fearcutsdeeperthanswords | ❆ | 037

Entry tags:

❆ | 037 | Video

[When the video comes on, the focus is immediately on a toy. A bobblehead, to be precise. The figure is all in black, with a little beard and mustache. Arya puts the camera down and steps back so she's visible.]

I didn't wish for dolls. And I think this one's head is broken. Look.

[She pokes toy-Jon's head, setting it to wobbling. She lets it go for a few seconds before closing her hand over it carefully. She'll make fun of it, but she doesn't want it to break. Even if it doesn't look much like Jon.]

Does anyone have something to put a map on a wall? [She doesn't chew her lip, though she would had that habit not been mostly broken.] I want to hang this, [she sets the bobblehead down, picks up a map of Westeros so big that it doesn't quite fit in her arm span,] but I don't have nails.

[Private to Alec]

I'm tired of waiting. What can you teach me?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[There's a small child on the Barge. He's not sure how this escaped him, but it definitely had. It doesn't sit well with him, either, and he wonders if she's a prisoner or a warden. Either way, she's young. Way too young. But he arches his eyebrows at her comment about the doll's head being broken.]

It's supposed to be like that. The doll. They're called bobbleheads.

[He looks at the map for a moment and then nods, reaching into his desk drawer and holding up a container of multi-colored push pins.]

And these should do the trick.

[What's more, this small child is a Barge veteran, at this point. She doesn't post often, and she's more prone to observing than intruding lately. So she frowns, just a little, and looks down at the doll again, pushing it's head and setting bobble-Jon's head to. Bobbing.]

You're sure it won't break?

[When he pulls out the push pins, she squints at them.]

What are they?

[He doesn't remember having seen her before, so either she's new or she's very quiet, or he's missed her posts. Any of the options are viable, really.]

Yeah, I'm sure.

[He glances from her to the box of push pins and back again.]

They're called push pins. They should be able to hold up your map.

[She gives him a look like maybe he's pulling her chain, though she's reasonably certain he isn't: she's gotten very good at reading peoples' lies.]

They don't look big enough.

It'll probably take quite a few of them but they should work. [He picks up the device and illustrates the few posters he has hanging up with the help of push pins.]

Oh. [She takes them in, reading as many as she can make out.]

I don't have much to trade.

[He blinks a couple of times, sort of taken aback by her words.]

Oh. No, it's fine. You can just...have them. I'm not using them.

Thank you.

[She gives him a small smile, because her small smiles are real. It's the big ones that are never completely her.]

You're Stiles, aren't you?

Yeah, no problem.

[He smiles back at her even when she catches him completely off guard by knowing his name.]

I am, yeah. I'm sorry, I don't...actually know your name.

Arya. [Narrowing the possibilities a bit. It actually makes her smile a little more wryly: names are such strange things, for her.]

You might have seen Nymeria more than me.

[She turns the camera: across her room is a direwolf, fully grown and the size of a pony.]

Nice to meet you, Arya.

[He cocks his head to the side at the sight of the large wolf and he grins.]

Haven't seen Nymeria before my friend Lydia mentioned her to me.

She scared Lydia a little.

[But both of their ears had been wringing, when they met.]

It's okay. She scares a lot of people a little. She's a wild wolf, after all.

Well, and she's pretty big as far as wolves go. Is she friendly?

That's because she's a direwolf. They come from the north.

[Turning the camera back on herself, Arya considers the wolf.]

She can be, some times. But not always.

A direwolf? I haven't heard of those before.

They're from the north, beyond the Wall.

[She looks down at the map, shifts it around to hold up the part that proclaims THE WALL in big letters, somewhere so far north everything is white.]

[He studies the map the best he can through the screen an nods because he can see the words THE WALL at least. He can't help but wonder what else is beyond it.]

Are there a lot of them? Or are they kind of a rare thing? [Like werewolves.]

I don't know how many are beyond the Wall. There are only south of it.

[She pauses, amends:] There were five. Just two, now.

[He doesn't want to know what happened to the other three.]

And Nymeria's one of them?

Yes. Her brother's the other one. He's all white, with red eyes, but he doesn't make a sound.

[He nods a little, curious.]

Is he here somewhere, too?

No. He was, once.

[And so was Jon. It's been so long, she wonders if he looks any different now, and rubs her thumb over the doll's face again.]

But he's been gone a long time.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only