Did you catch Arya's tell while reading ASOIAF?

Potential Spoilers Below

Anyone who read the books knows exactly what this means.
If you don't then you just read a wikipedia synopsis

Arya is a combination of Nynaeve and Min from The Wheel of Time.  This blog isn't meant to be read word for word as it shows their repetitive tells between both Nynaeve and Arya within their respective stories.  It can also serve to show you how you block things out if you didn't catch them when you read it.

Arya

Nynaeve

Min

Min

Arya

The Wheel of Time: Tugging on her braid

Anyone who has read TWOT knows that whenever Nynaeve becomes mad or angry she tugs on her braid.  As a matter of fact she can’t channel the One Power without being angry, worried or troubled in the beginning.

“Are you talking to yourself again?” Nynaeve asked, pulling her bay gelding closer. The two women were of a height as well as dressed alike, but the difference in their horses put the former Wisdom of Emond's Field a head taller. Nynaeve frowned now, and tugged at the thick braid of dark hair hanging over her shoulder, the way she did when worried or troubled, or sometimes when she was preparing to be particularly stubborn even for her. A Great Serpent ring on her finger marked her as one of the Accepted, not yet Aes Sedai, but a long step closer than Egwene. “Better you should be keeping watch.”

Egwene opened her mouth to say he needed help now, but at Verin's stare, quick and furious, she closed it again. Nynaeve was tugging her braid nearly hard enough to pull it out of her head.

ff

Verin

“That is your opinion, is it?” the Amyrlin said. “A year out of your village, and you think you know enough of the world to choose which Aes Sedai to trust, and which not? A master sailor who's barely learned to hoist a sail!”

“She did not mean anything, Mother,” Egwene said, but she knew Nynaeve meant exactly what she had said. She shot a warning glance at Nynaeve. Nynaeve gave her braid a sharp tug, but she kept her mouth shut.

Ignoring them all, Elaida sat down in one of the chairs, carefully arranging her skirts. She made no gesture for the rest of them to sit. Nynaeve's face tightened, and she began giving sharp little tugs to her braid. Egwene hoped she would keep her temper well enough not to take the other chair without permission.

Elaida

Nynaeve appeared at the head of the ladder that led down to the passenger cabins, still straightening her skirts. With a sharp tug at her braid, she frowned at the knot of men in the bow, then strode to Egwene and Elayne. “He ran us onto something, did he? After all his talk of knowing the river as well as he knows his wife. The woman probably never receives as much as a smile from him.” She jerked the thick braid again and went forward, pushing her way through the sailors to reach the captain. They were all intent on the water below.

Elayne

Nynaeve gave them her flattest stare and deliberately tugged her braid. Elayne had her chin as high as it had ever been, her blue eyes haughty enough to chip ice. Thom and the others surely knew the signs by now; their nonsense was not going to be allowed. “If you think you are still following Rand al'Thor's orders to look after us —” Elayne began in frosty tones at the same time that Nynaeve said heatedly, “You promised to do as you were told, and I mean to see —”

dd

Rand

“They think they know everything,” Nynaeve muttered disparagingly. “I told them about nightmares. I warned them, and last night was not the first time.” It made no difference that all six sisters had been Healed before she so much as got back from Tel’aran’rhiod. Much too easily it could have ended much worse — because they thought they knew it all. The irritated tugs she gave her braid delayed redoing it for the day. 

If any two women needed looking out for less, Mat did not know them, but no two were more likely to get a man killed because they would not listen to reason. Nynaeve, poking into everything a man did or said or thought and tugging her bloody braid at a fellow all the time, and Elayne the bloody Daughter-Heir, thinking she could get her way by sticking her nose in the air and telling you what for as bad as Nynaeve ever did, only Elayne was worse, because if frosty highhandedness failed, Elayne smiled and flashed her dimple and expected everybody to fall down because she was pretty.

