Open: Sewing in the Great Hall (come bother Sansa!)

[castleinthesnow.livejournal.com]

Normally, Sansa kept to the Slytherin areas, her dorm or the common room, to do her sewing. Even back when she had still been at Winterfell, the women did their sewing in a room set aside for the purpose, not in Winterfell's great hall. But here... Sansa was always by herself.

Today, she'd decided that she'd rather not be alone. She'd taken the risk of being thought strange by the other castle denizens, and settled herself at a table in the Great Hall, with her sewing basket next to her and her current project in hand.

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[usethepoker.livejournal.com]

((Repost, because I do know how to close my tags, really))

Susan, continuing her mission to be more social (http://community.livejournal.com/hogwarts_hocus/1156800.html#comments) had made her way down to the Great Hall in the hope of finding food that wasn't some form of leftover take-away. (She'd inherited her grandfather's habits, though she didn't share his fondness for curry). As was the case everywhere she went, half the people were complete strangers, but that was all right...she'd been gone a while, and a recluse just as long.

She spotted a young girl sewing, and made her way over with a small plate of pudding. The girl wasn't a child, but she was younger than most Susan had seen here.

"What are you working on?" she asked, and she could feel her inner governess creeping forward.

[castleinthesnow.livejournal.com]

Sansa glanced up at the woman, who seemed... well, just by her bearing, Sansa was tempted to compare her to Septa Mordane. Although this woman was less dead, of course.

"Oh, just... embroidery. Picking out some old, replacing it with new." A grey wool dress with lighter grey 'direwolves' embroidered on the bodice. She wasn't sure what she'd replace them with, since technically she shouldn't bear her father's arms anymore. Not lions, never lions, even if they were the symbol of her husband's House. Snowflakes, perhaps. Or silver leaves. Or both! That could be pretty.... "I'm not very good with books, so I tend to pick out and rework my stitches quite a lot, to keep myself occupied."

[usethepoker.livejournal.com]

Ah. Embroidery was an alien concept to Susan, though her mother had liked it. Still, this girl seemed quite good at it.

"You know, I would imagine you could find quite a bit of new work to do around here," she said, sitting on the bench beside her. "Most people here don't have the talent, or the patience, to do anything that intricate." The business with the books ought to be dealt with, she thought...and mentally kicked herself. She wasn't a governess here, but old habits died hard. "Do you not like to study?"

[castleinthesnow.livejournal.com]

Sansa blinked. She hadn't considered offering her skills more generally. Of course, there was a certain part of her that rebelled at the idea of becoming a seamstress, but... it would mean that she would have some method of making her own way, if she ever had to, instead of just relying on an endless series of rescues. Hmm. "I haven't seen a great deal of embroidery on clothing and such here, but... it may be for the reasons you say."

The question about studying made her cheeks redden. "I... have never been a great reader, my lady. Even less so, here." She'd picked up a very basic potions book in the library and tried to read it, but had had to give up before she'd got even halfway through. How were clocks supposed to be wise, and what did that have to do with anything? The books made her feel stupid. And yes, she was a stupid girl, but there was no reason she had to feel it. "I have no gift for books."

[usethepoker.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. She knew this syndrome: girls shouldn't be educated. She hadn't encountered it much in Ankh-Morpork, but she knew it was there.

"Perhaps you're not reading the right books," she said, wondering just how the poor girl had been brought up, and where. "Were you tutored much, before here?" Given the child's--and she had to use that in the loosest sense of the word--skills and preferences, Susan would guess she'd been raised to be a 'lady', i.e., domestic and ornamental. The mindset made her blood boil.

[castleinthesnow.livejournal.com]

"Perhaps so," Sansa agreed placidly. There was no harm in agreeing with the woman - there were a lot of books in the library at Hogwarts, surely at least one wouldn't cause her to put it back in frustration and confusion. "I know my letters and numbers well enough to manage a household of any size, I play the high harp and the bells, I know all my heraldry... not that that's terribly useful here." And she'd learned politics and how to lie, but that wasn't something to admit to anyone who seemed like Septa Mordane. "I would say I've had quite a lot of tutoring."

[usethepoker.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Well, running a household was, even she had to admit, a very useful skill--if she hadn't had people capable of that kind of thing at home, she'd never have been able to leave the estate after her parents died--but there was so much more to do here. And...well, Susan could read people; this girl had the look of someone who had not had an easy life. There was a timidity about her that Susan liked not at all--as though a girl who was naturally easy-going had somehow been cowed into taking up as little space as possible.

