Backdated - For Sandor.

[lifeisnotasong]

Eddara knew she wasn't allowed to play with the puppies. Mama had said it and Dada had said it and Lady had once even nosed her away from them. But when a puppy snuck out of the house while Eddara was playing drums in the garden - it couldn't be naughty to follow. She toddled after the small direwolf. "Woof," she shouted. "Wolfy!" This had no

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[kings_dog]

Sandor had been hunting for clams in the sea's rocky shallows, but had come away empty-handed. His trouser legs rolled up around his knees, his boots in one hand, he was walking back toward the path when he heard the child's delighted laugh. Veering off toward Sansa and Caspian's house, he found Eddara sitting with a lapful of fur joyfully licking her nose.

A grin pulled at one side of his mouth, but he didn't go any closer; she hadn't seen him yet, and he didn't know how she would react if she did. Just then, however, the puppy lifted its head, scenting something on the wind, and flipped out of Eddara's lap and ran toward him, barking.

[lifeisnotasong]

Eddara let out a squeal of outrage when the puppy abandoned her and gave chase. She did not pay attention to much else and she ran full tilt into Sandor's leg and sat down hard before pouting up at him. "Mine," she said.

The puppy however had other idea and hid behind, nosing at his bare foot and peering out at Eddara, yipping happily. Eddara launched herself at the puppy but was not quick enough to catch a direwolf and so turned to Sandor for help. "My puppy," she informed him. "Not Sandy's."

[kings_dog]

He could hardly be faulted for laughing, he thought; his experience of children was so limited, and no one could deny Eddara was a charming and endearing little girl. Besides which, the child-chasing-puppy scene was like something out of a fool's pageant, down to her running into his leg.

When she tried to say his name, his face froze a little, the laugh catching in his chest with surprise. "Uh," he said, half an awkward chuckle, and bent down to pick up the puppy and deposit it back in her lap. "Yours."

[lifeisnotasong]

Eddara favoured him with another smile when she was given the puppy and she patted it gently and hopefully. The puppy licked her face and she laughed but only briefly. Then the pup leapt out of her lap again and her face fell as the puppy pounced on Sandor's foot before curling up there.

"Bad puppy," she announced sulkily, peering up at Sandor as if deciding whether to blame him for this, she sniffed pitifully as she considered feeling very hard done by indeed.

[kings_dog]

"He is, very bad," Sandor agreed with a barely hidden smile. He edged his foot out from underneath the small warmth of its fur, but it only took the opportunity to pounce again, this time wrapping its forepaws around his foot and gnawing on his toe.

It wouldn't have been so bad, really, except for the fact that it tickled.

[lifeisnotasong]

Despite the fact that Sandor was agreeing with her Eddara was not about to stand for him calling her puppy bad. "Bad Sandy!" Eddara announced as the puppy followed his foot despite her best efforts to distract it.

When she could not attract the puppy back, she burst into tears and bopped him in the leg with one small fist. "Mine," she wailed, shrieking at him in a fit of frustrated temper and upset and then drumming her little heels on the ground.