Finally Nynaeve understood. Finally everything came together. The Yellow sisters’ presence. Sheriam and Myrelle believing, then not believing, threatening her, snapping at her. It was all a purpose, all to make her angry enough to work her Healing on Siuan and Leane, to prove herself to the Yellows. No. By their faces, they were here to see her fail, not succeed. She made no effort to hide the firm tug she gave her braid. In fact, she did it again, in case anyone had missed the first time. She wanted to smack all their faces. She wanted to dose them with a concoction of herbs that would make them sit down on the floor and cry like babies just from the smell. She wanted to yank their hair out and strangle them with it, to —

Sheriam

Myrelle

Leane

She gave him a tight frown and led him inside tugging at her braid and muttering only partly to herself. “This is Rand’s doing, isn’t it? I know it is. Somehow it is. Frightening everybody half out of their wits. You just watch your step, Lord General Cauthon, or I swear you will wish I’d caught you stealing blueberries again. Frightening people! Even a man should have more sense! You stop that grinning, Mat Cauthon. I do not know what she’s going to make of this.”

Mat

Mat looked at the other two women, and Egwene compressed her lips for an instant. She had made herself plain, but he appeared to be hunting for a clue to what she was talking about. Elayne gave him back a tight smile and a decisively confirming nod. She might not see where Egwene was going, yet she knew she was not talking for the sound of her voice. Nynaeve, still struggling to keep a severe face and tugging at her braid, only glared at him, but maybe that was even better. Though she was beginning to sweat; Nynaeve lost concentration when she grew angry.

Nynaeve glowered at her, giving her braid one firm tug. The tails of her dress changed, the skirts growing a trifle fuller, the embroidery’s pattern altering, the high neck sinking, then rising again, sprouting lace. She was just not very good at the necessary concentration. The red dot on her forehead never wavered, though.

“And I think I’ll go find Lan,” Nynaeve said, gathering her skirts. “The company is better where he is.” That with a sharp tug on her braid and a glare divided between Alivia and Logain. “The wind tells me a storm is coming, Rand. And you know I don’t mean rain.”

Alivia

“The Last Battle?” Rand asked. “How soon?” When it came to weather, listening to the wind could sometimes tell her when the rains would come to the hour.

“It may be, and I don’t know. Just remember. A storm is coming. A terrible storm.” Overhead, thunder rolled.

“If you’re thinking of any impropriety, Master Saranche,” Nynaeve said indignantly, tugging at the braid hanging from the cowl of her cloak, “you had best think twice and again. Before I box your ears.” Min hissed softly, and one hand drifted toward her other wrist before she checked the motion. Light, but she was quick to reach for her knives!

Of the Aes Sedai sworn to Rand, only Beldeine was there at the moment. Cadsuane sat near Min, perusing her own book. Nynaeve walked back and forth, up and down, occasionally tugging on her braid. Nobody spoke of the tension in the room.

Cadsuane

She and Naeff made their way out of the building, Nynaeve's frustration mounting as she tugged on her braid. She hated feeling helpless. Like with the poor guard who had started the fire back at the manor house in Arad Doman, or the people who were struck down by strange diseases. The dusty husks this day. What was the good of learning to Heal if she couldn't help people?

The Game of Thrones: What is Arya’s tell?  Did you catch it when you read ASOIAF?

Arya stopped at the door and turned back, biting her lip. The tears were running down her cheeks now. She managed a stiff little bow to Myrcella. “By your leave, my lady.”

Lord Eddard Stark sighed. “My nine-year-old daughter is being armed from my own forge, and I know nothing of it. The Hand of the King is expected to rule the Seven Kingdoms, yet it seems I cannot even rule my own household. How is it that you come to own a sword, Arya? Where did you get this?”

Arya chewed her lip and said nothing. She would not betray Jon, not even to their father.

Jon and Arya's last encounter

By the time she had reached eighty-seven, the room had begun to lighten as her eyes adjusted to the blackness. Slowly the shapes around her took on form. Huge empty eyes stared at her hungrily through the gloom, and dimly she saw the jagged shadows of long teeth. She had lost the count. She closed her eyes and bit her lip and sent the fear away. When she looked again, the monsters would be gone. Would never have been. She pretended that Syrio was beside her in the dark, whispering in her ear. Calm as still water, she told herself. Strong as a bear. Fierce as a wolverine. She opened her eyes again.

