Arya Reunited with Nymeria

[The Fattest Leech]

2 hours ago, HaeSuse said:

Am I missing something? Has Arya ever "warged" as Nym? She has the dreams, sure. But actual warging? If Nymeria DID realize that, why didn't she make her presence known to Arya? A thousand times over she had the chance, before Arya left for Bravos. Why not? 

Yes. George confirmed in an SSM that Arya was warming Nymeria when Catelyn was pulled from the river. 

Im still at work so I can't find the SSM at the moment. 

[HaeSuse]

1 minute ago, The Fattest Leech said:

Yes. George confirmed in an SSM that Arya was warming Nymeria when Catelyn was pulled from the river. 

Im still at work so I can't find the SSM at the moment. 

Cool. I haven't read much SSM. Just the books a couple times over.

[Clegane'sPup]

3 hours ago, HaeSuse said:

Am I missing something? Has Arya ever "warged" as Nym? She has the dreams, sure. But actual warging? If Nymeria DID realize that, why didn't she make her presence known to Arya? A thousand times over she had the chance, before Arya left for Bravos. Why not? 

Arya is the warg. Nymeria is the ?????.

That I know of Arya has not consciously warged Nymeria in the way that Bran actively seeks out Summer. It appears to me Arya has wolf dreams. She does not seem to know she is a warg.

According to me, one of Arya’s interesting wolf dreams takes place in SoS. Arya, Gendry and Hot Pie are on the run.

Quote

 

A Storm of Swords - Arya I     Her dreams were red and savage. The Mummers were in them, four at least, a pale Lyseni and a dark brutal axeman from Ib, the scarred Dothraki horse lord called Iggo and a Dornishman whose name she never knew. On and on they came, riding through the rain in rusting mail and wet leather, swords and axe clanking against their saddles. They thought they were hunting her, she knew with all the strange sharp certainty of dreams, but they were wrong. She was hunting them.

She was no little girl in the dream; she was a wolf, huge and powerful, and when she emerged from beneath the trees in front of them and bared her teeth in a low rumbling growl, she could smell the rank stench of fear from horse and man alike. The Lyseni's mount reared and screamed in terror, and the others shouted at one another in mantalk, but before they could act the other wolves came hurtling from the darkness and the rain, a great pack of them, gaunt and wet and silent.

The fight was short but bloody. The hairy man went down as he unslung his axe, the dark one died stringing an arrow, and the pale man from Lys tried to bolt. Her brothers and sisters ran him down, turning him again and again, coming at him from all sides, snapping at the legs of his horse and tearing the throat from the rider when he came crashing to the earth.

 

Two more paragraphs follow those that I referenced above.  Read the chapter for context. She, Gendry and Hot Pie are on the run from Harrenhal when Arya has the above dream.

Yes, Arya has a bond with Nymeria. Three books of Ayra wandering around with Yoren and Hot Pie & Gendry and her travels with the Brotherhood and the Hound. Most all the chapters have reference to wolves lurking about. She even has wolf dreams in Braavos.

Arya doesn’t seem to understand she is a warg. She does seem to like being a wolf though.

[The Fattest Leech]

4 hours ago, HaeSuse said:

Am I missing something? Has Arya ever "warged" as Nym? She has the dreams, sure. But actual warging? If Nymeria DID realize that, why didn't she make her presence known to Arya? A thousand times over she had the chance, before Arya left for Bravos. Why not? 

Here it is:

Q: 8- When Arya says she "dreamed" of finding her mother's corpse, did she actually take over the body of her lost wolf Nymeria, the way Jon and Bran sometimes do?

GRRM: Yes.

http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Category/C91/P105/

Also, just like Bran, and Jon, and Rickon, Arya has wolf dreams which is the type of shared consciousness that is warging and skinchanging.

Now, the Stark kids don't know what is going on because they have been trained by a maester of the Citadel, and maesters are taught to spread the false idea that nay northern magic types do not exist. So the Stark kids are confused for a while and the do not have a "trainer" like Varamyr did. Later we see Jojen guide Bran. Osha, being of the free folk, at least acknowledges that this "magic" exists and she can go tot the people who can actually help Rickon with his abilities, as we read Varamyr does in his chapter. Poor maester Luwin and Old Nan were just spreading the lies about magic and the inaccuracies about how the wildlings are sooo evil.

