come to decide that the things that I tried

[regenerated]

It was the second year in a row that Claire found herself up to her knees in snow for the month of December, and Claire still wasn't sure how well she liked the change of environment. Snow had been a once every other year luxury back when she'd lived in Texas, the chill only obtainable when the family was willing to fly for a few hours until they landed in the powdered peaks of Whistler. In such limited amounts, it had been a beloved treat. But as it was now, occasionally melting when the days grew unseasonably warm, and almost always tainted a dreary shade of gray by the poor air that she could practically feel polluting her lungs, snow was far from fun. Far from enjoyable. And so that morning, Claire had done her best to ignore Mr. Muggles' many yips and scratches against her apartment door, before finally giving in with a groan and reaching for the clothes she'd piled on a chair pushed close to her bed.

As far as she could tell, judging by the many pepole who had approached her asking for her services, the clothes that had waited for Claire in her dresser were those of a chimney sweep. Having done her best to beat the cloth clean, Claire found that the outfit left a lot more room for movement than most of the dresses and corsets she watched people wear around her, very few women braving the outdoors as the snow fell from the sky. Armed with heavy boots, Claire stomped down the stairs of her building, giving the strangers about a wary look, before pushing the heavy door out into the street. Mr. Muggles, with a yip, immediately tore out into the cold, his small paws slipping on the slick surface of the path.

"Happy now?" she asked the dog, raising her brow as Mr. Muggles fell into the cold, slushy puddle, fur shrinking at once in size.

Comments

[lonewolflives]

Arya did know how she felt about the change of environment: Dissatisfied. She'd been looking forward to the snow, to a slightly colder environment, something more her. Something she could actually think about in those terms.

But it had come wrapped in a city that reminded her, vaguely, of King's Landing, of her time in Flea Bottom. Nymeria didn't know how to take it, either. She appreciated the cold, Arya thought, but would have preferred it wild.

So the two of them slunk along the streets, Arya with her hands in the pockets of the breeches she'd managed to scavenge, until Nymeria tore off to circle around the smaller dog and Claire.

"Don't worry, she won't eat him," she said. "Probably."

[regenerated]

"You say that, having never witnessed just how irritating he can get when provoked. I wouldn't blame her if she tried," Claire replied in turn, wrinkling her nose in distaste as Mr. Muggles tried to shake off all of the ashen slush, yapping away and hobbling around on shivering paws. Sighing, Claire bent down and patted her thigh for the dog, who eagerly leapt into the blonde's arms and grinned at the wolf from where he was nestled safely a few feet up. "But I am fond of the fuzzball, so I'd definitely prefer that she didn't. Just for the record."

Grinning, her gaze moved from Arya to the wolf, then back again. "You know, you've mentioned wolves before, but I didn't realize that she'd be so big," Claire marveled, shaking her head. "Have the two of you already scoured the city, top to bottom?"

[lonewolflives]

"She's a direwolf," Arya said, managing to inject some pride into the statement. She'd proved troubling, in recent times, in what she represented and what her actions had implied about Arya herself. But for all that, Nymeria was hers. She used to dream through her eyes. She could never turn her back on that.

"They're bigger. And we're working on it. It'll all be gone in a month, and I can't decide if that means I should work faster or not even bother."

She tried not to think about how that thought applied to so many other things in her life at the moment.

[regenerated]

"Work faster, if you ask me," Claire replied with a quick shrug, glancing down the street, and then up at the roofs of the buildings that lined the block. Even if she didn't think the city nearly as pristine as London had always looked in photographics, Claire wasn't the type of person who generally liked leaving rocks unturned, and if there was anything that could encourage her to look at the city like an adventure, then all the better. "I mean, we think it'll be gone in a month... probably. But one, we don't have a guarantee of that, and two, if that's true, I feel like that just means we've got less time to get through everything. Maybe that's just me, though." She glanced back in Arya's direction, sheepish, offering a hesitant shrug.

"Not that I'm the biggest fan of this place or anything, but ignoring much of anything seems to get us in trouble a lot of the time, doesn't it?" Claire asked, tilting her head. "Even with seemingly harmless things like carnivals."

[lonewolflives]

"Just once I'd like to have a nameday where there's no weird shit going on," Arya said, kicking one heel into the snow, watching as Nymeria circled around them, sniffing at the unfamiliar buildings.

"It probably would help to know the shortcuts in case all these ghosts start trying to kill us," she added, thinking it through, craning around to try and spot one of the strange, half-seen citizens of this city.

