Floating cities, and magic beasts, and people made of steel. Grand tales, Sansa thinks, and she hesitates to trust it to be true; her love for songs and stories had been burned from her in the last five years.

But she is still a girl, barely eighteen. She still wears her hair in braids like her mother had taught her, and she still cares for her appearance for the pleasure of doing so. Most of all, she still hopes to find a way out - anywhere, somewhere so far from the horrors she's had to endure, if she can never find her way back to her true home. Bran and Rickon may still be alive; Jon is Lord Commander. Maybe they could triumph in her absence.

It's a cautious hope. They don't have the numbers, not while the Boltons presume to hold the North and the Lannisters rule the realm in all but name. But it's something to hold onto.

"We used to have dragons," Sansa murmurs. She says it like she's sharing a secret, and maybe she is. "I've never seen one, they say all the dragons are gone now, but I heard they have the bones of them tucked away beneath the king's castle. If you were lucky, you could pay to see them yourself. Bones as large as a small house, can you imagine?"

"Maybe this place could bring them back, too." A pause, and a nervous laugh. "Or not. Dragons might be harder to train than a wolf."