#got s1e2

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Arya tore into the rabbit she’d just pulled off the fire; the last two days her and Nymeria’s hunts had turned up almost nothing, and she was ravenous.  She was so focused on her food she didn’t notice the shapes creeping up on her camp until it was too late.

Her eyesight, dimmed by the fire, could just make out one, two, three… six of them, creeping foreword, towards her and Nymeria.

It took her a moment to recognize the figures in front of her: wolves.  An entire pack of them, from the looks of it.  Arya hadn’t ever seen any wolves besides Nymeria; the ones in front of her looked unusually small, until she remembers that Nymeria was a direwolf.  She was already a good six inches taller than the ones padding towards them.

Arya inched her hand slowly towards her bow, not sure how the wolves would react to the sudden movement. It didn’t seem to faze them at all, though; they were almost within spitting distance at this point, and their eyes were darting between her and Nymeria, who still lay on the ground next to her.

“Nymeria,” she whispered out of the corner of her mouth, her voice cracking from disuse.  She let out a huff that Arya almost labeled a sigh before pushing to her feet, a low growl creeping from her chest.  Arya could almost feel it through the ground.

The wolves halted in their tracks, their eyes all on Nymeria now.  One of the wolves tensed, its lips peeling back from its teeth in a snarl, but Nymeria simply growled louder and it stopped, its ears pushing back against its skull.  The other wolves hung their heads and rolled them to the side, baring their necks.

The challenger (because Arya could recognize that snarl for what it was; she’d had surprisingly similar conversations with her mother) crept foreword until it was right next to Nymeria, who was still growling, and licked her muzzle.  Suddenly her growling stopped, and the resulting silence was jarring.

The rest of the pack of wolves moved forward and Nymeria padded among them, nuzzling their flanks while they circled around her, until one by one all of them sunk to the ground. Nymeria laid down next to them, seemingly content, and then turned to stare at Arya expectantly.

Arya stared back uncertainly, not sure what she was supposed to do now, or even what had just happened. Nymeria kept staring at her for a few moments before tilting her head at the open space to the left of her. Did…was she supposed to go lie down with them?

Just as slowly as she had picked it up, Arya set her bow down, and walked slowly over towards the pile of wolves whom Nymeria had just accepted for reasons Arya couldn’t wrap her head around.  As she settled down next to Nymeria like she did every night, some of the other wolves flicked their ears towards her in acknowledgement but otherwise did nothing.

Arya’s eyes slowly slipped shut from the warmth emanating from Nymeria and the other wolves, rabbit forgotten; her last coherent thought was that it felt oddly nice, having a pack again, even if it wasn’t really hers.

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Arya woke up the following morning thinking it had all been a dream, and was surprised to find herself in the middle of the pack that had crept up on them last night.

She was even more surprised when it kept happening.

Every few nights a new group of wolves would appear, go through the same motions as the first, and then settle with them.  Soon it seemed as though dozens of wolves were following her and Nymeria through the woods as they hunted for food, and for a new campsite.

There were so many of them that they didn’t even all stay with them; some of the wolves simply prowled around their sites, sleeping in groups almost a third of a league away.  But when they started moving again, the entre pack moved with them.  

Whenever Arya hunted alone through the woods, Nymeria having run off to follow a different scent, she would catch glimpses of them moving through the trees around her.  Sometimes, they would drive prey her way, so she could hit it with one of her arrows and bring it down.  They even left some of it for her, so she could haul it back to the fire and cook it.

Her aim had gotten much better, over the weeks since the other wolves had started finding her and Nymeria.  She could hit a rabbit at nearly fifty paces now, while it was running.  The bigger animals, like deer, were harder to find but easier to hit.  She started to pick up tracking as well, recognizing the paw prints of all the different animals and the signs of their movements through the brush.  

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It took a while to get used to the howling.  The wolves that were furthest away would start it, and then the calls would echo closer and closer until Nymeria herself started howling.  It would go on for almost an hour, sometimes.

They called out about fresh kills, too, and if they got lost.  At least, Arya thought it was when they got lost; a lone wolf would call out and the rest of them would answer, and then the lone wolf got closer and closer until they burst through the trees and the others came up to surround them.

Sometimes Arya wanted to howl with them.  Come find me, I’m right here!she wanted to call out.  But she knew that her family wasn’t coming for her.  They would never find her here.  So she stayed silent, and listened to the wolves around her.

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The only wolf Arya could really recognize was the one from the first pack that had joined them, the one that had challenged Nymeria.  

His fur was a russet color, almost like Robb’s hair had been, with streaks of black along its spine and shoulders.  His eyes were an unsettling shade of yellow, so bright they seemed to glow in the dark.

Nymeria seemed to like him, at least.  They laid down, their flanks pressed together, silently watching the comings and goings of the rest of the pack, and Arya wondered if maybe he was Nymeria’s mate.

One night, she sat next to them as she finished off the second little squirrel she’d caught earlier, and talked with them.  Arya would say at them, because obviously they didn’t talk back, but something about the way they glanced at her made her feel like they were really listening.

“You know, you should probably have a name.  You’re always sitting around here, and I can’t really just keep referring to you as ‘that one wolf that sort of looks like Robb’, even if its only in my head.” Arya dropped the bones next to her and started to lick her fingers clean, looking at the wolf thoughtfully all the while.

“Ooh, I could just call you Robb,” she said, but as soon as the words left her mouth she dismissed them. It sent a pang of sadness through her every time she said one of her brothers’ names.  

“Aegon, maybe?  I mean, Nymeria was a queen who conquered Dorne, maybe you should be a conqueror, too.”  The name had merit, but it didn’t quite fit in Arya’s mind.

She thought back to the night he had first appeared and another idea struck her.  “I know; Torrhen!  The king who knelt.  It’s a northern name, which fits better ‘cause you’re a wolf, and you sort of knelt to Nymeria when you first met her.”