A Dance with Dragons - Prologue

Other beasts were best left alone, the hunter had declared. Cats were vain and cruel, always ready to turn on you. Elk and deer were prey; wear their skins too long, and even the bravest man became a coward. Bears, boars, badgers, weasels … Haggon did not hold with such. "Some skins you never want to wear, boy. You won't like what you'd become." Birds were the worst, to hear him tell it. "Men were not meant to leave the earth. Spend too much time in the clouds and you never want to come back down again. I know skinchangers who've tried hawks, owls, ravens. Even in their own skins, they sit moony, staring up at the bloody blue."

Not all skinchangers felt the same, however. Once, when Lump was ten, Haggon had taken him to a gathering of such. The wargs were the most numerous in that company, the wolf-brothers, but the boy had found the others stranger and more fascinating. Borroq looked so much like his boar that all he lacked was tusks, Orell had his eagle, Briar her shadowcat (the moment he saw them, Lump wanted a shadowcat of his own), the goat woman Grisella …

A Game of Thrones - Bran I

The morning had dawned clear and cold, with a crispness that hinted at the end of summer. They set forth at daybreak to see a man beheaded, twenty in all, and Bran rode among them, nervous with excitement. This was the first time he had been deemed old enough to go with his lord father and his brothers to see the king's justice done. It was the ninth year of summer, and the seventh of Bran's life.

The man had been taken outside a small holdfast in the hills. Robb thought he was a wildling, his sword sworn to Mance Rayder, the King-beyond-the-Wall. It made Bran's skin prickle to think of it. He remembered the hearth tales Old Nan told them. The wildlings were cruel men, she said, slavers and slayers and thieves. They consorted with giants and ghouls, stole girl children in the dead of night, and drank blood from polished horns. And their women lay with the Others in the Long Night to sire terrible half-human children.

But the man they found bound hand and foot to the holdfast wall awaiting the king's justice was old and scrawny, not much taller than Robb. He had lost both ears and a finger to frostbite, and he dressed all in black, the same as a brother of the Night's Watch, except that his furs were ragged and greasy.

A Game of Thrones - Bran IV

All Bran could think of was Old Nan's story of the Others and the last hero, hounded through the white woods by dead men and spiders big as hounds. He was afraid for a moment, until he remembered how that story ended. "The children will help him," he blurted, "the children of the forest!"

Theon Greyjoy sniggered, and Maester Luwin said, "Bran, the children of the forest have been dead and gone for thousands of years. All that is left of them are the faces in the trees."

 

A Clash of Kings - Bran V

Bran looked at him, his eyes wide. "What?"

"Warg. Shapechanger. Beastling. That is what they will call you, if they should ever hear of your wolf dreams."

The names made him afraid again. "Who will call me?"

 

~and then a few lines later~

"I don't want it. I want to be a knight."

"A knight is what you want. A warg is what you are. You can't change that, Bran, you can't deny it or push it away. You are the winged wolf, but you will never fly." Jojen got up and walked to the window. "Unless you open your eye." He put two fingers together and poked Bran in the forehead, hard.

When he raised his hand to the spot, Bran felt only the smooth unbroken skin. There was no eye, not even a closed one. "How can I open it if it's not there?"

[Philokles]

How aware Arya is about warging is uncertain, as her chapters are usually from the perspective of the persona she has adopted. But she must have some idea from when she consciously skinchanges the cat in Braavos.

[sweetsunray]

1 hour ago, Horse of Kent said:

How aware Arya is about warging is uncertain, as her chapters are usually from the perspective of the persona she has adopted. But she must have some idea from when she consciously skinchanges the cat in Braavos.

Both in the bar in Braavos as well as aferwards she's aware she's using cat eyes that aren't her blind ones. So, yes, without knowing the name, she knows she can slip into the mind of a cat and borrow their eyes (likely their smell, etc).

