fight like gods. asoiaf

TWENTY/ TWENTY ONE

XX
SANSA
"the red-haired ghost by the heart tree"
⚜️

News of Bran soon arrived on the black wings of a raven. After weeks of unresponsiveness, he'd woken to a daze of confusion. Father had shown the letter to Sansa and sister as soon as it had arrived. For that evening, there was no quarrel between the Stark sisters. Sansa forgot all about the business at the trident, of her anger toward the other girl, just as Arya ignored the unfairness of Sansa's actions and her failure to see Joffrey as the coward that he was.

Their father took them to the castle Godswood, to the grove of elm and alder that crowded around the thin slither of the Blackwater Rush, which ran loudly through the Red Keep. Sansa had always known there were no weirwood trees, with their pale bark and bloom of red leaves, in the south, but when she thought of the Godswood in King's Landing, she had always imagined an acre of the scared trees, large and foreboding, just as the capital was itself.

But indeed, in the castle Godswood, there was no weirwood, only a great, ancient oak that took the place as a heart tree. The lush, red flowers of Dragonsbreath encircled the tree, cushioning their knees as they bent down to give their offerings, and though father could not tell her how to pray, this time Sansa knew exactly what to say.

Thank you for protecting Bran.

She thought of the last time she'd seen the weirwood branches, crimson and vast, or the pale bark, marked with a solemn face. She had prayed for Bran, knelt beneath the watching presence of the heart tree. It had been Lucella at her side, praying with her.

Thank you for answering my prayers.

The moon had risen high above the tree tops by the time Sansa drifted to sleep, her shoulders cloaked beneath her father's cloak, Arya close and warm beside her back.

Sansa dreamed of Bran. He was walking, looking exactly as he had before the fall, if not a little older, but Sansa knew this to be a false image. Father had said that Bran would never walk again, and she'd wept for his lost dreams as if they were her own.

"Sansa?" His voice held a tremor and sent a pinching pain through her heart.

By his side, his direwolf prowled, tall enough to reach far past his hips, and with teeth as huge as a knife. His fur was a silvery-grey, darker than Lady's ever had been. Sansa wondered if Lady would be this large, had she lived. As the thought left her head, something gentle brushed against her hand. Clutching instinctively, Sansa's hand found soft fur.

Before she could acknowledge the direwolf at her side, Bran was running forward, launching into her arms and wrapping his arms around her neck.

"Bran!" She shouted, glee spreading through her with warmth. "I'm so glad you're alright."

"Summer looked after me," he said, smiling, his cheeks a ruddy shade of red. Bran glanced down at the direwolf to his left and gave him a scratch between his ears. Summer rubbed against him, circling him happily before he came to stop at Lady's side.

Lady! Sansa almost squealed when she recognised the direwolf at her side. Bending down, she leaned her face against hers, feeling the softness of her white fur.

"Lady will look after you," Bran said.

But when Sansa looked up again, the murky blue of the sky stared back at her, and the softness beneath her hands was no longer her direwolf's fur, but the fabric of her father's cloak. She'd slept until morning.

"Sansa, are you coming?" Father shouted on her from beneath the shroud of thick hemlock trees, eyes sharp and brilliant as they fell upon her.

Looking up one last time at the vine-twisted branches of the heart tree, past it to the tiny specks of the brightening sky above, Sansa wondered if the old gods could hear her, so far south and in the absence of a weirwood, if they'd shown her those images of Bran or if her brain had made them up for comfort.