The Room With 1000 Stories

Winterfell

Carter's POV

(Possible Game of Thrones spoilers ahead)

Everything hurt and it was very, very cold. Carter opened his eyes to see that he was laying in soft, freshly fallen snow, a foreign concept to a kid from San Francisco. There was nothing around him but tall trees, and fallen pine needles at their bases. There was a cleared path, but where he expected tire tracks, there looked to hoof prints.

"Where am I?" Carter muttered to himself, shoving his icy hands in his pockets. His t-shirt and leather jacket would protect him very little against the sharp chill. As he stood, he heard the crunching of snow and looked to his left to see two figures. They appeared to be dressed in much warmer clothing, although far from modern. They wore cloaks and funny- looking pants. They looked as if they were from the middle ages.

"Hey- you!" Carter called to them, stumbling in the snow, "LARP dudes!" The two figures stopped and turned towards Carter's voice. As Carter approached them, he could see one had shaggy blonde hair and a prominent front tooth, while the other was pudgy with dirt on his face.

"Where am I?" Carter asked.

"Nice coat." said the blonde man, feeling the leather. Carter slapped the man's hand away. The man laughed and looked to his friend.

"Woah, hey," Carter started, "don't touch the-" but the pudgy man punched Carter square in the jaw and Carter fell to the ground. He could feel the tangy, irony taste of blood pooling in his mouth and the cold snow against his face.

"Ow!" he cried, "the hell?!" but the men answered by swiftly kicking him. One blow was to his stomach and Carter struggled momentarily to breathe. The other was to the butt, causing aching pain instantly. Carter then felt his jacket ripped from him and his pockets searched.

"One more for good measure." said one of the men. Carter did not have time to brace himself before his head exploded with a white-hot pain in his right eye and nose after one of the men stomped firmly on his face. Pain may have been an old friend to him but he usually knew when to expect it. Different parts of his body ached from the blows and he found it difficult to concentrate on just one. And as the cold nipped at his exposed skin, he felt himself getting dizzier and dizzier. His only haven was the sound of the men's footsteps in the snow growing more and more distant.

Is this how he died? Really? From hypothermia? Carter wondered. How lame. Would he die in the snow having been beaten up by Medieval Times rejects? This had to be a dream, or maybe a nightmare. But the pain was far worse than he thought it possible to experience in a nightmare. His right eye was now throbbing and so he shifted himself on the ground to give it more direct access to the snow.

Carter was brought back to the present with the sound of a galloping horse that stopped and huffed when it reached him. Carter wondered if a policeman rode this horse, he had read that in some towns they do. And so, he gingerly lifted his head, barely able to see through his swelling right eye.

Through blurred vision, a man atop a dark horse took off his medieval cloak to reveal golden hair and a thick beard. Carter recognized the man, but without sharpened vision, he could not place from where.

"Are you dead?" asked the man, and even his posh accent sounded familiar.

"I might be," Carter replied, his throbbing, swelling lip making it hard to speak.

The man sighed and dismounted his horse. Carter held his shaky arms up in defense. But the man simply grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him to his feet.

"Up you go, Lad." said the man, "Never really cared much for the North. They aren't as friendly."

"Where am I?" Carter tried to say with a strained voice over the howling wind.