[sweetsunray]

While Nymeria does not visually show herself to Arya in the Riverlands, there are definitely hints that she's watching Arya, helping her, and sending and controlling her wolves to help Arya out.

1. There are the wolves when she goes to pee away at night. Facing them, initially she's scared, but they look at her for a moment and then move away. (aCoK)
2. The wolves howl outside of HH, the last chapter of aCoK, when Arya decides to escape (and force Gendry and Hot Pie to go along), shortly after she hears Ned's advice via the weirwood tree. They howl again after she killed the guard and they do escape. The wolves were waiting for her, calling out to her, almost as if they're saying - We're here! Now's the time! Escape, and we'll do the rest. (aCoK)
3. The first chapter that Arya, Gendry and Hot Pie are on the run, they have Bloody Mummers chasing them, as well as hears wolves. She dreams at some point how those wolves kill the Mummers trying to catch them. Only the Dothraki Bloody Mummer manages to escape. If Arya's seeing this in a dream through wolf eyes, we can infer that Nymeria was one of those wolves taking care of the Bloody Mummer hunting Arya. (aSoS)
4. Nymeria drags Catelyn out of the Green Fork, where Beric comes across it, while Beric and the BwB were trying to catch up with Sandor and Arya. Looking at a map that means that Nymeria's pack has traveled from the HH area (where she and her pack remained for all of aCoK) to the area North of the Trident. Hence, Nymeria and her wolf pack are trying to remain relatively close to Arya. (aSoS)
5. The BwB also mention seeing or hearing wolves nearby at least once, while Arya is with them (aSoS)

The claim that Arya and Nymeria don't have a bond, or that Nymeria resents Arya for chasing her away, with all of the above, plus her warg dreams while in Braavos is unattainable.

[Meera of Tarth]

18 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

While Nymeria does not visually show herself to Arya in the Riverlands, there are definitely hints that she's watching Arya, helping her, and sending and controlling her wolves to help Arya out.

1. There are the wolves when she goes to pee away at night. Facing them, initially she's scared, but they look at her for a moment and then move away. (aCoK)
2. The wolves howl outside of HH, the last chapter of aCoK, when Arya decides to escape (and force Gendry and Hot Pie to go along), shortly after she hears Ned's advice via the weirwood tree. They howl again after she killed the guard and they do escape. The wolves were waiting for her, calling out to her, almost as if they're saying - We're here! Now's the time! Escape, and we'll do the rest. (aCoK)
3. The first chapter that Arya, Gendry and Hot Pie are on the run, they have Bloody Mummers chasing them, as well as hears wolves. She dreams at some point how those wolves kill the Mummers trying to catch them. Only the Dothraki Bloody Mummer manages to escape. If Arya's seeing this in a dream through wolf eyes, we can infer that Nymeria was one of those wolves taking care of the Bloody Mummer hunting Arya. (aSoS)
4. Nymeria drags Catelyn out of the Green Fork, where Beric comes across it, while Beric and the BwB were trying to catch up with Sandor and Arya. Looking at a map that means that Nymeria's pack has traveled from the HH area (where she and her pack remained for all of aCoK) to the area North of the Trident. Hence, Nymeria and her wolf pack are trying to remain relatively close to Arya. (aSoS)
5. The BwB also mention seeing or hearing wolves nearby at least once, while Arya is with them (aSoS)

The claim that Arya and Nymeria don't have a bond, or that Nymeria resents Arya for chasing her away, with all of the above, plus her warg dreams while in Braavos is unattainable.

oh so she was there with her all the time. I love Nymeria I really want them to meet again

[Prof. Cecily]

 

 

7 hours ago, Horse of Kent said:

A skinchanged animal can make it perfectly clear that it resents being occupied, and could maybe even be able to resist an untrained warg like Arya, much as Thistle did Orell. Nymeria never reacts this way to Arya. The direwolves have a deep emotional connection to their owners, so Nymeria would realise that Arya was only forcing her to leave very reluctantly. Then you have the ambush of the Bolton men and pulling of Cat from the river which would seem odd favours for a girl you hate.

