Sansa was bent over her golden stitches when Lady Mormont found her. The slight incredulity still hadn't left Sansa whenever she saw the figure Lady Mormont cut – little and solemn and so painfully young. When she was Lady Mormont's age, Sansa had still dreamt of sunshine piercing the southron courts and gallant knights with their tourney swords accepting her favour, of ladies in waiting wearing silks instead of wool as they brought her trays of lemon cakes.
"Princess," Lady Mormont said, apparently not expecting to see Sansa tucked in an alcove.
Just as Sansa had not expected Lady Mormont wandering the corridors of Winterfell.
"My lady," Sansa said. "I trust you have finished your preparations?" And, sweeping aside her slate grey skirt from the window seat, Sansa added, "Please, sit."
Lady Mormont inclined her head and approached the alcove. Her steps were as measured and precise as they were quite severe. But when she sat down, huddled in her black furs, her feet barely touched the stone floor. Sansa didn't know whether to smile or to hurt.
"Yes, I will be ready to depart tomorrow," Lady Mormont said. She fiddled with the small black gloves that she had been clutching. "Perhaps by mid-morning so it won't be so cold."
Sansa nodded. There was an assembly yesterday discussing winter provisions and hearing reports on every northern House, amongst other things. A heavy snow fell in the middle of the assembly, when Lords Cerwyn and Glover and Hornwood were arguing about timber, and it prevented Lady Mormont and her party from making the passage back to Bear Island.
The snow had not prevented the raven from delivering the news, though. Sansa and Jon had been up late in her chambers last night, discussing the assembly and Winterfell repairs, when the letter came. As she'd read the news that Queen Margaery had died, Sansa kept her elbows from crumpling the papers on which she had written what she had to say on every Winterfell business.
"What is it?" Jon had said, looking up from his own notes. With a frown, he'd added, "That's a late raven."
"The weather," Sansa had absently replied. "Queen Margaery is dead."
Jon had sat up straighter.
"And King Tommen," she'd added, as an afterthought. Once, she might have quibbled with calling them king and queen in the presence of her family, now that she knew the secret for which Father had died, but the North in winter and the threat beyond the Wall were more than pressing as it was.
She'd held out the letter to Jon. "Did you know them?" he had asked.
"Margaery was kind to me. The closest person I had as a true friend." Sansa had a fleeting thought of Cersei and her unpredictable ways. "But there are no true friends there. A nest of adders, the south. Have you had friends on the Wall?"
Jon had given her a wan smile. "Yes. A handful. I've been lucky, I suppose."
At the end of the night, they had exchanged notes with the promise of adding their thoughts to them. It was useful to lay down those notes because there were so many things to do and they had to be organised. Then they'd finished their hot cider, made from the last batches they had of Fossoway apples, and Sansa had fed Ghost the last of her biscuit before Jon took her hand to say how sorry he was for her loss.
"You are always welcome to stay in Winterfell," Sansa told Lady Mormont now, and she received a small smile. "Especially now that it is winter and travel has become much more difficult."
Lady Mormont glanced at Sansa's stitching, a fall of golden roses on one side of a green cloth. "A very lovely work," she offered. "Have you been to Highgarden, Your Highness? They say there is a field of golden roses which stretches as far as the eye can see."
"No," Sansa said, and she ran her finger through her stitching. "It was – a missed opportunity."
"I hear the queen has passed," Lady Mormont said, more quietly. Her dark eyes were fixed on Sansa. "She was from Highgarden."
Sansa breathed out. "She was a good friend. Kind and intelligent and beautiful."
"I see," Lady Mormont said. "I am terribly sorry."
"She wasn't too fond of pies, Queen Margaery," Sansa went on. Then she noticed Lady Mormont's polite but poorly concealed bewilderment, and shook herself out of it. "Speaking of sewing, how are your stitches, my lady? Have you been having lessons?"
"I am afraid not." Lady Mormont glanced at the golden stitches again, her pale face softening. "My education focuses on good governance. But I have been having lessons on dancing."