A knight of the Kingsguard stood beneath the arch of the door with five Lannister guardsmen arrayed behind him. He was in full armor, but his visor was up. Arya remembered his droopy eyes and rust-colored whiskers from when he had come to Winterfell with the king: Ser Meryn Trant. The red cloaks wore mail shirts over boiled leather and steel caps with lion crests. “Arya Stark,” the knight said, “come with us, child.”

Ser Meryn Trant

Arya chewed her lip uncertainly. “What do you want?”

“Your father wants to see you.”

Arya took a step forward, but Syrio Forel held her by the arm. “And why is it that Lord Eddard is sending Lannister men in the place of his own? I am wondering.”

“Mind your place, dancing master,” Ser Meryn said. “This is no concern of yours.”

Everyone was moving in the same direction, all in a hurry to see what the ringing was all about. The bells seemed louder now, clanging, calling. Arya joined the stream of people. Her thumb hurt so bad where the nail had broken that it was all she could do not to cry. She bit her lip as she limped along, listening to the excited voices around her.

“—the King’s Hand, Lord Stark. They’re carrying him up to Baelor’s Sept.”

When the bell ceased to toll, a quiet slowly settled across the great plaza, and her father lifted his head and began to speak, his voice so thin and weak she could scarcely make him out. People behind her began to shout out, “What?” and “Louder!” The man in the black-and-gold armor stepped up behind Father and prodded him sharply. You leave him alone! Arya wanted to shout, but she knew no one would listen. She chewed her lip

The men paid her no mind, but she was not so lucky with the boys. She was two years younger than the youngest orphan, not to mention smaller and skinnier, and Lommy and Hot Pie took her silence to mean she was scared, or stupid, or deaf. “Look at that sword Lumpyhead’s got there,” Lommy said one morning as they made their plodding way past orchards and wheat fields. He’d been a dyer’s apprentice before he was caught stealing, and his arms were mottled green to the elbow. When he laughed he brayed like the donkeys they were riding. “Where’s a gutter rat like Lumpyhead get him a sword?”

Lommy

Hot Pie

Arya chewed her lip sullenly. She could see the back of Yoren’s faded black cloak up ahead of the wagons, but she was determined not to go crying to him for help.

Yoren

I won’t, Arya thought stubbornly, but when Yoren laid the wood against the back of her bare thighs, the shriek burst out of her anyway. “Think that hurt?” he said. “Try this one.” The stick came whistling. Arya shrieked again, clutching the tree to keep from falling. “One more.” She held on tight, chewing her lip, flinching when she heard it coming. The stroke made her jump and howl. I won’t cry, she thought, I won’t do that. I’m a Stark of Winterfell, our sigil is the direwolf, direwolves don’t cry. She could feel a thin trickle of blood running down her left leg. Her thighs and cheeks were ablaze with pain. “Might be I got your attention now,” Yoren said. “Next time you take that stick to one of your brothers, you’ll get twice what you give, you hear me? Now cover yourself.”

“That’s nothing to us,” Yoren insisted stubbornly. “Tully or Lannister, makes no matter. The Watch takes no part.”

Lord Tully is my grandfather, Arya thought. It mattered to her, but she chewed her lip and kept quiet, listening.

“It’s more than Lannister and Tully,” the innkeeper said. “There’s wild men down from the Mountains of the Moon, try telling them you take no part. And the Starks are in it too, the young lord’s come down, the dead Hand’s son . . .”

Arya sat up straight, straining to hear. Did he mean Robb?

Robb

“You take her!” she yelled. “You get her out! You do it!” The fire beat at her back with hot red wings as she fled the burning barn. It felt blessedly cool outside, but men were dying all around her. She saw Koss throw down his blade to yield, and she saw them kill him where he stood. Smoke was everywhere. There was no sign of Yoren, but the axe was where Gendry had left it, by the woodpile outside the haven. As she wrenched it free, a mailed hand grabbed her arm. Spinning, Arya drove the head of the axe hard between his legs. She never saw his face, only the dark blood seeping between the links of his hauberk. Going back into that barn was the hardest thing she ever did. Smoke was pouring out the open door like a writhing black snake, and she could hear the screams of the poor animals inside, donkeys and horses and men. She chewed her lip, and darted through the doors, crouched low where the smoke wasn’t quite so thick.

