Chapter 8
The North had in all its history never really cared about what the rest of the world was up to, and in a weird and for outsiders confusing way that even included the North itself from time to time. It wouldn't have been an exaggeration to say that only the Houses Stark and Manderly truly cared about both the North and the realm at large from what Osric had learned from his father. House Manderly because they came from the south and were indebted to Winterfell like no one else in all of Westeros, and House Stark because they were oath bound to the Iron Throne while the North was just an extension of House Stark itself.
Yet this status quo changed rapidly as the great Houses of the North learned from their maesters that the little heir to Winterfell had apparently received both knowledge and a gift from the famously withdrawn children of the forest. Which was only amplified by the fact that the notion that anything from beyond the Wall deserved attention remained carved into the soul of every Northerner, even if both lords and commoners normally cared little about anything beyond their own lands, oaths, and families. Though with the knowledge having been gained from the weirwood of Winterfell, the usually isolationist lords of the North took the notion of another war in the south more seriously than ever before.
And with every day that passed it became clearer to House Stark that the sleeping giant that was the North wasn't going to be caught off guard again, which Lord Eddard, Osric's father, and the Warden of the North, was more than a bit troubled by. For while vigilance had always been a virtue in Winterfell and the North, and would have normally been treated as such by House Stark, the fact remained that the conflict was everything considered still a minor one.
One could have even said that the hosts of the North weren't actually needed by King Robert as long as the Ironborn really tried their luck on their own, yet the North wasn't a place that brought forth the kind of men that did things halfheartedly. And this for the moment less than ideal characteristic of House Stark's vassals had only been amplified further by the situation's sheer abnormality, much to Lord Eddard's chagrin. The children of the forest had after all happily remained secluded no matter what happened south of the Wall, so much so that even House Stark needed to send its members north of the Wall if it wished for more than a raven or two per century.
That the children of the forest had actually initiated a proper exchange of both words and gifts on their own was so abnormal that it had shocked just about anyone that had heard of it, from Winterfell's bannermen to Lord Eddard himself. And while the children themselves weren't connected to the gods, the fact that they interfered with the south at all, and that to partially warn House Stark of a coming war, was seen by more than a few as a sign from the gods themselves.
And so as the weeks passed by, both the armouries and treasuries of the North's holds were emptied for the war effort as the lords of the North did their utmost to ensure that their contribution wasn't going to be judged lacking by the gods. So much so that it wouldn't have been wrong to say that the usually proud and lonesome wolves of the North, in their own quaint ways, actually competed with one another. And that for the normally quite silly privilege of joining the troops of House Stark once they were called south to King Robert's side once more, all while the creator of the North's chaos, the little heir to Winterfell, taught his dryad how to make him happy.
For Osric had swiftly learned that even his best efforts weren't enough for his mother, as he couldn't truly guarantee her that Nimis would remain docile, even if he managed to hold himself together. And much to Osric's disappointment, his father had swiftly agreed with her as there was still a decent chance that Nimis would even if he remained in control of his wolfblood naturally remove everything she perceived as a threat to him. It was after all the world, as far as the history books were concerned, that had created the first Dryads to protect its once continent spanning forests, and so it stood to reason that the children of the forest had simply learned how to summon and create them.
Or in other words, it was everything considered still the nature of dryads, bound or otherwise, to protect their trees at any cost, and since these trees were normally quite unconcerned with the world at large, a certain agency on the part of the dryads was only natural. And so Osric and his father had, after the lords of the North were ordered to marshal a contingent of their troops for the coming war, successfully put their heads together till they reached what both considered a workable solution.
If it simply wasn't possible to guarantee that the two and a half meter tall armoured dryad would obey Osric's will then the best next thing, the both of them agreed on, besides taking care of her, was to simply reshape Nimises reactions to different threats. And thus Osric happily taught Nimis, for he wasn't sure how long, how to properly protect him from other humans the most effective way he knew that would still work when actually needed, which after he thought about it was the simple hugging of the enemy.
Though just as every thinking being in the world would have expected, Nimis was, despite her age and the natural lack of knowledge, less than convinced by Osric's notion that hugging the enemy was the correct course of action to protect her precious tree. Not that Osric was going to be stopped by something as silly as common sense, even if her continued refusal had admittedly caused him a great deal of annoyance, just as the lords of the North annoyed his father with their sudden madness. But Osric being Osric, unable to do anything that might be seen as aggression by her, one day simply decided to show her the folly of her ways by hugging the giant dryad a little more seriously.