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“Breakfast, come and get it!” Cat yells, flipping the last piece of buttered toast onto the plate on the counter. She didn’t usually go to the effort to make a big breakfast for the kids – seven kids is too many eggs to buy for on her budget – but today is the first day of school. They ought to get off on the right foot.
“I’m serious,” she yells again, this time walking to the base of the staircase. “There is food down here!”
That gets a few feet up and pattering about in the boy’s room above her, and she is nearly bowled over as a dressed Arya thunders down the stairs.
“Morning, Mum! Smells delicious!” Arya says, bouncing on her bare tiptoes as she works her way around the counter, piling food onto a piece of toast instead of on a plate. Cat thinks she may be wearing Bran’s clothes. “Bacon! It’s official, today is the best day ever.”
Cat smiles, thanking her, and turns to go upstairs. She’s passed first by Bran, attention consumed by the Rubik’s cube in his hand, and then by Theon, who is carrying a screeching, giggling, and thrashing Rickon by his ankles.
“Don’t drop your brother.” Cat says, warm but firm. They can’t afford a trip to the emergency room. She turns an ear to the two boys as they make it past her, curious as well.
“I told you, Rickon, what did I tell you?” Theon says. He transfers both of Rickon’s feet to one hand and begins tickling him ferociously with the other. Rickon explodes with laughter, still upside down. “What did I tell you, huh?”
“No….noooo!” Rickon shrieks.
“No what, Rick, no what?” Theon is unrelenting in his tickling, and Rickon’s face is bright red.
“NO JUMPING! NO JUMPING! I WON’T JUMP ON YOUR BED ANY MORE!” Rickon screams, laughing some more. “I won’t do it! I promisssseeeee!!!!”
“Good. Just what I wanted to hear.” Theon says, and Cat hears a thump as he plops Rickon on the floor. By this time she’s made it up the stairs, and is faced with an explosion of toys out the first door on the left – Bran and Rickon’s room. She kicks what she can back through the doorway and picks her way through the room to shut the window. Boys, she thinks. I swear.
She walks down the hall a bit more to the room the older boys share. It’s more a loft than a room, closed off by some curtains around a wide doorway and a half wall. She sees that there is a new addition to the collection of posters that peppers the half-wall. It’s some band or another, The Valyrians. They really look more Dornish than anything else. Maybe it’s cool to have Valyrian blood these days; honestly, though, everyone in the seven kingdoms has a bit of it.
Just as she reaches up to push the curtain aside, it swings violently open and she sees Robb, grinning. Behind him on the floor is a bleary Jon, pushing his hair off his forehead and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Robb must have just pulled him bodily from the top bunk. Jon probably deserved it.
“Morning boys,” Cat chirps. “Breakfast downstairs, cheesy eggs and bacon.”
“Really? Thanks!” Robb kisses her on the cheek and makes his way downstairs. Jon perks up at the sound of bacon, a real rarity in the Stark house, and mumbles something about how he’ll be there in a minute.
Robb, Jon, Theon, Rickon, Arya, Bran… Cat counts off in her head, trying to figure out who isn’t up yet. Ah, Sansa. Cat taps her fingers lightly on the door to the girl’s room, which proudly pronounces “No Boys Allowed! You Stink!” in Arya’s handwriting. She gets no response, and pushes the door open quietly.
Sansa is still lying in bed, tangled in her sheets with one arm thrown haphazardly over a small stuffed elephant. Cat sits down next to her, and prods her awake.
“Sansa, darling, wake up,” she whispers. “Sansa, it’s 7:00, you need to get ready for school.”
Sansa’s brow furrows, and she peels her eyes open.
“Mum, no, go away.” She grumbles, and tries to flip herself over until she realizes she’s caught in the sheets and heaves a heavy sigh. “I’m not going.”
Cat rolls her eyes. “Come on, get up. I made breakfast. It’s all going to be gone if you don’t get downstairs soon.” She gets up and walks to the door, lingering there until she sees Sansa actually stand up out of bed.
Back downstairs, it’s a hullabaloo. Though the six kids have all made it to the table with plates in front of them, food and dishes are scattered around. About half the eggs intended for Rickon’s plate are sitting pretty on his placemat instead. He’s lining up a forkful to lob at someone. Robb’s eyes are wide, and he is engaged in an animated conversation with Theon and Jon, the latter of which is nodding quietly while chewing on a piece of bacon. Bran and Arya have finished eating and instead are arguing loudly about the clothes Arya is wearing; of course the shirt Arya has on from the Oldtown Museum of Natural History is actually his.
Across from them, Cat sees that Rickon has finally gotten his fork fully loaded with eggs and is aiming it at his sister. She snatches it up out of his hand and delivers the eggs straight to her mouth.
“If you are going to throw your food, boy, you aren’t going to have any fork privileges anymore,” she says, stern. Rickon grins sheepishly.
“Okay, promise, no more throwing food.” He grabs the fork back out of Cat’s hand, and digs in. Cat’s pretty sure Rickon’s eating habits are a lost cause at this point, and sits down to eat next to him for good measure.
Sansa, now fully dressed, red hair curled, emerges from upstairs. She gives an appraising eye to the madness in front of her, reaches in for two pieces of bacon and some toast, and walks over to pick her shoes out of the pile by the door. She pulls her backpack on, which she had loaded up the night before, and calls out to her brothers.
“Robb,” she says, getting his attention. “Robb, don’t wait for me, I’m leaving for school right now.”
“Uh, okay,” Robb says. “Whatever.”
Theon looks at his watch, and groans. “No, Robb, come on, look. We need to leave too.”
Sansa nods, as if to say, Yeah, of course you do, I can’t believe you’re so dumb. The three oldest stand up and shuffle to their backpacks. Jon grabs the bag lunches that Cat had set out by the sink, Sansa’s too, and passes them out. All four of them file past Cat, kissing her goodbye.
“Have a great day at school, my loves! It’s going to be a great year, I know it!” She says cheerily. As the door closes behind them, Cat turns to the three who are left at the table. “Okay, you three. You know the drill. Come help me with the dishes.”
Arya, eager to get away from the confrontation about her stolen t-shirt, hops up and begins collecting plates. Bran sighs, tosses his half-completed Rubik’s cube in the general direction of his backpack, and loads the dishes Arya’s placed on the counter into the wash. “Swear down, that shirt is mine.”
Cat takes a moment to wipe a washcloth over Rickon’s face, and then leans down to help him with his shoes. He doesn’t need it, but he’s her baby. It’s Rickon’s first day of school as well, out of the nursery and into Year 1…growing up.
Arya, now in Year 6, feels a proper adult at the top of her class. Sansa kindly lets her keep that illusion, knowing that she’s only got one more year until she’s back at the bottom of the heap. The secondary school that Sansa attends is across the street from the primary that they’d all attended. The sixth form college that the boys attend is just a block away from both schools, and as such Cat would prefer it if they all walked together. The kids won’t have any of that, though; Arya doesn’t even want to be seen walking with her younger siblings anymore. Cat hustles the three of them out the door together, lunches in hand. She tries not to hear as Arya instructs Bran and Rickon to walk twenty paces ahead of her, “no looking back.”
And just like that, the house is quiet. Cat looks around her mess of a kitchen, only marginally better than it was during breakfast, and sighs. Ned will be home from the graveyard shift he took at the construction site any minute, and she’s got to get ready for the interview she has at 10:00. Here we go, she thinks. Another year on the books.