The wolfwood was often a place of quiet serenity even outside of the Godswood clearing frequented by Winterfell's ruling lord. The balance of nature within it was beautifully untamed, the lush evergreen colors a sharp contrast to the snow and frost that usually decorated the limbs and undergrowth when the summers ended. It had proven so lulling that come sun or snow, it often tricked those who hadn't traversed its undergrowth before into acquiring a false sense of security.
But with the King Robert Baratheon and his royal family arriving upon the morrow, it was now the only place in all Winterfell or Wintertown that was not abuzz with preparation. Or the appearance of it in any case. Thus it proved the perfect place for Arya to receive some last bits of instruction from her cousin Jon Snow before she was expected to confine herself, both physically and metaphorically, to the role of a 'proper lady' once more.
It still gave Arya pause to refer to Jon by a title other than brother. For so long he had been her brother: the one closest to her in heart and in mind even if he generally kept it behind a reserved expression she tended to call his 'Stark face.' She knew better than to call it that in front of her lady mother of course, since she'd gotten upset the only time Arya had explained that Jon's neutral expression made him look like a smaller version of their lord father.
Her mother had always seemed to have such a sore spot where Jon was concerned.
Which of course had come to a rather abrupt head the night Jon had returned and she had managed to first call snow to her hand.
Arya had been amazed when the scant water in the air of her father's study responded as though it had been waiting for her: a loyal hound simply needing to hear its master's call to come as needed. She couldn't take her eyes away as the snow started to solidify and crackle: signifying that it was freezing further into a small pile of ice on her hand. Even as it did so, she felt no cold. No change in the temperature of her hand. Just liquid becoming slush becoming feathery soft crystal becoming hardened solid.
Her mother had been rather horrified that this power Jon had awoken inside her was only going to get stronger with time. Whereas father had seemed more resigned than anything else and Maester Luwin…well, for all his lacking hair and stooped posture made him seem a man over a hundred years old sometimes, in that instant he seemed more like Sansa when she thought she was going to get the first lemon cakes fresh from the oven: giddy yet restrained with a supreme amount of self-controlled effort.
His enthusiasm hadn't dimmed even as Jon admitted later when he was observing during one of their sessions that Maester Luwin would likely never be able to replicate the things they could do with the mystic arts. He had only responded that regardless of ability, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to study magic firsthand. He was thus perfectly happy to learn alongside her as Jon began to try and teach her to harness her own power using the lessons he had been given across the Narrow Sea.
Though thanks to Jon meeting her in their shared dreams as well as during the waking hours, Arya was practically never without instruction or insight into the mystical world. Even as Maester Luwin expressed surprise at her seeming rapid progress in Jon's instruction she knew it was only thanks to Jon being so dedicated to her training that he was literally continuing to do so while they slept in addition to any time in the daylight they could get away with.
Hence why she was now by the side of the running brook within the trees with a black blindfold covering her eyes and her fingertips practically tingling as the orange-yellow heat of Jon's body made its way silently through the trees toward her.
She knew he too would have a blindfold across his eyes. It wasn't so much the sense of fair play ingrained by their lord father that had him doing this when he taught her anything mystical or physical. It was more so his belief that if she was to experience a handicap in order to learn a lesson then he too would experience the handicap alongside her; mostly so that she had no room for complaint if he managed to outwit or outfight her.
The wet ground and the chilled undergrowth brushed her bare ankles as her feet briefly gripped the ground before relaxing again, her breathing barely audible in the quiet but loud as Nymeria's growling to her own ears.
Through the heat of their bodies, she could see that Ghost, Nymeria and Frost were further away: apparently hunting for food. Well, Nymeria and Ghost were probably hunting while Frost was more likely there just to keep an eye on them and make sure nothing happened. Despite the fact that the direwolves were getting to be almost as big as her now, Arya knew that they were still pups and so still had to be educated by their mother in what it was to survive the world as a direwolf.