Gendry

Someone’s there. Arya chewed her lip. All the other places they’d come upon had been empty and desolate. Farms, villages, castles, septs, barns, it made no matter. If it could burn, the Lannisters had burned it; if it could die, they’d killed it. They had even set the woods ablaze where they could, though the leaves were still green and wet from recent rains, and the fires had not spread. “They would have burned the lake if they could have,” Gendry had said, and Arya knew he was right. On the night of their escape, the flames of the burning town had shimmered so brightly on the water that it had seemed that the lake was afire.

“I wish I knew. I think Yoren knew, but he never told me. Why did you think they were after you, though?”

Arya bit her lip. She remembered what Yoren had said, the day he had hacked off her hair. This lot, half o’ them would turn you over to the queen quick as spit for a pardon and maybe a few silvers. The other half’d do the same, only they’d rape you first. Only Gendry was different, the queen wanted him too. “I’ll tell you if you’ll tell me,” she said warily.

“I would if I knew, Arry . . . is that really what you’re called, or do you have some girl’s name?”

The guards were talking loudly, but she was too far away to make out the words, especially with the crows gabbling and flapping closer to hand. One of the spearmen snatched the helm off Gendry’s head and asked him a question, but he must not have liked the answer, because he smashed him across the face with the butt of his spear and knocked him down. The one who’d captured him gave him a kick, while the second spearman was trying on the bull’s-head helm. Finally they pulled him to his feet and marched him off toward the storehouse. When they opened the heavy wooden doors, a small boy darted out, but one of the guards grabbed his arm and flung him back inside. Arya heard sobbing from inside the building, and then a shriek so loud and full of pain that it made her bite her lip.

It would be better once they got to Harrenhal, the captives told each other, but Arya was not so certain. She remembered Old Nan’s stories of the castle built on fear. Harren the Black had mixed human blood in the mortar, Nan used to say, dropping her voice so the children would need to lean close to hear, but Aegon’s dragons had roasted Harren and all his sons within their great walls of stone. Arya chewed her lip as she walked along on feet grown hard with callus. It would not be much longer, she told herself; those towers could not be more than a few miles off.

Aegon

Arya had not known her brother was so near. Riverrun was much closer than Winterfell, though she was not certain where it lay in relation to Harrenhal. I could find out somehow, I know I could, if only I could get away. When she thought of seeing Robb’s face again Arya had to bite her lip. And I want to see Jon too, and Bran and Rickon, and Mother. Even Sansa . . . I’ll kiss her and beg her pardons like a proper lady, she’ll like that.

Bran

Rickon

Catelyn

Sansa

Two nights later, he sent her to the Barracks Hall to serve at table. She was carrying a flagon of wine and pouring when she glimpsed Jaqen H’ghar at his trencher across the aisle. Chewing her lip, Arya glanced around warily to make certain Weese was not in sight. Fear cuts deeper than swords, she told herself.

The longsword was a lot heavier than Needle had been, but Arya liked the feel of it. The weight of steel in her hands made her feel stronger. Maybe I’m not a water dancer yet, but I’m not a mouse either. A mouse couldn’t use a sword but I can. The gates were open, soldiers coming and going, drays rolling in empty and going out creaking and swaying under their loads. She thought about going to the stables and telling them that Ser Lyonel wanted a new horse. She had the paper, the stableboys wouldn’t be able to read it any better than Lucan had. I could take the horse and the sword and just ride out. If the guards tried to stop me I’d show them the paper and say I was bringing everything to Ser Lyonel. She had no notion what Ser Lyonel looked like or where to find him, though. If they questioned her, they’d know, and then Weese . . . Weese . . .

As she chewed her lip, trying not to think about how it would feel to have her feet cut off, a group of archers in leather jerkins and iron helms went past, their bows slung across their shoulders. Arya heard snatches of their talk.

“Ser Amory sent them down to the dungeon. The one under the Widow’s Tower, that’s just one big cell. You could smash the door open with your hammer—”

“While the guards watch and make bets on how many swings it will take me, maybe?”

Arya chewed her lips. “We’d need to kill the guards.”

