298 AL - The First Day - The Day of the Prologue

RICKON

When Rickon awoke the first thing he felt was the lack of the warm heartbeat he had fallen asleep listening to. Shaggydog was gone-this was not strange to the young boy, as it was oft the case that the wolf rose before Rickon did to stalk out of the hut and hunt among the rough cliffs of Skagos. However as Rickon began to sit up he found he wasn't laying on the ground in a bed of straw and furs, but instead was laid out in a small bed lifted off the ground, in a room which all at once looked vaguely familiar and yet strangely alien to him. The room was circular in shape, with walls made of grey stones laid on top of one another. A thick wooden door stood across from his bed, so unlike the furs that had protected Osha, Shaggy and him from the bitter cold winds on Skagos. Two small openings in the wall also adorned the room, allowing the milky-white mid-morning sunlight to peer into the otherwise darkened room. The room was ornamented with a few objects that were at once old and new to Rickon's mind but for which he couldn't think to name-a place to store the furs he wore, a place to put the objects which he valued most, and so on and so forth. A small wooden wolf was laying next to him on the bed with a few bite marks on the wolf's tail and ears-and looking at the wolf made him want to stick it in his mouth and chew-which he obliged, instantly feeling a small sense of satisfaction.

Osha must have moved them in the night, Rickon figured, and she would soon return, he was confident. As if to confirm his confidence the door to the room then opened and in stepped an old crone. She was a short shrunken figure, clearly weather-beaten and long past the prime of life.

"Good morrow Master Rickon, it is time to rise and break your fast," tutted the old woman in a high and wheezy sing-songy voice.

"Where's Osha?" asked Rickon as he took the slobbery wooden wolf out of his mouth to speak. He was almost shocked at how his voice sounded different than he'd last heard it, he couldn't explain how-it just struck his ears as undeniably different.

"Who, milord?"

"Osha," replied the boy as if the name were self-evident enough.

"I recall not any nursemaid by that name in all my time here at Winterfell."

Winterfell. That was the name of his home that Osha would sometimes talk to him about when they curled around the fire in their hut. Immediately Rickon rose and padded his feet across to the openings in the wall-windows-was the word he had failed to recall earlier. Peering out Rickon could see a muddy patch of ground and grass surrounded by stone walls, with people milling about. Was this the castle of Winterfell that Osha had told him all about-where kneelers lived and knelt to his brothers?

"Master Rickon?" questioned the old woman, but Rickon didn't answer-too quickly wondering how he had got there and wishing to have Shaggydog and Osha by his side.