Her musing was interrupted by Jon picking up speed as he came closer and closer to her through the trees, his form barely missing the trunks while his feet danced through the undergrowth with only some rustling to give him away. Arya was ready, drawing the cold to her fingertips as she contemplated for a moment whether the variation of her powers she'd been working on would surprise Jon.
She saw his right hand flash forward toward her head, claw shape firmly established. Arya's own left hand rose to meet his wrist, claw shape allowing her to grasp in a flash. Jon flexed his hand so that his claw gripped the top of her own wrist, his body dipping low as if to tackle her. Arya didn't know what he intended to do, but she knew she shouldn't let him do it.
Keeping the grip she had on his right wrist, she brought her own right claw forward. His left hand was in a fist shape as he brought it in front of his body, allowing her to grasp the wrist of his hand instead of his tunic. He pushed his right arm forward to restrict the use of her left arm while simultaneously pulling his right hand back like a cracking whip.
Arya dug her fingers into his arm, feeling a bit of wetness that told her it had drawn blood. Jon would likely be pleased considering how much time he had spent having her strike the tree trucks with the claw shape until her finger tips bled in order to toughen them up.
All she'd thought when she'd first been learning what she and Jon agreed to call the 'Wolf's Fang Technique' was that it was a good thing her affinity with ice allowed her to heal the torn fingernails and bloody fingers. Otherwise Septa Mordane would've demanded a stop to it at once regardless of what father or Maester Luwin told her.
Her left knee came up to strike at his ribs before he pulled back abruptly, yanking both his arms toward himself. Off her left knee and her hands occupied, Arya was caught off guard when Jon's right knee folded her in half over it before he pulled her arms down and back, flipping her onto her back on the soft ground.
The quick succession of attacks before being abruptly brought onto her back drove the breath from Arya's lungs and loosened her grip off Jon so that he could pull his arms free. Arya brought her right hand to his bare ankle, thinking to perhaps use it as leverage to bring her left hand into his knee. But before she could pull herself up, Jon's right foot impacted her side, flipping her through the air several times before she landed across from him on the other side of the brook.
Panting heavily, Arya knew now wasn't the time to hold back. If she wanted a hope of winning she'd have to surprise Jon sooner rather than later. As Jon ran to the edge of the brook, Arya quickly brought her right hand into the water, concentrating with all her might as the water flowed through finger tips before she expelled the magic into it, feeling as it flowed. Time seemed to slow down as her magic flowed in that practiced path she'd managed to figure out in the little time she'd had alone from everyone and Jon was in the Wolfwood to do gods only knows what with Frost and Ghost.
As Jon's feet left the ground and he jumped toward Arya, she felt the finished edge of the blade in her hand. At this distance, she couldn't miss. She rolled onto her back, throwing the crude blade of ice she'd formed at Jon as she did so.
Jon cried out in surprise and some pain as she got to her back before tucking her knees into her chest and rolling herself backward to rest on her hands and knees. Just in time to see Jon land clumsily on the ground, not so much rolling as tumbling forward. Arya was on her feet as he came to a stop, right hand clutching the back of the blade of pure ice that had sunk into his chest just beneath his right shoulder.
She made a flying tackle at Jon's midsection now that he was on his knees and therefore lower to the ground than before. But Arya had underestimated his attention to their fight. As her outstretched claws came closer to him, he collapsed toward his right side, left hand flashing out to grab her by her flowing hair. Even as her arms passed him by, he slammed her face down into the dirt before a wet squelching noise was heard and the bloodstained blade of ice that had been in his shoulder ripped a hole in the fabric of her blindfold across her nose.
She knew what that meant: if he'd wanted to, he could've ended it by jamming the impromptu dagger into her skull via her ear, her eye or even her jaw. That meant he'd struck the killing blow and therefore won their bout.
Panting heavily as he got off her, Jon moved away as his hand went up to his face, presumably to remove the sight obstruction. Arya too slowly got up, the ache in her muscles rushing to tell her how much she had been exerting herself even in this short bout of theirs. As she brought her blindfold off, she saw Jon looking at the blade of ice in his head with a great deal of fascination.