As for Nymeria being too wild to live with humans other than Arya, I am skeptical. The bigger, pretty unsurmountable problem is with the grey cousins.

The grey cousins. 

That's a poser.

 

2 minutes ago, Meera of Tarth said:

oh so she was there with her all the time. I love Nymeria I really want them to meet again

As do I.

It's the reunion I most want to read.

Well, then again, knowing GRRM's treatment of reunions of Arya with her loved ones thus far, mayhaps I'll not anticipate anything very happy.

[Weirwood Ghost]

On 03/07/2017 at 6:46 PM, snow is the man said:

I do agree about the size of a pony. Though to be fair some dogs are that big. I didn't mean to sound like a jerk if it came off that way I was just confused about the size of an aurochs thing

Nah you didn't come across that way. It made me go on a heroic fact check of my own lol

[Springwatch]

I'm still puzzled why Nym didn't track down Arya asap and help her get back to her relatives, which she wanted so desperately.

Maybe Bloodraven was holding her back? Or maybe Arya subconsciously wanted Nym to stay wild and free, and not risk her ending up like Lady.

It was a pretty risky strategy, either way.

[sweetsunray]

2 hours ago, Springwatch said:

I'm still puzzled why Nym didn't track down Arya asap and help her get back to her relatives, which she wanted so desperately.

Maybe Bloodraven was holding her back? Or maybe Arya subconsciously wanted Nym to stay wild and free, and not risk her ending up like Lady.

It was a pretty risky strategy, either way.

And what would have been the result of Arya getting to her mother and brother Robb? She'd have been a corpse in a river, minus a head, or raped by Ramsay and his dogs. I'd say it's safe to say something was guiding and holding back Nymeria and her pack, not necessarily Bloodraven though. The lake was calling to Arya, and the lake has an island with Green Men.

[snow is the man]

2 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

And what would have been the result of Arya getting to her mother and brother Robb? She'd have been a corpse in a river, minus a head, or raped by Ramsay and his dogs. I'd say it's safe to say something was guiding and holding back Nymeria and her pack, not necessarily Bloodraven though. The lake was calling to Arya, and the lake has an island with Green Men.

I think she was keeping arya safe. She killed the bloody mummers that were chasing arya when she escaped roose bolton. Despite the fact it made no sense for a wolf pack to attack four well armed people on horses since it is not an easy kill. The only reason nymeria should have done that is for her to protect arya.

[sweetsunray]

43 minutes ago, snow is the man said:

I think she was keeping arya safe. She killed the bloody mummers that were chasing arya when she escaped roose bolton. Despite the fact it made no sense for a wolf pack to attack four well armed people on horses since it is not an easy kill. The only reason nymeria should have done that is for her to protect arya.

Agreed.

And it's not as if Nymeria could have said "Hey hop on, I'll carry you to Riverrun". She was watching out for Arya.

[Clegane'sPup]

On 7/3/2017 at 5:24 PM, Horse of Kent said:

How aware Arya is about warging is uncertain, as her chapters are usually from the perspective of the persona she has adopted. But she must have some idea from when she consciously skinchanges the cat in Braavos.

Your post caught my attention and gave me an uh-oh moment. Arya is not only a warg; she is a skinchanger.

A Dance with Dragons - The Blind Girl     But she was no one and she heard most every word. And for a time it seemed that she could see them too, through the slitted yellow eyes of the tomcat purring in her lap <snip> The next morning, when the kindly man asked her what three things she knew that she had not known before, she was ready.

A Dance with Dragons - The Blind Girl     "Yes. I know that you're the one who has been hitting me." Her stick flashed out, and cracked against his fingers, sending his own stick clattering to the floor. The priest winced and snatched his hand back. "And how could a blind girl know that?"

I saw you. "I gave you three. I don't need to give you four." Maybe on the morrow she would tell him about the cat that had followed her home last night from Pynto's, the cat that was hiding in the rafters, looking down on them. Or maybe not. If he could have secrets, so could she.

I knew about the cat thing a while back after a poster told me where to look. It didn’t dawn on me that Arya may be a skinchanger as well as a warg until you mentioned it.