The sixty-foot leap into the snow was not beautiful, or liberating, as Sansa might have thought on any other occasion. No, it was probably one of the most terrifying things she had ever done. She felt herself, plummeting weightless in the air, to what could be her imminent death if the snow wasn't deep enough. As they fell, time seemed to slow down. Was it really only a few seconds she was falling? It felt like an hour to her. She gripped Reek's (Theon's?) hand harder.

At last, she felt the impact: They landed facefirst and sank about ten feet into the soft snow.

Slowly, they both rose. Sansa brushed the snow off her wet face and lowered her hood onto her head again.

"We need to hurry," said Reek, shakily. He grabbed Sansa's hand and pulled her up. With difficulty, they climbed out out of the ten-foot pit they had created. Sansa saw that to their right, the snow became more shallow and treadable. Further off, there was a forest.

Not daring to look back, they headed to the right, trudging knee-high through the deep snow as quickly as they could, still grasping each other's hands for life. After ten minutes or so, the snow was just a few inches deep again, and they ran again. Reek was pulling her into the forest. As they sprinted, Sansa saw that this forest curved to the left, branching into the larger one where the Bolton and Baratheon armies had fought. But she had no time to think about what dangers might arise from that.

They reached the forest. Sansa crouched behind a large pine tree at the edge of the dark, shadowy forest, panting from exhaustion and adrenaline. Reek stood behind another tree, peering from behind it at Winterfell. Slowly, dreadfully, she looked, too.

It seemed that no search was being made right now. Sansa could her cheerful hoots coming from the kingdom: victory cries. There was also a great deal of smoke coming from behind the walls, and she knew that the Bolton banners must be burning. Perhaps Ramsay had been too caught up in his victory to remember to catch up on his wife. But he would find out any minute now that she had left. She felt a hand grab her arm. Panicked, she looked up, expecting to see Ramsay, but it was only Reek. "We should get as f-far away as we can," he said. As always, his eyes were fixed on the ground, and he trembled. "They'll b-be coming soon."

They ran silently through the forest, away from the castle and in in the direction of where the battle had taken place. The forest was deep and thick with trees, yet it had a certain comfort to it. That comfort, Sansa thought dully, was probably that it was not Winterfell. Still, even now, Sansa had to admire the pine trees that stood hundreds of feet tall and noble as they had done for hundreds of years.

After about half an hour or so, Sansa heard noises coming from Winterfell- and this time, they were not delightful. Sansa and Reek froze in their tracks. There was a horn blowing and shouting. Sansa strained her ears and heard that it was Ramsay:

"My wife, Sansa Stark, has run away with my servant! I will be leading a small army to retrieve her. The first man to find her will be rewarded. Any person who tries to help them escape will be flayed alive. " Commotion and chatter ensued this announcement, as army men prepared for their new mission and townspeople chattered nervously among themselves.

Sansa and Reek looked at each other. "Where do we go?" Sansa panted.

Reek pulled her arm in answer, and they continued running, this time to the right, away from the larger forest where the armies had fought, and deeper into the smaller forest they were already in. Sansa knew why: Ramsay's army would first be checking the battle site.

They ran for what felt like hours, stumbling over knotted, twisted tree roots and slipping slightly on the occasional ice patches, and then finally stopped. Night was falling. The sky was dark blue. Behind them, perhaps a few miles away, there were shouts, and Sansa knew it was Ramsay's army.

Sansa listened harder. She heard something about not finding anything, about perhaps trying the King's Road. Then she heard Ramsay's sharp voice: "We already have men on the King's Road! We'll keep searching here. If anything, we can take some supplies from this lot." Sansa took "this lot" to mean the dead Baratheon army.

More disagreement, and Ramsay's voice again. "The stretch of woods towards the castle?" More talking. "Good idea. Let's go!"

Sansa froze in horror. Reek tapped her shoulder, and Sansa turned around. "We have to hide there" he said, tremulously pointing at something in the side of a cliff up ahead. Sansa squinted and saw that it was a hole in the cliffside: The cave. She would not have known it was a cave if she hadn't known that Arya and Bran used to play in there: It was inconspicuous, just a hole in the cliffside. They rushed to the cave. The entrance was mostly filled with rocks, except for a small gap where they could squeeze through. Sansa went in head-first, then Reek.

The cave was about half the size of Sansa's bedroom at Winterfell: Small, but enough room to stand and walk around. They sat together in the darkness of the cave, shivering with fear like children.

After a while, when the sky was pitch black, they heard the sound of footsteps and shouts nearby. The orange light of the torches illuminated the cave. Sansa and Reek froze completely still.

"I'll search here!" someone shouted. Sansa's heart skipped a beat and she thought she might faint.

The voice came from right outside of the cave entrance.

She dared not turn her head to see Reek's expression, though she knew it must be something similar to hers.

The two hardly dared to breathe as they silently prayed to the gods. Then-

"Nothing here!"

Sansa almost sighed with relief, then caught herself.

"They've got to be somewhere; they can't have gone far!" Ramsay shouted. He sounded angry now. Sansa had rarely heard him angry; he usually was cheerfully sadistic. After a few more minutes of searching the area, the army left to search somewhere else, muttering frustratedly.

Sansa sat huddled, shocked and relieved at the same time, as though she had just surfaced from an icy cold ocean.

Speaking of icy cold, she was freezing. She was still wet from the snow she had fallen in from that jump. She removed her long cloak, which was also wet, knowing too well of the tales of frostbite here in the North. She saw that goosebumps covered her arms, and she crossed her arms and huddled into a fetal position, shivering. Her teeth chattered, and her breath billowed out in front of her like smoke, as it always did in the North. She had no blanket. She was hungry, too, and they had no food. She was thirsty, but she dared not step outside the cave to eat snow.

It was going to be a long night, Sansa thought, as she slumped down onto the cold stone floor and tried to fall asleep. A few feet away from her, Reek was trying to do the same.