Chapter Text
Arya woke up; she needed a pee urgently. A quick look round confirmed Sandor was still wrapped in his blankets. She walked quietly and carefully out of the camp. Good she’d made it and hadn’t woken him up. Arya liked to get far enough into the trees to make sure she wasn’t seen by Sandor and he seemed to be getting more relaxed about her being out of sight for a few minutes, but it was still easier to do it before he woke up. So she dropped her pants, leaned back against a tree and let her muscles relax. The sense of relief was profound; it was one of the simple things in life, having a nice long pee, going from discomfort to relaxation. She took a quick peek between her legs to make sure nothing was splashing where it shouldn’t and realised that she had squatted down over a rabbit hole. The contents of her very full bladder were running, no more accurately streaming into the hole; there was almost a little waterfall at the rim. At her age Arya still found this sort of thing slightly naughty and amusing. It wasn’t that she really wanted to imagine peeing on a real rabbit, but in a sort of fantasy world inside a little girl’s head funny ideas can form.
Suddenly the ground gave way, Arya found herself falling. In the fraction of a second it had taken she saw the stream of pee erode the hole into a massive chasm, which was impossible she was slim and less than five foot, the hole she was falling down would have needed gallons of water, she could probably produce about a pint. She was falling, the sides were feet away, there was nothing to grab hold of and she was going to die. The sensation went on far too long to be believable, she even had time to feel her bladder was empty and she was no longer releasing fluid. Then she hit the ground with a bump, hard enough to hurt and knock the wind out of her, it was nevertheless not the sort of bump that should have been the result of the distance she’d fallen. Bran had said his fall had been so short he didn’t have time to think about it before he hit the ground; she’d nearly had time to start pulling up her pants. There was no way she shouldn’t be dead, but she wasn’t; she was sore, confused and, she realised, sat in damp earth that was sticking to her bum and those other bits down there which she didn’t have a name or names for yet.
She heard a noise behind her and looked around. Brushing frantically at his ears was a very wet white rabbit. Arya wasn’t used to all white rabbits; rabbits were only white underneath. On top they were speckled shades of brown. She’d heard about snow rabbits beyond the wall that were white, may it was one of those, although there was no snow where they were both sitting, just some damp earthy soil. That wasn’t all that was strange about this white rabbit he was wearing a strange little helmet and a breast plate like a great lord or knight but, and this was even stranger, neither he nor his armour looked real. The rabbit had a sort of simplistic appearance almost like he was drawn on a piece of parchment and coloured in by a child rather than a proper artist. Now she looked round Arya realised everything else looked the same, not quite real. The soil that was stuck to her felt real, damp, what she thought one of the castle gardeners would have called loamy, but the moment she dusted it off her it appeared to become more like a simple thing without any depth, that was what everything lacked the sense of depth.
The rabbit finished grooming, it had really done a very good job of drying itself out since when Arya first saw it it was pretty much soaking wet. Arya felt a bit guilty, she was pretty sure she knew what had made it that wet, she really really had needed that pee. The rabbit turned and looked at her. “Thank you for nothing” it said “Now I’m going to be late, late for a very important date”. Despite this apparent lateness it made no immediate move to go and Arya thought the least she could do was apologise. She might not want to be a lady, but she wasn’t the sort of girl who peed on rabbits for fun, was she. No she was sure that she wasn’t, life at her age could be quite confusing, but she felt quite sure of that part of her sense of self: she did not pee on rabbits for fun and when she accidently did she would apologise. Her mother would have been proud of her. “I’m sorry, you see I just had to go, it was urgent, you know how it is”. She’d never seen a rabbit pee but they had to didn’t they. She plunged on “And I didn’t realise I was peeing down your rabbit hole until I was squatting and it was too late to stop and then the ground collapsed and I think I was so frightened as I fell that I’d have peed myself anyway on the way down so there wasn’t really anything I could do to not make it happen, but I’m still sorry”.
The rabbit looked at her “I’m sure you could have held on for just another minute and found a tree without a rabbit hole at its base”.
“No I don’t think I could. I think I really might have peed my pants if I’d waited any longer and then I’d have had to go all day with a wet bum and wet trousers”.
The rabbit pointed at Arya’s bottom “And the difference would have been”.
Arya realised he had a point, not only was her bottom wet, she’d said ‘bum’ a second ago and it had seemed quite naughty so she was going to stick to bottom from now on; but her trousers weren’t much better. She wasn’t going to give in though “I’ve said I’m sorry, I really do think I’d have been a lot wetter otherwise”. She thought she’d change the subject “You said you were late didn’t you. You ought to be going”.
It was like she’d suddenly hit the rabbit over the head, he started running round in circles “I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date, no time to say ‘Hello, Goodbye’ I’m late, I’m late, I’m late”. Despite this he still didn’t actually go anywhere just ran round in circles. Arya stood up and took one step in front of him and caught him as he came at her. Despite the fact he was her height and looked considerably bulkier she stopped him quite easily. He didn’t really seem to weight anything at all. “Where are you going”
“I told, you a very important date”
“With whom”, that seemed to stop him in his tracks.
“Why the Mad Hatter or course, where else would I be going; it’s his tea party”.
“I don’t know, because I’m not sure where I am so I don’t know where else you might go”
“Nowhere else, why would I go anywhere else, but I’m late, they’ll all have moved round and I’ll have lost my place”. He’d been jigging around Arya and suddenly she realised he’d manoeuvred her through a half turn and he turned and ran off very fast away from her. She tried to run after him, tripped over her trousers round her ankles and fell face first into the wet earth. As she lay there cursing, not very quietly and definitely in a very unladylike manner, she realised from the smell that her face had just landed in, that it most definitely was her pee that had wet the ground.
She pushed herself up onto all fours, then onto her feet. She did her best to brush the earth off her body, it was more loose fibrous material than sticky clay so she got most of it off quite easily. Then she pulled up her pants, they weren’t really soaked, just damp. The same went for her leather trousers. They would have been a lot worse if she had really wet herself so she decided taking a pee had been the best course of action, then realised that she might not have fallen down the hole if she hadn’t taken a pee. Which made her think, things were not right here, rabbit holes don’t swallow humans, you can’t fall for that long a time and not get hurt. Rabbits, well most rabbits aren’t white, don’t wear armour and most definitely; rabbits don’t speak.
I must be dreaming, that’s it this isn’t real, I must be dreaming. In which case if I’m dreaming about taking a pee I probably do need a pee so I’d better wake up. It wouldn’t help her if she woke with wet pants. She tried to will herself to wake up, she squeezed her eyes shut and opened them, she tried to find an ‘awake’ place in her brain, she thought about the campsite where they bedded down last night. None of it seemed to make any difference and the feeling of needing a pee was very definitely gone. So, she rationalised, either she wasn’t asleep or she was, had pee’d herself and was blissfully sleeping on. Well if the second was true there appeared to be nothing she could do for now so maybe she had better assume the first was true and find out where the rabbit had gone. She took a look round, above her there was a very long tunnel to a patch of blue sky that was shedding just enough light for her to see by and going away from her was a passage pretty much on the level into the darkness. She tried to scramble up the tunnel, but the earth was soft and just fell away and she fell back into the damp ground. She picked herself up, dusted herself off and set off in the only practical direction down the tunnel after the rabbit.