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By Emmanuel Williams

Jon Snow has gone missing. No one seems to care. 

After her attempts to convince Lord and Lady alike to send a search party, to no avail, Arya Stark procured her provisions, and a horse, and left them all to their mead and detachment.

“I’ll find him.”

And so she rode out in a thickening snowstorm, determined to find her brother, cursing Winterfell and the entire Seven Kingdoms for their abandonment.

After Sansa’s words, there was nothing more she wanted to do with any of them.

“He went North with Tyrion,” said Sansa, staring at her. “I told you yesterday, and the day before. We’ve had no ravens from them, nor riders with news of them. Not for 107 moons.”

Arya’s face squeezed and her brows looked as if they would invade each other.

“107 moons?”

“Give or take a moon. You know I can’t leave Winterfell, so don’t blame this on me.”

The storm had reached its crest and seemed to lighten as Arya reached the forest. She would make her first camp tonight. But it wouldn’t be easy.

Simple. But not easy.

She selected a small grove of pines whose branches overlapped enough to keep out the elements. At its heart, she could fit the horse, herself, some wool, and Needle. Kept close to the leg and within arms reach. 

There she slept.

She woke but didn’t move. Couldn’t move. Her eyes were open, and her surroundings were clear, almost vibrant, but familiar. It was her only comfort. She lay there, motionless, terrified and speechless, for three hours. 

Slowly, her strength returned. She resolved to leave as soon as she had stowed away the wool, believing she had been intoxicated by the collective smell of the pines, if not their massive stale pools of sap.

She still felt trapped as she and the horse moved opposite Winterfell, and deeper into bent branch, thick leaf, and darkness.

The snow had quit falling, but piles of it were visible in every direction. Today she would hunt for an evening campfire. And came up with two rabbits and a stray rooster who would not be quiet. She didn’t like using Littlefinger’s dagger, but if it was going to be useful she would not protest.

Dinner was a lone rabbit. Skinned, and roasted dark. Arya could enjoy the smell as she tended to it. Burning meat stealing space from the oxygen she had to fight to injest beyond the juices welling up into her sinuses from her very tongue. She was famished. Turning the rabbit regularly with rapt attention.

Arya didn’t finish the meal. She couldn’t. Hadn’t completely shook her recent lethargy, and halfway through the little beast, she had to retrieve her wool, and drifted off in the open snow.

Her eyes snapped open. Already furious since the sun might reach it’s zenith and she’d still be facing the sky, unable to move an inch to the left or the right. Trapped again…

It took five hours to rise this time, but she beat the sun to its apex, and Arya rose at last. Grasping for Needle and shuffling to her feet.

Enraged.

Someone had poisoned her. There was nothing to blame aside the rabbit, and she had skinned and gutted it herself. The first time she hadn’t eaten a thing.

“This is foul play,” she spoke aloud. And resolved to start setting traps around her next camp. She had to find Jon still. And every paralysis set her further behind where he might be… if even he still was…

But someone else must be near. Tracking her at rest. 

The cloud and snow were a blessing and a curse. It was deadly cold, but the night was brighter with the heavens blocked. 

She was weak and she knew it. But not so weak as to not lay three separate traps with the rope in her sack, and random branches that when snapped nearly buried her in snow.

Finally she returned to the horse, scared to eat lest she sleep too soon, and miss the catch. But whoever it was took nothing from her in the night. Nothing but her strength.

She pulled out the rabbit, warm from it’s keeping. But thought better of it. Tonight she would be vigilant. Too curious to ruin her chances of discovery. She knew she might be wrong, but there was no way she was going to miss being right, and confronting them with Needle.

All night the wind rustled quietly, lifting frost into her face every now and then. What truly bothered Arya was that the entire night, the only gains were a rather large boar, which she quickly put out of its misery, and a fox who had none of their assumed cleverness that hung from a tree completely tangled. It’s whimper overtly alarming in the otherwise silent night.

But no weakener…

She had no room for the entire boar, but she was stuck butchering and roasting legs and thighs. Dragging the carcass into the bushes for someone or something else to finish.

Packing the meat in her sack made it heavy so she slung the pack horse back and cleared her camp. That’s when she saw them.

Tracks. Human sized. Opposite where she would step into her straps to mount. They must have circled on the spot and then decided against poisoning the horse. 

She could only infer these things, but the pattern was undeniable. And they were… not much bigger than her own.

After resecuring the horse, Arya followed the tracks in their natural direction coming to where Arya had laid her wool, but several paces before where her back had been exposed longest overnight, the tracks stop, and circle the top of her head, until from the creature’s eyes, it could see Arya’s eyes open and vigilant.

They turn back into their own tracks and then proceed south and west in a long narrow line.

Her hand immediately fell to her sword, and she ran along the tracks, ready for a fight, some final confrontation. 

And… perhaps… answers…

The trail died at a vast frozen lake where a heron was stuck by its legs. Arya was sure it still wept just out of earshot.

She looked around, noting landmarks, searching for more tracks. To her right she found them. But they were unnecessary.

A hole had been carved out of the largest oak Arya had ever seen. She crept toward the opening. Slow, aggressive still, but slowing even her breath lest anything be spooked into protecting itself too soon.

Inside there were shelves with bottles filled with liquids and herbs, no place for a fire except at the feet of the lone creature sitting on a small wooden bed. 

Staring at her.

Through eyes that appeared as stars under its hood which obscured the entirety of its face.

It stared. As if it knew her well.

This bothered Arya to no end, and Needle’s glint flashed on the walls with the creature’s eyes. Were they growing brighter?

”You pursued me,” she accused him. “You drugged me, left me paralyzed in snow like a deadbeast.”

Needle lifted into the air as though she sparred with a fencing partner. As if in response, the creature stood with surprising height. But she found his belly and shoved Needle up through his heart seeking his brain. 

She found it, and withdrew her weapon.

Spinning, she found her on tracks and headed back to all her meat and mission.

”I need to find Jon.”

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