The people here are kind, but there is no one else here like me.” The next oldest people in time are still closer to this place’s 2015 than they are to her own time. “Visit me once in a while and you can consider your duty fulfilled.”

❤️

[clothed]

"I give my word, my lady," Sansa swears to her. Friends are important when one's a stranger in a foreign place; friends made without condition, ever more so. "I will meet with you soon."