ARYA
This was no test, she'd finally concluded. It was an impossibility. From what she'd been able to gather, somehow she had awoken in the past, and if she hadn't received that nasty blow to the head that would likely leave a bruise at the very least-she might have then thought it were but a dream. But no, it was instead a reality, and she was no longer No One, but Arya. And for the first time in a long time she felt a complete euphoria at having the luxury of once again allowing her to be herself.
But even as she slowly came to accept the truth of this, a million other things came pouring out, far too fast for her to grasp all at once. Sansa had probably been tortured, they all were skinchangers, Bran had gone wild, the horn had sounded... it was all just happening too fast. At first she'd wanted to go with her father to see what had caused the horn to be blown, but a glance down at her terrified baby brother, convinced her otherwise to stay, if only for his sake. Sansa meanwhile had taken it upon herself to persuade their mother that Bran had changed skins with a wolf. Her other little brother-or the wolf inhabiting him she guessed, skinchanging didn't work that way, did it?-meanwhile had taken to pawing at the door after her father had left.
"You have to believe me, mother!" implored Sansa for what felt like the hundreth time.
"It's a curse!" denied their mother with a shake of her head.
"There's no such things as curses!" insisted Sansa
"Tempt not the gods, child!" snapped mother, with a mix of fury and fear that Arya had never seen in her before.
"She's telling the truth, mother" Arya finally added, tired of the stalemate that the two had come to.
Both Sansa and her mother turned to look at her. Sansa with relief, and her mother with a kind of tired anguish, "Not you too, Arya!"
Arya felt like only the truth would settle the matter and end the ceaseless argument. "I'm a skinchanger too. I had a cat once."
Both Sansa and her mother looked at her with various looks of shock.
"Bran said it's part of being a Stark, mother. Maybe if father found an animal he might-" added Sansa
"Jape not about something like that! How can something that does that to my son be… be…" said their mother as she indicated towards a confused Bran who had stopped pawing at the door but instead had curled up and watched them with worried eyes. She didn't have to finish the sentence for her meaning to be understood.
Just then a second horn blast was heard in the distance along with a lot of commotion. Sansa was immediately at the window.
"It's Robb, and there's Jon and… a wolf!"
"Shaggy!" squealed Rickon, who had left her side and joined their sister at the window.