A Storm of Swords ÔÇö Arya IV

At Acorn Hall Lady Smallwood puts Arya in a dress with acorns on it; Tom's songs and Gendry's forge make the war feel briefly far away.

The chapter retold

At Acorn Hall, Arya Stark gets something the war has not allowed her in a long time: an afternoon that resembles peace. Lady Smallwood dresses her in a girl's gown patterned with acorns, an act of ordinary kindness that sits strangely on a child who has spent a year running, hiding and reciting a list of names to fall asleep by. Tom o' Sevenstrings sings, Gendry works metal at the forge because idle hands unsettle him more than danger does, and for a handful of pages the war recedes to something happening elsewhere, to other people.

The chapter is a deliberate exhale before the book resumes tightening the screws on Arya's road, and its gentleness is exactly the point ÔÇö it lets the reader (and Arya) remember what an ordinary childhood might have looked like right before the story starts taking even the memory of it away. Nothing here advances the war; it advances the reader's investment in what the war is about to cost her.

This movement: Dracarys

• In Astapor Dany trades Drogon for the Unsullied ÔÇö then speaks Valyrian, and the whip changes hands: Dracarys.
• Jaime loses his sword hand to Vargo Hoat's Brave Companions and learns what he is without it.
• Arya falls in with the Brotherhood Without Banners and watches a dead man rise from his seventh death.
• Tywin re-arranges the realm at his table: Tyrion to Sansa, Cersei to Willas ÔÇö the children object; the Hand doesn't care.