Chapter 1: A Calling
When her daughter was three years old, Catelyn Stark took her to her first ballet class. Little Sansa had seen an advertisement for the Winterfell Ballet Company and imitated the movements she had observed for several weeks, before Ned, with an affectionate smile, suggested to his wife (they were both observing Sansa's attempts at a pirouette) that perhaps their little daughter was lucky to have discovered her calling so early in life. Therefore, Catelyn made the necessary arrangements, and Sansa was auditioned by the Winterfell Academy of Ballet — one of the most prestigious classical dance academies in the Seven Kingdoms, if unhappily located so far in the North. She was accepted: her beauty and natural grace, unusual for so young a child, made her the perfect candidate.
The mothers were welcome to stay and observe the classes, and Catelyn watched with pride and joy, how Sansa, delighted, performed the exercises better than any of her peers. Their way home was animated by constant excited chatter coming from the back seat.
Sansa's love for ballet grew with every lesson. It was not only the beauty of the movements that enticed her or the compliments of her teachers — it was the dream that one day, if she worked very hard and ate very little, she would be the physical epitome of beauty, elegance, and graceful perfection, who enchanted viewers from stage and TV screens. She would hold onto this dream for fifteen years.