Jon's disappearance

[onceaqueen]

It began as just another morning around the house. Susan was hanging laundry on the line to one side of the house, and Jon and Rickon were in the garden nearby, pulling weeds--or rather, Jon was pulling weeds and Rickon was 'helping'. This mostly constituted slinging small bits of plants and sticks and clods of dirt about with no regard for what

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[lonewolflives]

A crying child wasn't entirely anything out of the ordinary, not with all children running about, now. But the wolves didn't howl for nothing, not howls like that.

Arya took off towards the sound at a run, vaulting over a log, Nymeria a grey blur at her side, only to halt, stymied, when she arrived at Snow House.

She'd been ready to ward off whatever had Rickon and Shadow so upset, but there was nothing, at first glance, to ward off. And Arya's first glances were good ones. She noticed, for instance, that there were clumps of weeds pulled loose but not yet thrown away, and that the laundy was not quite done being hanged.

No one with any sense gardened and did laundry at the same time. But there was only one adult here.

"...what happened?" she said, even though it wasn't the question that leapt first to her tongue.

[onceaqueen]

"Jon," Susan said, having to force the word out over Rickon's squalls, which showed no sign of letting up anytime soon. "He was in the garden with Rickon one minute, and the next..."

"Dada GO!" Rickon interrupted, stomping and kicking, and Susan turned him a little so that he wasn't kicking her stomach but could still vent his stormy feelings. "Dada gone! Ghost gone!"

[lonewolflives]

Arya went entirely still, and blurted, "No," without even thinking about it. It wasn't true. She wouldn't let it be true.

"Nymeria, find Jon," she said to the wolf, who simply padded to the garden, sniffed, and then looked back at her, silent as her absent brother.

[onceaqueen]

"Find!" Rickon demanded. "Find! Find!" When no one did it, he burst into a fresh round of squalls and stomping that Susan didn't have the heart to stop.

"Maybe the island sent him to dinosaur territory," Susan ventured. She was grasping at straws.

[lonewolflives]

"Dinosaur territory!" Arya said, grasping at the same straw. It did that, it had done that. It wouldn't just happen, surely, it had to be something else. It had to.

"I'll go," she said, "I'm going to go right now and find him."

Her feet didn't seem to want to move, though.

[onceaqueen]

"Yes," said Susan. "Go and find him." But somehow Susan didn't have the heart to get up and start looking either. She'd done this so many times that she just could not think about it; she knew that feeling far too well, the gut certainty that came from simply knowing.

[lonewolflives]

Arya wasn't listening to her gut; she was barely listening to Susan, who was standing right in front of her. She just stared at her a moment longer, at a loss, and then said, "I'm going," and bolted for the stables.