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[color=gray]The sky looked like the shadow of a shadow to her, a never-ending voice of grays and lifeless pale blues that threatened the world with snow all over again. She took slow, painful, breaths and focused her eyes on the haze upon the horizon. The first two weeks in the North had been, by far, the worst in her young life. It wasn’t winter. It was barely autumn. She checked, twice, with Maesters before leaving. 
Tell that to the North.

She had wandered to nearly every corner of the Seven Kingdoms, save the Vale and the North. The North just sounded more amusing than being boxed into a valley with a bunch of steep mountains all around. First men, Andols, First men, Andols…the First Men won. And, really, all things being equal, it was Winterfell and the Wall that had won.

And in her few days out from White Harbor, she had never been so cold in all her life. The last night she could fully recall had been such a misery, she had come to terms with wanting to die. Not actually dying, the girl was just too stubborn for such nonsense, but the desire to let it all end, quietly, in the dark and cold like so many before. 

She understood the urge, now. 

Sheer willpower saw her another few nights. The days and nights blurred, pooling in her mind as one long grey and white and painful stain. If it weren’t for her well bought clothes, the voice told her, she would have lost toes and fingers. Instead, she just needed rest. She understood the voice to belong to some god. She didn’t believe in your gods, or their gods. She could see gods having been a thing, once, long ago. But to her…it would just be some god telling her to make sure she closed the door on her way out for the last, final, time. 
It was half a day before she realized the voice belonged to no god, but a man who cut and sold wood. There was a cabin, there was a little boy, hiding behind things. It was nightfall before she could speak to the man, ask what, how. He explained it was the wet that did her in. She had been too exposed to snow, she had clearly fallen in snow, and she had never properly dried off. Staying dry, he said with a puff of his pipe, was the key to staying alive in the North. “You’re an archer? Keep yourself as dry as your strings up here, girl.”

He noticed she didn’t look like any woman he had seen when he changed her, dried her clothes. The amount of near strangers that had seen her in her nameday pride, between being dressed by ladies of court and the water gardens all her life, it frankly wasn’t that strange. It was honor that forced her hand in the end. She knew he might not accept it, so she smiled big and sweet and gave the gold coins to the young boy, and told him to give them to his papa when she was gone. 

Reginald was beside himself when he saw her again. He looked, he snorted, he looked away. “I MISSED YOU TOO!” The horse might have bolted, had he not been tied. Not that it mattered, eventually Reginald always found her. Eventually, Reginald always returned to her. “I love you too, I’m an idiot.”

She spent a few days not far from the cabin, accounting for everything from various pastes to salt beef to small blocks of steel, strings, jigs, feathers fletched and unfletched, and a variety of shafts in firmness and size. Small saw, various small blades, bow, leather wraps and casings. The bedroll she kept upon Reginald, but sleeping under the stars was ill-advised if the clouds looked stormy, and if they didn’t, it would just be freezing cold. Fire became necessary, a large wineskin of Dornish Red, but true freedom came in the map Wendal had given her. A hunter’s map that highlighted trails, and more importantly, every cave and hunter hideaway between the south shore and the Wall. 

The next few weeks just rolled together. She adjusted to constant freezing, even spending the evening two nights ago wild and naked in the snow and moonlight. Possible, of course, because of the natural hot-spring she had discovered nearby under some of the largest, oldest, trees she had ever seen in her life. They had been her favorite few days in the North, so far, outside Wendal’s cabin. 

Her mind and her eyes seemed to focus on the horizon, again, at the same time. The synchronization of their focus allowing her to see past the haze of travel in the wilds of the “autumn” North. That haze on the horizon became something else entirely; it became a horse, it became a rider. 

It became a danger as she watched from under tree line upon a ridge. And a danger made Princess Saeria Martell focus like nothing else in her earthly trials. There was new life to the girl as she disappeared where she had been standing just moments before. She had seen him first. In the wild, that could make all the difference. She returned to Reginald, removed the thick cloak and pulled up the hood of the layer just under the thick cloak; hooded tunic, woolen and lined with fur. 

“Fade away, Reggie, I’ll be back.” 

That was nearly noon. It was nearing sundown when she found the danger again. The man was, by quick looks behind trees, a scout of some sort. He busied himself with a camp, which meant a fire. She understood his concern, she had been regretting the shedding of her heavy cloak for hours, but it was more than enough noise cover for her to make slow and careful movements. He was hacking away at a tree nearby when she got to his camp. She soothed the horse the best she could before a quick pick through. Steel and salted fish and wools to keep warm. Nothing Stark, or any other noble house she recognized. 

“Wha’ th…”

The voice grew quiet as his dark eyes surveyed her. When they met eyes, she knew trouble was coming, she'd seen that look in the eyes of many men before the violence came. He let the wood of the tree he had hacked at fall to his feed, thick chunks of wood for a long, slow burning fire to get him through the night before he went back looking for smaller bits, before the sun set. 

She knew the schedule. Anyone who lived out in the wild did. 

She’d seen the look in his eyes before. When he lunged forward, she was took his own dagger up from the neat pile he had created in order to make camp. She went back when he went forward, moving awkwardly in the snow under the tree he had picked. He lunged again, she circled around, keeping in mind the obstacle he had created. When he swung back around and gave a short shout, his eyes were narrowed on her, and the next lunge landed  his foot awkwardly on one of those pieces of firewood, rolling the ankle and sending him to the snow. Another piece of firewood smashed the back of his head before he could recover. A hand gloved in rotting leather squeezing at her neck, and her hand brought the dagger down. 

The scout howled, screamed—he wanted to make noise. Who was around? How many? She’d have to make a quick escape, thoughts she thought as she kept stabbing. When the noise stopped and the man’s twitching mostly died off, she caught herself standing there, removing the hand from her neck, panting as her mind dazed and her eyes narrowed to a tunnel.

[i]Noise[/i]. 

Panic struck through her heart like steel as she moved for the tree she had originally hidden behind to watch him. The tree she had left the bow at. The snow seemed thicker here, like a sludge she had to struggle through, sweating and freezing in equal measure. The doeskin cover was in her hands, then the bow itself, stringing it, and rearing around with arrow notched just in time to see another man, on a horse, ride up with a blade in his head.

She nearly felt the pressure fall and the string release, until the horse spun in place, and she noticed the shield. Grey, with a direwolf. She rested the bow, all but panting again as her heart raced. “Stark?...Princess Saeria of House Martell…really, really,” she said through huffs, catching her breath, “hope you’ve got a camp around here, somewhere.”

The scout snorted at her when she gave her name and her house, to no surprise of her’s. “Disarm. Lead me to your horse.”
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