"Oh, how were those dancing lessons?" Sansa said with a smile. Those used to be her favourite, the rhythm and her skirts swirling around her and the fantasies of being twirled around by a kind and handsome prince. A constant of those lessons had also involved Arya plucking off her own dancing shoes and clapping them together as she madly writhed around like a mushroom-addled monkey in a mystical dance. Sansa hoped Arya had boots on her feet now, wherever she was.
"They were nice, I suppose," Lady Mormont replied. "I told my maester that I wish to have the dancing lesson a few days after my arms training. It tires me when they are so close. But I do love my dancing shoes." Another wistful glance at Sansa's stitches. "They have the tiniest bear stitches on them. A lot of skill went into them for certain."
"I used to practise by making my dolls a lot of dresses," Sansa said, casually. She cast a careful look at Lady Mormont.
Lady Mormont's eyes lit up. It was like watching a solemn shadow being warmed by ale. "I have three dolls," she said. "One used to be my lady mother's and it had been made by her mother. It wears a blue dress, which is lovely as it is also my favourite colour. The stitchings are as beautiful as yours, Princess."
Sansa was quite endeared. "Thank you. And how are the other two?"
"One was from Myr and it has the richest lace trimmings," Lady Mormont said. She had a small bright smile on. "And the other was from Dorne. It has the most beautiful black hair and it came with a dappled toy horse."
"Those sound really lovely," Sansa said, with a dull pang for the dolls she'd left at King's Landing.
"They are, yes. My lady companion encourages me to play with them before bedtime. I agree with her. It eases my tiredness from the day."
"Your lady companion is wise," Sansa said as she nodded, and she believed it. She sent a silent thanks to the gods for Lyanna Mormont's companion. "Running a keep and an island must be positively taxing."
It was certainly not easy running Winterfell, and Sansa wasn't alone in that as well as having a few years on Lady Mormont.
The days were tiring for all of Winterfell's inhabitants. Father used to intone "Winter is coming," because winters in the North were daunting. But the Starks have always endured, he had always added. Sansa didn't know if he expected this winter to come just after a war ravaged most of the Seven Kingdoms. Sansa was determined that they endure this winter.
Sansa spent most mornings in conference with Jon, Ser Davos, Lady Brienne, and Tormund. Winterfell was in need of a number of repairs, and they need winter provisions especially with the threat of a war from beyond the Wall and possibly from the south. The destruction of the glass gardens was really unfortunate that Sansa found herself clenching her fist whilst thinking of their lost potential, her thoughts to hurt Ramsay Bolton once more – hurt him as he had hurt her home - rendered vivid. But she had to be practical, she had to think of ways to find food without the glass gardens, so those unpleasant thoughts were only fleeting.
In the hours outside charts and maps, Sansa went over the books with the steward. Sansa never had much of a head for figures when she was younger, but she found that she had a clearer grasp for it nowadays.
She wasn't of much help when it came to battle strategy, so in the afternoons Sansa visited the ladies making fur blankets and spinning wool, and those people almost frantically making wicks and candles for the longer nights. She invited the men tasked with chopping firewood to drink warmed ale before they resumed, and she always visited the kitchens to look over the menus of the day.
Sansa also figured that she should read as much as she could. The books kept her from dwelling into dark and hurtful things, and Tyrion Lannister had once told her that you never knew when a piece of knowledge would be useful. She challenged herself to read as much of the books in the library as she could, and Jon had smiled over his stew when she told him one day. She had invited Lady Brienne to the books as well.
"Thank you, Princess Sansa," Lady Brienne had said. "I admit that I've missed reading. It's been years since I last read in Evenfall Hall's library."
The feeble winter light from the window had struck Lady Brienne's kind and steadfast eyes then, and Sansa was overcome with a sudden gratefulness that the gods and her lady mother had her meet an incomparable sworn shield.
Sansa had reached out over her fork and held Lady Brienne's hand. "One day, I hope to see Tarth with you, my lady."
And when she felt she'd read too much for the day, Sansa would sit and lean against the warm tapestried wall, sewing a new dress for herself or a new tunic for Jon for the winter. Sansa sewed and thought about the things she'd read, all the while smiling at her creations because it felt good to see the direwolf blazing on the clothes.