[regenerated]

"You mean yours is coming up too?" Claire asked, even as Mr. Muggles began to growl in her arms, squirming at the sight of Nymeria walking about while he had no similar amount of freedom, quickly turning his face and biting down on the lapel of Claire's jacket. "I should have figured you for a winter kid, though. It just... suits you, somehow. I mean, not like this. But." Biting her lip, her eyes roved around their surroundings, at the blanket of white that faded into a darker gray with the smoke which dispersed and hid itself in the air.

"I guess if we just had open space, and the wind totally howling around us? That's what I'd peg you as," she admitted, a shy smile on her lips. "Ghosts or no ghosts. I get the feeling you'd totally own them, too. But we might as well explore for a bit, because a bit of an advantage never hurts, right?"

[lonewolflives]

"Been," Arya said. "October 31st, as they reckon it here."

Every year. She supposed it was the misfortune of having it fall on one of the days that seemed to have some significance. But once she'd learned of the coincidence, she'd thought that maybe that was a sign, too. It probably wasn't. It was just a date her father had picked because it was in about he right place.

"But I was born in summer, actually," she said, ducking her head a little, looking up to examine Claire's smile before she nodded that they should pick a direction and start walking. "All Starks are winter kids, truly, because the North is always cold, but it was summer. Our seasons work different, though."

[regenerated]

Claire immediately fell in line with Arya as she took the initiative to pick a direction, glad for the way that the other girl seemed to so easily take charge of a situation. Granted, choosing a street to venture down in a city was probably pretty low on the scale of choices to make, but there were times when Claire found herself struggling more with the smaller choices than the weightier ones. She was a girl who nearly always followed her convictions, but when right and wrong seemed less than clear, and when a choice could easily determine how much trouble the both of them ran into, it became that much harder to put her best foot forward.

"I guess in some ways, I was the opposite. I don't actually know where I was properly born, because... I was adopted, and that wasn't really the first question on my mind when I finally got to meet my mom," she admitted with a light shrug. "But I grew up in a pretty hot part of the country, and my birthday's January 11th, so winter in a winterless zone, I guess. How do your seasons work, though? Are they a different length?"

[lonewolflives]

"The summer I was born in was just ending when I was nine," Arya said, eyes skimming over the street they were walking down, looking for anything other people might not notice. For the interesting detour. It'd take her mind off things.

"Seasons in Westeros are long. That was a particularly long summer, though. Everyone said the winter that followed it was going to be brutal. I never got to see it, though. I left before that. Then I left again, kind of, when I ended up here."

[regenerated]

"A summer that lasted nine years?" Claire asked, blinking in surprise. "That's... half of how long I've been alive, wow. I can't imagine getting caught up in a season for so long. I feel like the only way that I managed to get through school without too much complaint was getting to see the change in seasons pretty significantly every time. We always had long breaks from class in the summer, and a shorter one in the winter. So getting to see the seasons pass was like getting reassurance that school, no matter how completely tedious it felt, wouldn't last forever."

Unsure whether or not she should have been offering sympathy for the rest, Claire pushed the tip of her boot further into the snow by the side of the street. "Do you want to go back?" Claire asked, quiet. "I mean, you seem pretty well-adjusted, as far as people on the island go. Like you could fit in just about anywhere."

[lonewolflives]

Arya thought about it for a long moment.

"There's nothing for me back there," she said, eventually, shaking her head. "They burned it. Braavos was nice, but... I don't know if I was meant to be there, either. And it's nice, here, except for-"

She trailed off, and cut down the first side alley she saw. "Let's see what's down here."

[regenerated]

The words hit Claire with a fair amount of force, her chest aching at the thought of one's home being burned or razed to the ground. (How could they, she wondered? How could war be so consuming and relentless and merciless, all of those things at once and more? It was hard to understand, impossible to imagine until one found themselves in the thick of it.) But before she had the chance to comment, Arya's words cut off as she ducked into the alley, Claire blinking for a couple of seconds before she rushed to catch up. There was a comforting familiarity to it, in all honesty. If Arya ever did decide to stay in a single place for long, Claire might have found herself more worried than to know she was wandering everywhere the island would let her, testing her limits.

"Whoa, okay," Claire replied, pressing her lips together as she reached her hand for the brick wall to steady herself, driving her heels hastily to the ground. Mr. Muggles squirmed in her hold, but let out a yawn soon enough, and Claire pulled him closer so as not to let the dog freeze in the cold. "See anything good?"