Their clearing sat alongside a wide creek and so along with the early dawn rose a low-lying fog. All noises are sharp in a fog, and seem close; when the Hound stood abruptly from their pallets and withdrew his sword from its sheath the bright hask brought her awake and upright, clutching her blanket to her chest.
In the mist was a small man digging through the ashes of their fire. He stood rigid at the sound of the sword, caught where he was, openmouthed. Her vision sharpened and she saw that it was only a raggy boy about her age, wearing a rucked pair of man's breeches tied up at the ankles, dirty hair, thin brown wrists still in the ash. The Hound dropped his point and leaned on it. He and the boy stared at each other a long moment, and Sansa watched as the boy's shoulders began to shake under his rags. A monster, he must think. Then the Hound waved slightly as if to call off a dog, and the boy burst and ran, skidding clumsy through the brush.
The Hound sat down beside her, yawning and scratching, but her heart was still in her throat.
"What was he doing in the fire?" The grey eyes turned to her, the whites all red with sleep. "I doubt he knows. Looking for anything he could find. Probably thought there'd be scraps left. More than not, he'd been watching us through the night."
She thought on this. Watching us. "Where are the rest of his people?"
"They're dead, most like. I told you what I saw in that hut. War brings the sickness out of the ground, people stir it up trying to flee. Or else the war itself took them. The next town may be better, we'll see." He stretched back out. "It's early; lie down."
She did, but her sleep was uneasy. The boy crowded her dreams and became Jon at home, digging through the ashes of their kitchen fire. She walked in to see him crying, looking at her, his digging hand all burnt, his face accusatory. Perhaps that was the reason why, after she woke and helped pack and they were leaving their clearing, she took a roll of bread from her bag and left it on the ground by the ashes for the boy. The Hound didn't notice and she was glad of it; it was childish, superstitious thing, if kind. Kind, too, were the morning birds; they waited patiently in the brush til the girl had ridden away, before descending in a mass on the ashy bread and tearing it amongst themselves.
They had ridden half the morning and the fog had not lifted. It was dense now and Sansa's hair netted in droplets; the air became close and the man behind her sighed and squinted at the sky. He nicked to the horse and it turned in an irritated wheel, started back down the ridge.
"What is it? What happened?" She looked up to then chin above her, saw it set.
"It's going to rain. Smell it." She did, then, the sweet heavy smell. "There was an overhang, back there. I don't want the mail getting wet; the Blackwater did enough to it. It's good mail." He brought the horse to a trot as the first drops started. By the time the mossed overhang came to view, their bags were damp and her hair a wet tangle. It was wild and laced with roots under the overhang, and she didn't care to look into its depths, but the plate of stone they sat on was dry. He spread the mail out and she spread out her hair and they watched the sheets of rain flow down the ridge. The horse stood under a tree and snorted incessantly in its rage, and for a while all there was for them was the rain.
The Hound broke from his reverie and went muttering through a wet bag, pulled out a ball of thin rope, dropped it to her lap. "You'll need a net, and you'll make it. You've made lace in your little cage before. Now, I'll have you make lace." He laughed at his own joke and nudged her; she unrolled a length of the rope and looked at him, questioning. "Here." She dropped the length in his hand and he picked at it, began tying the knot, to show her. She leaned close to watch. His hands were covered in so many shallow scars they seemed fishscaled in the grey light.
"Here. Like this. Bend this, and then around this part. Now like so... And pull. That's all. Now you do it." He unwound it just as quick and held it out to her. As he did, a flea crawled from the notch of his shirt and made the small jump to her collarbone. He eyed the flea, licked the broad pad of his thumb and leaned in, pressed it to her; her twitch of disgust only made him cough a laugh. When he pulled his thumb back the flea came with. He rolled it to a smear, laughing raspy, his good eye crinkling and the scar under his bad eye pleating somewhat. She opened her mouth for complaint, but he held up his hand. "Ah, don't start; you'll cry to your mother soon enough about your dog's fleas. I don't want to hear it now." She found herself laughing; she made her clumsy net and watched the rain and tried to comb out her hair with her fingers, and the man put his arm over his eyes and slept. After some time the rain lifted and they began again.
The wood was wet and glittering. They made their way back up the ridge picking slow through the mud, and Sansa, cold in her damp dress, leaned against the man. She thought of the raggy boy again and shivered. How sad, to dig through ashes for your dinner; how sad to lose all of your people. She thought of Jon in the ash of her dream and wondered if her half-brother had heard of the death of the man who was his link to the Starks. The death was a grievous wrong, an imbalance in the world; she felt her anger inside her and wondered then how much of it she could hold. Her thoughts were brought up sharp by the pinch at her side and the Hound leaning to mutter look, girl, soft in her ear. She followed his point with her eyes and saw riders only twenty paces to their side, half-hidden by brush, picking through the wet wood just the same.
It was a woman and an old man, each astride an overpacked horse, both faces filthy, stony. She looked at the woman, looked as well as she could into her eyes, wondered what the Hound had meant, and then she saw. The woman– wan, thin; greyish pallor set off by her grey dress. Grey dress which was also Sansa's, which had been spattered in blood and still bore faint stains; grey dress which she had thrown away into the brush the night the stranger had come for her. Grey dress, grey dress– pretty grey dress that the thin woman had found when she went looking through the wood for him, for the man that had never come home in the morning. Sansa's eyes burned with horror and with pity.
Maturity is a callous thing. It drops itself into laps, laughing, careless of the mess; takes the child away, and leaves a changeling.