"Arya," He said softly, turning his grey eyes to hers. "When did you learn to do this?"
"I only worked it out in the last few days." She admitted, a bit ashamed at how she had still managed to lose against Jon despite having been sure her trick would turn the tide. She opened her mouth to ask if Jon was going to be ok, but before she could do so his right hand ignited with a small flame as he brought it absently to his right shoulder, left hand still holding the very crude ice dagger. Well, more ice blade since Arya hadn't had the time to properly make a handle for the thing, opting instead to use it like a double bladed knife she could throw.
Even as his skin knit back together, Jon let a small but genuine smile come to his face.
"That was very good Arya." He admitted. "Had you not made the same mistake about taking to the air that I did, you might well have been able to end the fight in your favor."
Arya perked up at that.
"That said," He continued, several shades of sternness entering his expression and his tone. "I hope that you realize I was perfectly within my rights to blast you with fire after that stunt."
Arya nodded, nibbling her lip in frustration.
"But I suppose the thing to do now is to have you practice using daggers for throwing and for you to promise me that you will not bring your powers into our fights again." He said.
Arya nodded again, bringing her eyes to meet his.
Correctly interpreting the unspoken question in her gaze, Jon told her what she could do to make up for throwing the dagger at him.
"In the meantime, I believe your lady mother will be simply joyous to find that you're being released from training early to prepare for the royal party's arrival on the morrow."
Arya's felt her face morph into an expression of genuine horror at Jon's idea of punishment. The laughter that escaped him at her predicament did not help in the least.
"Unless you'd like to explain to Lord Stark why you thought it was a good idea to throw a dagger at me in the middle of training?" He offered facetiously.
She didn't bother offering a rebuttal, instead choosing to hurry through the wolfwood back to Winterfell.
"Nymeria, come!" She called, seeing two protrusions on the top of Nymeria's head twitch through her view of heat before her loyal companion went back to hunting alongside Ghost and Frost. Arya let out an involuntary growl as her right eye twitched briefly.
'Don't say it don't say it don't say it don't say it' Her mind chanted to itself before Jon called to her retreating form.
"Seems hard to tell the difference between you two in these moments." He said in a tone of perfect innocence.
'Damn it!' She thought, speeding up further as her frustration with the apt but irritating comparison flared her power briefly.
She had tried to sneak back into Winterfell without anyone being the wiser, only to run into her lord father who took one look at her dirt encrusted feet and dirty training clothes before frog marching her to mother against all her pleading and protesting. Jon was right in his prediction that mother was overjoyed to have her back so soon in order to make her prepare for the royal party. Which of course didn't help any when she and Sansa had seemingly decided to team up against Arya so that they could drill her again and again about the proper greeting formalities and seating arrangements for the feast that was to be held for the royal family when they came here.
The next day when she tried to weasel her way out of getting into the uncomfortable dress and putting her hair up in a ridiculous style her lady mother claimed was fashionable in the southron kingdoms, she'd had less success than Bran had in coming up with a name for his direwolf companion. (She sometimes wondered if it was reflective of Bran himself: being so caught up in making a decision that was "just so" that he got in his own way of resolving it.)
She was washed and scrubbed until her skin was pink before being forced into the dress as well as that stupid hairdo and interrogated by Sansa and her mother repeatedly on what she was expected to do when the royal party arrived. It got to the point that she started repeating the questions and her own answers back to them before they could say anything. But thankfully, that also came shortly before the grand horn blowing that announced the first members of the King's train of followers arriving.
As they all came to assemble in the courtyard, there were only a few riders bearing the royal banner of a black crowned stag and a yellow lion meeting together upon a field of red. She knew that it was meant as a symbol of the union between the houses of their father's friend the King and his queen's house. That they'd needed to replace the three headed dragon of House Targaryen with something to represent a new era or so Maester Luwin and Septa Mordane had liked to claim. Though why that meant the queen's family was equally deserving of the royal sigil as the king who had fought the war through to the end simply for marrying him Arya had never understood. To her understanding, none of the previous Targaryens (who had married outside their family anyway) who ruled had ever joined the seal of their house with any other who married into it.
