Still as a stone
She'd caught cats in her time, and monkeys, and fish. Today, Arya was catching birds.
She was, perhaps, cheating by doing it in the aviary, but she thought there was a lesson there, too. Besides, it wasn't as if she was leaping around the place disturbing all the birds. Her tactic, today, was to simply sit on one of the benches, one hand and one finger out, and attempt to be so still she was simply another perch.
It was not easy; for all the time she'd spent holding a sword up with it, staying up and extended was still not a natural place for an arm to be, and she'd been holding it out for a while. Staying completely still - still as a stone, Syrio would have said - got harder the longer you tried to do it.
She'd been sitting still for quite some time now. She was trying to not think about sitting still, because when she thought about it she felt a prickling sensation trying to goad her to move. To keep her mind off it, she was reciting her list: Roose bolton, Raff the Sweetling, Ser Gregor, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, the Freys of the crossing...
It was giving her trouble, though. She didn't recite it every day, like she'd used to, so she didn't know it as well, though mostly it all came back to her. But the ones on the list that had been there forever, it was harder to remember what each of them had done to end up there. And the ones she'd omitted, because they were dead already... dead people showed up here all the time. Should she put them back on the list, just in case? But if they'd died, did they need to be on the list, even if they were alive again? Some of them, certainly, but she didn't know about all of them.
Eventually, she got tired of trying to work it out. It didn't seem to fit with the bright, cheerful noises of the birds, even if Polly had explained what they were all saying once and it wasn't actually all that cheerful.
That thought made her go quiet for a moment, even inside her head. She spent all that energy remembering the people she hadn't liked, what if she forgot the ones she had?
Still poised on the bench with one arm out, she started attempting to assemble it. Polly Perks, since this was her aviary, even if she'd never seen it built. Then, of course, Eddard Stark, Catelyn Stark, Bran Stark, Rickon Stark. Benjen Stark, Brandon Stark...
A swallow hopped on to a perch near her hand. Arya kept on compiling her list.
[Timed to when she's not playing at Gideon and Penny's wedding. >_> ST, LT all welcome.]
She was, perhaps, cheating by doing it in the aviary, but she thought there was a lesson there, too. Besides, it wasn't as if she was leaping around the place disturbing all the birds. Her tactic, today, was to simply sit on one of the benches, one hand and one finger out, and attempt to be so still she was simply another perch.
It was not easy; for all the time she'd spent holding a sword up with it, staying up and extended was still not a natural place for an arm to be, and she'd been holding it out for a while. Staying completely still - still as a stone, Syrio would have said - got harder the longer you tried to do it.
She'd been sitting still for quite some time now. She was trying to not think about sitting still, because when she thought about it she felt a prickling sensation trying to goad her to move. To keep her mind off it, she was reciting her list: Roose bolton, Raff the Sweetling, Ser Gregor, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, the Freys of the crossing...
It was giving her trouble, though. She didn't recite it every day, like she'd used to, so she didn't know it as well, though mostly it all came back to her. But the ones on the list that had been there forever, it was harder to remember what each of them had done to end up there. And the ones she'd omitted, because they were dead already... dead people showed up here all the time. Should she put them back on the list, just in case? But if they'd died, did they need to be on the list, even if they were alive again? Some of them, certainly, but she didn't know about all of them.
Eventually, she got tired of trying to work it out. It didn't seem to fit with the bright, cheerful noises of the birds, even if Polly had explained what they were all saying once and it wasn't actually all that cheerful.
That thought made her go quiet for a moment, even inside her head. She spent all that energy remembering the people she hadn't liked, what if she forgot the ones she had?
Still poised on the bench with one arm out, she started attempting to assemble it. Polly Perks, since this was her aviary, even if she'd never seen it built. Then, of course, Eddard Stark, Catelyn Stark, Bran Stark, Rickon Stark. Benjen Stark, Brandon Stark...
A swallow hopped on to a perch near her hand. Arya kept on compiling her list.
[Timed to when she's not playing at Gideon and Penny's wedding. >_> ST, LT all welcome.]