Canon Arya Stark Appreciation Week - Day Two: Favorite Familial Relationship

Canon Arya Stark Appreciation Week - Day Two: Favorite familial relationship

She’d tell him, “I missed you,” and he’d say it too at the very same moment, the way they always used to say things together. She would have liked that. She would have liked that better than anything.” (A Clash of Kings, Arya I)

Arya Stark and the old black tomcat, by Jonathan Burton, for The Folio Society’s illustrated collector’s edition of A Game of Thrones

The Red Keep was full of cats: lazy old cats dozing in the sun, cold-eyed mousers twitching their tails, quick little kittens with claws like needles, ladies’ cats all combed and trusting, ragged shadows prowling the midden heaps. One by one Arya had chased them down and snatched them up and brought them proudly to Syrio Forel… all but this one, this one-eared black devil of a tomcat. “That’s the real king of this castle right there,” one of the gold cloaks had told her. “Older than sin and twice as mean. One time, the king was feasting the queen’s father, and that black bastard hopped up on the table and snatched a roast quail right out of Lord Tywin’s fingers. Robert laughed so hard he like to burst. You stay away from that one, child.” He had run her halfway across the castle; twice around the Tower of the Hand, across the inner bailey, through the stables, down the serpentine steps, past the small kitchen and the pig yard and the barracks of the gold cloaks, along the base of the river wall and up more steps and back and forth over Traitor’s Walk, and then down again and through a gate and around a well and in and out of strange buildings until Arya didn’t know where she was. Now at last she had him. High walls pressed close on either side, and ahead was a blank windowless mass of stone. Quiet as a shadow, she repeated, sliding forward, light as a feather. When she was three steps away from him, the tomcat bolted. Left, then right, he went; and right, then left, went Arya, cutting off his escape. He hissed again and tried to dart between her legs. Quick as a snake, she thought. Her hands closed around him. She hugged him to her chest, whirling and laughing aloud as his claws raked at the front of her leather jerkin. Ever so fast, she kissed him right between the eyes, and jerked her head back an instant before his claws would have found her face. The tomcat yowled and spit. –A Game of Thrones, Arya III

i wonder if actors ever get their scripts and are like

well this is fucking stupid

Jon Snow Appreciation Month Day 6 - Familial Relationships

Rickon yelled, "Me! Me now! I want to play!" Little Walder beckoned him on, and Shaggydog started to follow. "No, Shaggy," his brother commanded. "Wolves can't play. You stay with Bran." And he did...

...until Little Walder had smacked Rickon with the stick, square across his belly. Before Bran could blink, the black wolf was flying over the plank, there was blood in the water, the Walders were shrieking red murder, Rickon sat in the mud laughing, and Hodor came lumbering in shouting "Hodor! Hodor! Hodor!" (Bran I, ACoK)

Rickon: *laughs hysterically at attempted murder*

Me: "aww, he's so cute 🥺🥺"

Blood Sacrifice?

I’m probably not the first to notice this, but I’ve definitely never come across anything about this either.  In Arya X ACOK we get this scene:

In the godswood she found her broomstick sword where she had left it, and carried it to the heart tree. There she knelt. Red leaves rustled. Red eyes peered inside her. The eyes of the gods. “Tell me what to do, you gods,” she prayed.

For a long moment there was no sound but the wind and the water and the creak of leaf and limb. And then, far far off, beyond the godswood and the haunted towers and the immense stone walls of Harrenhal, from somewhere out in the world, came the long lonely howl of a wolf. Gooseprickles rose on Arya’s skin, and for an instant she felt dizzy. Then, so faintly, it seemed as if she heard her father’s voice. “When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives,” he said.

“But there is no pack,” she whispered to the weirwood. Bran and Rickon were dead, the Lannisters had Sansa, Jon had gone to the Wall. “I’m not even me now, I’m Nan.”

“You are Arya of Winterfell, daughter of the north. You told me you could be strong. You have the wolf blood in you.”

“The wolf blood.” Arya remembered now. “I’ll be as strong as Robb. I said I would.” She took a deep breath, then lifted the broomstick in both hands and brought it down across her knee. It broke with a loud crack, and she threw the pieces aside. I am a direwolf, and done with wooden teeth. - Arya X ACOK

I like to refer to this moment as “Arya’s Mufasa Moment” because her father’s voice through the weirwood gave Arya the strength to reclaim her identity.  She gained the courage she needed to make her escape from Harrenhal with her friends before they would be maimed or killed.  Whether that voice was actually Ned, or Bloodraven, or future!Bran, or some other greenseer, or the Old Gods isn’t the point of this post though.

One other aspect of the above quote I want to touch upon before I move on, is how Arya got dizzy when she heard the wolf’s howl after asking the Old Gods for help.  I think it’s pretty much accepted throughout fandom that (or I hope so because it seems kind of obvious) that Arya’s skinchanging abilities were opened more after this chapter.  Arya started gaining more, and more vivid wolf dreams after this chapter, either way.  In fact, in Arya I ASOS, Arya while skinchanging into Nymeria unknowingly protected them by killing the Brave Companions going after Arya, Gendry, and Hot Pie in their desperate escape.

So onto my point.

Arya’s Mufasa moment happens in Arya X ACOK, but that was not the first time in that chapter that Arya went to the Godswood:

The afternoon was still young by the time she was done, so Arya took herself off to the godswood. Her duties were lighter as Lord Bolton’s cupbearer than they had been under Weese or even Pinkeye, though they required dressing like a page and washing more than she liked. The hunt would not return for hours, so she had a little time for her needlework.

She slashed at birch leaves till the splintery point of the broken broomstick was green and sticky. “Ser Gregor,” she breathed. “Dunsen, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling.” She spun and leapt and balanced on the balls of her feet, darting this way and that, knocking pinecones flying. “The Tickler,” she called out one time, “the Hound,” the next. “Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei.” The bole of an oak loomed before her, and she lunged to drive her point through it, grunting “Joffrey, Joffrey, Joffrey.” Her arms and legs were dappled by sunlight and the shadows of leaves. A sheen of sweat covered her skin by the time she paused. The heel of her right foot was bloody where she’d skinned it, so she stood one-legged before the heart tree and raised her sword in salute. “Valar morghulis,” she told the old gods of the north. She liked how the words sounded when she said them. - Arya X ACOK

Did Arya inadvertently feed the weirwood her own blood from her injured heel while she was praying?  And is that why the next time she prays in front of the weirwood it answers her?  If so, I’m very curious to see if Arya ever goes back to Harrenhal and that Godswood again, in case there is some sort of furthering connection now to that land if this is the case.

Anyway, I just randomly came across this and it piqued my curiosity, so I thought I’d share to see what people thought.  I wish we knew more about weirwoods so we could better determine this.