July 2, 2014
Week 41, 280 AC

Let me be clear about this: I don't know how I got here. Yesterday, I was at the family house in California, enjoying the summer. I left the house for my daily evening run after it was dark and my earphones were intact (I was listening to the new Bastille album - they'd more than grown on me in the last couple of days). I remember a car hitting me. Then the world went black, and I thought I died.

But I hadn't died. I wake up in a beautifully decorated room and for a moment I entertain the thought of it being heaven. Then there is a sharp pain in my head and when I regain consciousness, I know that something very, very weird has happened to me.

I am in the body of a thirteen year old - a thirteen year old! I am sixteen. Not thirteen!

I also have flowing red hair - which I know for a fact that I don't. I have always been a blonde. What has happened to me?

A girl about fourteen or fifteen chooses that moment to appear. She calls me Lysa - do I look like a Lysa?!

But I am Lysa, as it turns out. I have all this new information in my head that I still have to come to terms with. Names and places that should mean nothing to me but in fact, do. Catelyn Tully. Hoster Tully. Edmure Tully. Minisa Whent. Petyr Baelish. Septa Myana. Riverrun. Westeros. Harrenhal. The Trident. Maidenpool. King's Landing.

I don't know what happened to me. One moment I am Maria Gray and the next I am Lysa Tully, daughter to Lord Hoster, the Lord Paramount of the Riverlands in this continent called Westeros. One moment I am sixteen; the next I am barely more than thirteen. I now have two siblings: Catelyn, the girl who alerted me to being Lysa, and Edmure, who is still quite small. My mother, Minisa Tully, died a few years ago in childbirth. My father is a respected lord and he seeks to make himself stronger my marrying all three of his children to different noble families on the continent.

He has already arranged a match between Catelyn and a boy called Brandon Stark, who is the heir to the most powerful northern seat called Winterfell. That is why Catelyn came in to call me - some outriders had spotted her betrothed making his way to Riverrun to be our guest. She wanted to tell me to quickly get dressed so we could stand by the gates to greet him.

I instinctively walk to the place I now know is my wardrobe, and wear a simple dress in blue and red, which are the Tully House colours. Cat and I will never be mistaken for anyone else, I think: we are living endorsements for the House with our blue eyes and red hair.

The dress is not much to my liking - I have never really worn loose clothes such as this. In high school, it was either those little black dresses or jeans. I feel unusual, but comfortable nonetheless.

The lack of hygiene products is to be expected, but it still disheartens me. It irks me to wake up and have a bath (not a shower) without brushing my teeth. The soap is less like soap and more like a bar of detergent. Shampoo is non-existent.

I know my way around Riverrun. Finding the gates takes little time, and my now-father and now-brother are waiting there with Catelyn. Brandon Stark appears on horseback some time later, and he is a handsome man I suppose. More brawn than brain - that is what I feel, personally, but I am not one to judge. Catelyn is. She seems to like him well enough.

He is eighteen, and he tells us loudly of how he is fostered at a place called Barrowton, in the North. He has a few companions with him, among which notable are Willam Dustin (the heir to the Barrow Hall, at Barrowton) and Jeffory Mallister, who is from Seagard in Lord Hoster's province. I find them far better company than Brandon - he is loud, boastful, and arrogant, everything I don't like in a boy. I hold my tongue and don't say anything.

Petyr Baelish, I find later on, is a boy fostered by my lord father himself, and has a thing for Catelyn. During the feast that is held to welcome Brandon Stark, this boy gets drunk and nearly challenges the guest of honor to a duel. Foolish Baelish gets yelled at by Cat, and scurries away to his rooms. No one else follows. That is, incidentally, the highlight of the evening. Brandon and his friends laugh about it all evening and little Edmure giggles with them, too.

I am silent for most part, which I am later told by my lord father is most unlike me. I tell him that since Catelyn is soon to get married, it is time for me to grow up and be a woman. He gives me a warm smile. I don't know why, but I smile back. It is a nice moment, I suppose.

I don't know how long I am going to be here. I don't know what is happening back home. I don't know how my family is doing; how my friends are doing. Am I really dead back home? How is Mom coping? I keep asking myself these questions.

There is no answer to them.