When Arya first opened her eyes, it was to frosty grass. The log where she had slept under was also quite icy, symbolizing the beginning of winter. And Arya was glad that she had gotten what meat she could have, otherwise she would have had to barter with Sloan and buy whatever meat she could with the limited money she had.
Stretching like a cat, her joints popping from sleeping on the hard ground, Arya leaned up and gained her bearings. And after she had packed up her bedroll, putting it with her sled, she began the trek home again.
Hour's pass and Arya had finally begun to see the outskirts of her town from the game trail she was on.
Carvanhall wasn't a particularly big town. It had a blacksmith and a butcher shop, but most of the villagers, few there were, stayed in the town itself. A few families, Arya's included, lived on the outskirts of the town, away from the other families. Arya was both grateful for this, mainly because that meant she wasn't the laughingstock of everyday life in Carvanhall, just when she was there, but she also wished she had grown up in the heart of the town, in hopes that someone would see her for who she was. The only people she really talked to in the town were Brom, Katrina who was Roran's girlfriend, and Gertrude, but the latter was only to escape her uncle's ire, and the town healer let Arya help occasionally with her duties. But everyone else shunned her, ad Arya was fine with that.
Hiking down from the trail and into the valley, Arya made for her house, which from the game trail, was a few leagues west. Hopefully, her Uncle would be pleased with her success. Arya thought to herself. That was one of the few times where he wasn't ridiculing her. Garrow was a farmer and grew cabbage and a few other types of vegetables and meat was practically a delicacy for them, and Arya could tell that he enjoyed the deer meat compared to the vegetables he was constantly eating.
Arya had always wondered why Garrow had moved outside of the village and into the fringes of the town. She had known, from Roran, that he had indeed owned a house in the center of town when her Aunt Marian was alive. But apparently, after her death, which Arya could scarcely remember, he moved away. Her Aunt was a wonderful woman and she had always loved Arya as if she were her own daughter, and apparently, Garrow had too, until she started showing interest in hunting and adventure.
Her Aunt had died from a sickness that had struck Carvanhall when she was very young, and ever since then, her uncle was set on making her the perfect little housewife.
After an hour or so of walking, pulling her sled behind her, Arya could finally make out the silhouette of her house in the distance, partially covered by the morning fog. She could also make out her uncle's form, bent over pulling some sort of plant out of the ground and into a basket that laid near his feet.
Sucking in a breath, Arya continued to trek on, until her uncle stood up, and doing so, saw her. He paused, made a grimace, and then bent over again, continuing to pull plants out of the ground, collecting them and putting them into a basket.
"Hello Uncle". Arya said quietly, stopping a few feet from him and looking at her feet, to avoid his repugnant gaze. He didn't respond, continuing to collect his crop, and didn't acknowledge her presence.
"Did you get any meat, Niece?" Garrow had a deep, gravelly voice that would always smooth out when he was ridiculing her or yelling at her, and she never understood that. He didn't bother looking up, knowing she had stayed where she had stopped, and he knew she wouldn't leave until he dismissed her.
"Yes, Uncle. A deer and a few other smaller animals." She muttered, trying to make herself tiny in the case of him reprimanding her. He was awfully good at that. She thought bitterly to herself. He stopped with cabbage in his hand, looked up at her, then to her sled, nodded slightly, and waved his hand. Arya let out a breath she didn't know she was holding and practically ran away from her uncle's cold, russet eyes. She hated those eyes. Hated how soft and warm they looked when he talked of Roran, or his wife, or his dead sister, Arya's mother.
Having to pull the sled up the steps to the house, Arya put the pack on her back and lifted the sled onto the porch, and went into the house.
Their house wasn't particularly big and was only one story with an attic, as well as a cellar. The cellar held the meat as well as most of their other food supplies, and the attic held some items, some trunks filled with cheap trinkets of the past, as well as some letters of her mothers. Arya's room was across the hall from Roran's and was on the opposite side of the house from Garrow's. It had a tiny twin-sized bed, a dresser that was in the corner of the room, and a window. A few shelves held whatever sentimental items she had, which weren't much. A rock that Roran had got her, a few books, not much.
Sliding the sled underneath her bed, Arya unloaded the contents of her pack onto her bed, having already done so with her meat into the cellar, salting most of it to keep it fresh, and started organizing her room. Leaning her bow and quiver into the corner opposite of the dresser and putting her bedroll onto the top of her dresser, Arya tossed her pack onto the end of her bed, undressed, redressed into a simple pair of trousers and a light blue shirt, she left her room, with the emerald gem sitting on her bed.
Hearing a door click, Arya turned into the hall only to find the shaggy brown hair of her cousin, Roran. "Greetings short stack." Her cousin said affectionately. "How was your hunt? Did you get any game? Go on any adventures?" Arya jumped sightly, cursing under her breath for her cousin and his brazenness, and setting to glare at him, she struck his shoulder. "Roran! You can't just scare the living daylights out of me like that!" Arya, despite her height, could be quite intimidating, and Roran raised his hands in mock surrender.
"Little Cousin, I beg for your forgiveness and how can I ever repay you?" Finishing it with a mocking bow, Roran had a broad grin on his face and Arya's face lit up. "Do my chores forever?" Arya chirped, rocking on her heels, and grinning like a fool. Roran let out a chuckle, stood back up, and ruffled Arya's hair.
"In your dreams, Arya." Roran, who had similar clothes as well as his cloak on, walked along with Arya down towards the kitchen. Grabbing a peach and some dried jerky, Arya sat down and Roran sat opposite of her, waiting for him to eat before telling him about her adventures.