Jon's face always lit up whenever she gave him a new tunic, his fingers almost reverently running over the stitched direwolf before he looked up at her and thanked her very earnestly. Sansa thought she could understand: bastards didn't get the coat of arms. Sansa didn't get the sword so she couldn't defend herself and she shuddered to think if she didn't get the arms as well.
These days she and Jon always found themselves drifting together. They broke fast together. A few hours after dinner they would sit together, each occupied with a different pursuit, whilst Ghost silently trotted between them and Sansa spoiled him with treats and fur touslings. Sometimes Jon would watch her stitch up a sleeve, and they would reminisce or tell each other the pleasant bits of the time they spent apart.
Jon told her it was his favourite time of the day, when they sat together in Sansa's chambers. It used to be her lady mother's chambers and the warmest in the Great Keep.
Sansa agreed with him. She found that it eased her tiredness from the day. Only during those times would Sansa entertain the glimmer of hope for Arya and Bran, as she sat with Winterfell's walls surrounding her, Stark-bannered and given life by the hot springs' waters coursing through them, with Jon safe by her side and the sun long gone from the wintry skies.
The morning of Lady Mormont's departure, Sansa stood in the corridor until Lady Mormont emerged from the guest chamber. Sansa held up the gift she'd sewn the night before, a deep blue handkerchief embroidered with a pale green bear.
"Please accept this token of appreciation, my lady," Sansa said, after Lady Mormont did a stiff curtsy.
"Your Highness," Lady Mormont said, with a small smile up at Sansa. "What a wonderful gift. I am absolutely grateful and honoured."
"The breakfast table is being prepared," Sansa told her as they started walking. "For you and also for your party."
"Thank you. We will trouble you no longer after this." Lady Mormont must have seen Sansa thinking of interrupting her, because she pressed on. "I understand the practicalities, Your Highness. Winter is here, and Winterfell has barely recovered. The food you are preparing for me and my twenty men could do great lengths for one and twenty people here."
"It's no trouble," Sansa insisted, pausing by a clump of ironwoods on a tapestry. "House Mormont aided us when we were most helpless. The least we could do is offer you meat and mead when you are under our roof."
"I understand," Lady Mormont said at length. "These choices," she went on, before giving a minute shake of her head. "I stopped being a child that afternoon the maester interrupted my dancing lesson to tell me I am to be Lady of Bear Island."
"You are still a child, my lady," Sansa said. "We are children." Sansa thought of the wonder she felt for the hush of the godswood, the Starks' gods for 8,000 years; of the warmth and comfort brought to her by the proximity of Jon and Ghost, of the pleasure upon seeing her sewing take shape in her hands, of the yearning for Father and Mother.
"I stopped being a child when I realised the grievous mistakes of the adults I looked up to," Lady Mormont said. "When I started to think for myself about who to follow." She stopped then, because they were probably both thinking of how she had stood up in the Great Hall and declared Jon the King in the North. "You have seen horrors of this war that I would not know of, Your Highness."
Lady Mormont was such a tiny shadowy pale child, her head tilted up at Sansa as she said these cold truths. Sansa resisted the urge to take Lady Mormont into her arms, something she wished she did more to Bran and Rickon and Arya before everything went wrong.
"I understand," Sansa said. "Deeply understand. But don't kill the child, my lady. This wonder in life, and hope. Kindness and gentleness. Empathy. We – we need a little light during winter."
They looked at each other for a while, as the light from the window behind Sansa grew less grey. Then Lady Mormont nodded. "We do."
They started walking again. "I heard from Ser Davos that King Jon adores his new tunic by you, Your Highness," Lady Mormont began. Sansa listened to the compliments Jon had already told her, smiling at the memory of Jon bustling into her chambers with two mugs of hot cider and biscuits afterwards.
Sansa continued smiling as they went down the granite stairs, glancing every now and then at the figure Lady Mormont cut – little and solemn with her dark hair and black furs, the dash of blue and green handkerchief proudly clutched in a black-gloved hand.
fin