She never did manage to get a straight answer out of any of them about why that was.
As the train started to trickle in and the trickle turned to a steady stream, Arya looked to each of their sigils. Many emblems both Lannister and royal, but none that she could see of exclusively stag.
With Sansa's heavy perfume on her left and Bran's fidgeting on her right Arya shut her eyes for a moment before taking a deep breath and looking through her 'fire sense' as Jon called it. (She herself was partial to 'heat vision' due to her mostly operating with the cold but to each their own.) Her gaze slowly went further upward, trying to find Jon's signature. Amidst the candles that everyone else's heat showed, Jon was a veritable torch. Finally she found his signature: standing still atop the Burned Tower near the Central Keep. She supposed that was only fitting considering his own power.
The royal family's carriage at last rolled into the courtyard, seemingly almost too big to fit through the front gate. As it came to a stop, Arya deactivated her heat vision in order to try and figure out which was the king and where the Kingsguard were.
The Kingsguard was fairly easy to find with his golden helmet and white cloak standing out amidst the clashing colors of red and black and grey. A black haired fat man with a great beard came to a stop before her family. As they all began to kneel before him and an attendant rushed forward, Arya realized whilst she automatically sunk into a bow with them that the fat man in the leathers and plain black furred cape was in fact the King himself. As he descended and walked to stand before her father, Arya couldn't help the thought that crossed her mind at the moment they were all rising to their feet again.
'I wonder if he could disguise his gut as a boulder by painting it grey.'
Unflattering to be certain, but the man was easily six and a half feet tall if he was an inch. In addition to which, his shoulders and tree trunk like legs would seem to speak to the fact that he'd once been a powerful man. But now? It was as though all that muscle was slowly being converted into fat so that if anyone were to try stabbing him they'd have to get through about four layers first. Not exactly the first thing she pictured fighting alongside him when Jon had talked to her about their father's sojourn to the Iron Islands to quell a rebellion when she had asked who Theon was and why he was here.
As they stood the king remarked to her lord father: "You got fat."
An interesting greeting to be certain. Her father's only response was a brief look up and down the King's body before looking him in the eye with a raised eyebrow.
As they began laughing like old friends, Arya couldn't help but wonder how close they were that even after not seeing each other for nine years they could still so effortlessly reconnect regardless of station and formality.
He worked his way down the line, greeting Robb than Sansa than Arya herself before moving on to Bran. He stopped briefly to get Bran to flex his arm for him, apparently admiring his developing muscles and claiming he knew Bran would be a solider one day.
Arya honestly would've been more incensed if she hadn't seen the king for herself.
"Take me to the crypt Ned. I'd like to pay my respects." He called to her father after finishing with Rickon.
"My love, we've been on the road a month." The queen answered, golden hair right at home amonst the golden lion emblems that seemed to surround her, her red traveling dress seeming brighter amidst the more subdued red of her Lannister guard's armor. "The dead can wait."
The king entirely ignored the queen as he began striding toward the crypts. Her father gave a brief apologetic look to the queen before following after his friend and king. Thus it was left to her lady mother to take the queen while she and Sansa were to make the princess Myrcella comfortable and her brothers were to look after Tommen's lodgings.
In all this commotion, she still hadn't managed to glimpse the Imp or the Kingslayer she'd heard so much about in the commotion surrounding the royal party's arrival. Overall a bit of an anti-climactic start to their stay as guests of her lord father. As she and Sansa escorted Princess Myrcella toward the castle and her sister eagerly spoke with the newly arrived royal personage Arya couldn't help but wish this stay would be over and done with already.
'Naught to do but grit my teeth and bare it.' She thought to herself as she walked behind the two chattering girls.
A/N: No excuse. Just life and general sickness getting the way of the creative flow. My thanks to all of you who favorited, followed and reviewed. As always you guys are the reason I'm still sweating and laboring over this stuff and sharing it. Be sure to let me know what you think of my continued efforts!