"So, how went your hunt?" Roran had his head propped up with his hand, idly playing with the end of his cloak in his other. Arya finished the remains of her snack and propped her feet up on the arm of the chair next to her. "It took a couple of days, but I got a decent-sized doe, and a couple of other smaller animals, but otherwise it was ok. I didn't venture that far in this time around; with the frost and impending winter, I didn't want to get too far away from home. But the strangest thing happened, I found a-" Arya immediately stopped herself from mentioning the stone she had found in the forest and the strange circumstances around it. While Arya didn't think that Roran would claim he found the stone, taking the spoils for himself, she knew that her Uncle would either label her a thief or claim Roran had found it, and she was just being envious. And while Arya knew her Uncle would never accept her for who she was, she couldn't help a small part of her from wanting acceptance from some parental figure in her life. She had Brom, but he was just the town storyteller and Roran was all but her brother in blood, so she didn't have a permanent source of anything maternal in her life. And the young girl in Arya craved that more than anything.
Roran, oblivious to her obvious interruption of her description of her trip, nodded leaning back in his seat. "Good. Nothing has happened much since you left. Father has been Father, as usual, and I got to visit Katrina" At this Arya grinned madly and went to tease him about Roran's love life but he continued "Sloan was being an ass, and I tried to get some meat with the coin we had from me working for Horst, in the event of you not getting enough meat for winter, but the coast was too much, and we had to spend quite a bit to replace the windows in the kitchen, as well as replace a hoe that had broke a couple of days ago."
Arya scowled at the mention of her Uncle and Sloan's behavior but was still in a giddy mood after his mention of Katrina. Katrina, who Roran was courting, was the daughter of Sloan, the only butcher in the town, and they couldn't have been more different. The butcher was a cold man, only showing any sort of positive emotion when talking about his daughter, and hated Arya for several reasons. For one, Arya went against his views of what a woman should do, hated her for being family to Roran who was wooing his only child and hated her for hunting in The Spine. Sloan hated The Spine, due to the superstition surrounding it, and also because his wife had died mysteriously by a set of waterfalls near the entrance to the woods.
Arya and Roran continued talking into the evening, waiting until dusk to start making dinner, and everything was doing fine until Garrow came in.
Immediately after her Uncle's entrance, Arya made for the cellar, grabbing a couple of slices of meat, as well some ingredients for a soup she knew he would like. When she came back up from the cellar, Roran had also gone quiet, looking at his feet while his father sat at the head of the table. Stealing a glance at her Uncle's form, she made way for the kitchen and made dinner.
Dinner that night was a quiet affair, the family of three eating in silence as the two young adults had already spoken about her trip, and Arya's Uncle didn't care to learn about what happened on her trip. But she knew the pleasantness wouldn't last.
"Niece, with Sixteenth birthday, Elian and some of the other ladies from the town is coming to collect you to find some potential suitors that are coming from Therinsford." Not even looking up from his soup. Roran looked nervously from his Father back to his Cousin, knowing how adamant Arya was against being a conventional girl. Arya herself looked ready to burst with heavy emotion, her face as red as the tomato soup she had made. She dropped her spoon, some of the soup splashing onto her lap and the table and violently pushing her chair back from the table, standing up and making way to her room.
Garrow frowned and stood up from his chair surprisingly fast and grabbed Arya's upper arm. Twisting her to face him.
"Going somewhere, Niece?" Garrow spoke clearly, contrasting against his normal gravely voice, with a smooth, icy cold voice that was reserved only for these types of conversations. Roran, who had made to get up and defend his cousin, sat back down after seeing the look Arya gave him.
"My room, Uncle." She stressed the word Uncle and made to shrug her shoulder out of his grip, but his hold remained strong. In fact, his iron-tight grip only seemed to increase in its strength and Arya let out a small whimper.
"Do you hate that fact, Niece?" Garrow returned the stressing of their relationship "That you have are a female, not some boy? That you will be destined to sitting on a porch, watching your children meander around while you sew some cloth for your husband. Not your silly fantasy of what, some warrior girl?" At this Garrow let out a low, menacing chuckle "I bet it infuriates you, doesn't it? That you are a measly little, pathetic, worthless girl." With that, Garrow dragged her back to the table, forcefully shoving her back into the chair, and shoved his bowl of soup and plate in front of her, and went outside.
Wiping a stray tear that leaked out due to her now throbbing arm, she stood up and grabbed her dishes, taking them outside to clean them. She grabbed the stool that was leaned up against the side of her house and began the tedious task of cleaning the dishes.
Arya sank into her feather mattress, thanking that something was to support her aching body after a hard day's work. Garrow had made her do other monotonous tasks, that he most likely had purposefully left for her to do. After her spine cracked, the joint stiff from bending over and checking the nails on the fence surrounding their livestock and barn she went to lay on her right side, and noticed the stone, gleaming in the moonlight that was peeking through her window, and grabbed it, setting it down into her lap once more. The emerald gem, which still had that same white webbing surrounding the emerald blotches on the stone, was, upon further investigation, hollow.
"How in the world…" Arya muttered to herself, flipping the stone around, looking for any sort of mark left from a seal. When she found none, she slumped back, her brows furrowing together.
A stone of this quality and craft, also hollow, would take incredible craftsmanship, and she knew that no one even remotely around Carvanhall would have the skill to make this stone, or even attempt to, and that brought up its circumstances even more. But a stone was a stone and considering she didn't have to do anything to get it, it was a great find, and it would definitely sell for a lot of coins. But the merchants were far out, and with winter coming in a couple of weeks, they weren't going to be there for a while. Shrugging to herself, she put the stone back onto the edge of her bed and rolled over.
But in her sluggish state, she didn't hear the slight cracking that came from the gem.