good dirt | arya stark

sixteen: the bannerman

Irene didn't know if it was best to ignore Arya or not. Their previous encounter was too close of a call, really. Irene was too close to losing control of the situation, and that wasn't how Irene liked it. Her brain had gone haywire, her heart just stopped working completely, her fingers were twitching, and her eyes wouldn't stop ogling. It was an entire embarrassment and it was a tragedy in itself. And Irene hates facing tragedies head on.

   Instead of thinking about how she probably ruined any chances of being Arya's actual friend, she wanted to read. She hadn't read a good, hardy book since what felt like ages ago. She decided it was time for a good read again.

"Excuse me," Irene asked a young local boy, probably a stable boy. "Do you know where the library is?"

He looked her up and down, looking at the expensive furs that didn't really match her at all. With all the roses and the tan skin and the smile that she gave him, she didn't seem Northern at all. "I never had reason to use it." He went back to work at that, throwing rocks and letting it hit the roof of the market.

Irene blinked twice at the boy's straightforwardness. She smoothed out her hair as if it would lessen the sting of being close to ignored and brushed off, the cold brightening her cheeks. "Northerners."

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   She found the way on her own. The library wasn't nearly as big as the one in Highgarden, but it wasn't small. It would satisfy her for now.

   The library seemed dead and dusty when she walked in. It was quiet and as unmoving as the grave, giving her an unsettling feeling. There should have been someone there. A Maester, a literate village person, a lord. She seemed to be the only person to have grasped the doorknob to the place in years, and that worried her.

   No wonder these people are angry, Irene thought to herself. They never learned to fucking read.

   She walked in the library, her quiet steps still making an echo due to the low heels on the back of her shoes. Her eyes were on the left side of the room, away from the main isles as she walked to the back. Those books were the history books, the books that the Maesters would be interested in, if they existed at all in Winterfell. She was so focused on the history books that she completely missed the entirely live person standing in the isle, dumbstruck that there was another human present.

  She stopped her walking and turned her attention forward when she saw the last row of books. She walked straight into it, picking up the first one she saw and thumbed through it as best as she could. The pages were sticking together grotesquely, sealed together by age. She grimaced and slowly moved to put it back, bending her back just the slightest. She didn't expect to see an eye staring right back at her.

  She shrieked, jumping back and nearly dying on the spot from pure fright. She fell over, tripping over a wooden stool that she didn't even know was there. She swore to herself, a shaky breath as she realized that whoever that was, was just going to have to get her. She had no line of defense.

  "I'm so sorry!" The voice was almost shrill as it said an apology. It belonged to a obviously very meek man. She watched as a rotund man with stubble on his face came around the bookshelf, a sheepish look on his face and in his eyes. He had a hand reached out to her and it was shaking in a way that let her know that he was nothing close to a threat.

   "It's quite alright, I didn't see you when I entered." She made a move to stand on her own, and she wasn't shocked at all when her legs didn't want to cooperate. It was too cold, and she got too scared to move. Her body shut down like that, it had always worked that way. He took her hand and lifted her up, choosing not to acknowledge her struggle.