"Well, are there any subjects you'd be interested in? Charms would perhaps be a good one, and very useful for managing a household. Potions as well. You may just need someone to sit with you, and break it all down into manageable bits. It can be overwhelming, just attacking it head-on."

[castleinthesnow.livejournal.com]

"I thought Potions, at first," Sansa admitted. She had a certain fondness for poisons, at least, once she'd gotten some time to reflect that yes, overall Joffrey's choking-to-death had been very satisfying. For all his threats to her, he was the one who ended up dead. Potions weren't poisons, but there was some kinship in the idea, at least. "I went to the library, and found the very simplest book I could, but...." She shook her head. "All I could do was get stuck thinking stupid questions. If I can't understand the simplest things, it's best I don't frustrate myself further."

[usethepoker.livejournal.com]

Well, that was a start, at least. It was amazing how Governess Mode seemed to turn itself on automatically.

"Well, to come into a subject with no prior experience is terribly frustrating, without help," she said firmly. "I was fortunate, in that I had friends with existing skills in that area. You just need someone to work you through the beginning." This was quite familiar territory. "Being frustrated doesn't mean you're stupid. It just means you don't know the right questions, which you're not going to know without help. You, my girl," she concluded, quite matter-of-factly, "need a tutor."

[castleinthesnow.livejournal.com]

Part of Sansa was curled up in shame; she knew that all the questions she'd had were ones everyone already had answers to, everyone except her. Another part of her was annoyed at this woman telling her what she did and did not need, but that was a very small part trapped underneath the curled-up part. The rest of her was... amused. A sort of grim amusement, but amusement nonetheless. Any tutor would be horribly, horribly frustrated with her, and then there would be two. "If you say so, my lady."

[usethepoker.livejournal.com]

"Call me Susan," she said. "Let me guess--you don't know what half this stuff is, do you? Even learning the lingual patterns here is a challenge. Even I haven't mastered all of them yet, and I've been here..." Gods, how long had she been here? Damnable memory "...a while. I imagine if you had someone to explain all those things, it would be a great deal easier."

[castleinthesnow.livejournal.com]

"I'm Sansa." She tilted her head thoughtfully, not even covering the moment with sewing, to indicate to the woman Susan that she was in fact thinking.

She still thought Susan was wrong. If it was such a common problem for people not to know things that were so simple they weren't thought to need explanations, WHY were those things still never explained? That was just... just ridiculous. On the other hand, doing and redoing embroidery would get old eventually, and it wasn't like any part of her tiny household really needed managing. "Some things seem like they would be obvious - a toenail is a toenail even if I don't know what sort of creature it's talking about. Other things are just... clocks being foolish."

[usethepoker.livejournal.com]

"Very pleased to meet you, Sansa."

Clocks being wise... Susan turned that one over a moment, and then said, "Ah. Clockwise. That's not such an odd mistake, really, if you come from a place that hasn't got clocks. The trouble is, all these books--and a great many other things--were designed for this world, by people who live in this world. I don't think they had this kind of situation in mind."

She fell silent, considering. "The problem is, so many things that are taken for granted here are not taken for granted elsewhere. I think, perhaps, that you need someone to sit down with you, and answer questions about the things you find bewildering. I rather think a great many people would benefit from that."

[castleinthesnow.livejournal.com]

That was a little encouraging. A little. If it was really just ignorance, and not stupidity, that could be fixed. At least a little bit, anyway, to the limits of her ability.

"Perhaps so," she allowed, "though I think it would be very frustrating for any such someone."

[usethepoker.livejournal.com]

"Well, Sansa, I used to be a governess--believe me, we are impossible to frustrate." Well, that wasn't strictly true, but she never ever let on if she was. "Would you care to try, at least, and see if it helps you at all?" She had a hunch Sansa would be quite good at some things, if only she had help at the start.

[castleinthesnow.livejournal.com]

She thought a moment, then nodded slowly. "I think I would, my... Susan." Narrow miss on the 'my lady' there. "Eventually even needlework will become boring, so I need to find something to do. If I can learn anything, so much the better."

[usethepoker.livejournal.com]

"Well, we can certainly work on that," Susan said, pleased. "Start small, with the little things you don't understand, and work up from there."