But thinking of the village made her remember the march, and the storeroom, and the Tickler. She thought of the little boy who’d been hit in the face with the mace, of stupid old All-for-Joffrey, of Lommy Greenhands. I was a sheep, and then I was a mouse, I couldn’t do anything but hide. Arya chewed her lip and tried to think when her courage had come back. Jaqen made me brave again. He made me a ghost instead of a mouse.

“A girl forgets,” he said quietly. “Two she has had, three were owed. If a guard must die, she needs only speak his name.”

“But one guard won’t be enough, we need to kill them all to open the cell.” Arya bit her lip hard to stop from crying. “I want you to save the northmen like I saved you.”

“I take back the name.” Arya chewed her lip. “Do I still have a third death?”

“A girl is greedy.” Jaqen touched one of the dead guards and showed her his bloody fingers. “Here is three and there is four and eight more lie dead below. The debt is paid.”

“The debt is paid,” Arya agreed reluctantly. She felt a little sad. Now she was just a mouse again.

“A god has his due. And now a man must die.” A strange smile touched the lips of Jaqen H’ghar.

As Arya crossed the yard to the bathhouse, she spied a raven circling down toward the rookery, and wondered where it had come from and what message it carried. Might be it’s from Robb, come to say it wasn’t true about Bran and Rickon. She chewed on her lip, hoping. If I had wings I could fly back to Winterfell and see for myself. And if it was true, I’d just fly away, fly up past the moon and the shining stars, and see all the things in Old Nan’s stories, dragons and sea monsters and the Titan of Braavos, and maybe I wouldn’t ever fly back unless I wanted to.

Old Nan

Titan of Braavos

She nodded. “We’ll be safe once we reach Riverrun.”

“We will? Why?”

Because Riverrun is my grandfather’s castle, and my brother Robb will be there, she wanted to say. She bit her lip and rolled up the map. “We just will. But only if we get there.” She was the first one back in the saddle. It made her feel bad to hide the truth from Hot Pie, but she did not trust him with her secret. Gendry knew, but that was different. Gendry had his own secret, though even he didn’t seem to know what it was.

From time to time she sent Hot Pie and Gendry on while she doubled back to try to confuse their trail, listening all the while for the first sign of pursuit. Too slow, she thought to herself, chewing her lip, we’re going too slow, they’ll catch us for certain. Once, from the crest of a ridge, she spied dark shapes crossing a stream in the valley behind them, and for half a heartbeat she feared that Roose Bolton’s riders were on them, but when she looked again she realized they were only a pack of wolves. She cupped her hands around her mouth and howled down at them, “Ahooooooooo, ahooooooooo.” When the largest of the wolves lifted its head and howled back, the sound made Arya shiver.

Roose Bolton

Arya chewed her lip. “I don’t think this is the Trident.” The river was swollen by the rain, but even so it couldn’t be much more than thirty feet across. She remembered the Trident as being much wider. “It’s too little to be the Trident,” she told them, “and we didn’t come far enough.”

“Did you hear that?” a man’s voice said. “There’s something behind that wall, I would say.”

“Aye,” replied a second voice, deeper. “What do you think it might be, Archer?”

Two, then. Arya bit her lip. She could not see them from where she knelt, on account of the willow. But she could hear.

He looked dubious. “Did you ever sail a boat?”

“You put up the sail,” she said, “and the wind pushes it.”

“What if the wind is blowing the wrong way?”

“Then there’s oars to row.”

“Against the current?” Gendry frowned. “Wouldn’t that be slow? And what if the boat tips over and we fall into the water? It’s not our boat anyway, it’s the inn’s.”

We could take it. Arya chewed her lip and said nothing. They dismounted in front of stables. There were no other horses to be seen, but Arya noticed fresh manure in many of the stalls. “One of us should watch the horses,” she said, wary.

The rains came and went, but there was more grey sky than blue, and all the streams were running high. On the morning of the third day, Arya noticed that the moss was growing mostly on the wrong side of the trees. “We’re going the wrong way,” she said to Gendry, as they rode past an especially mossy elm. “We’re going south. See how the moss is growing on the trunk?”

He pushed thick black hair from eyes and said, “We’re following the road, that’s all. The road goes south here.”

We’ve been going south all day, she wanted to tell him. And yesterday too, when we were riding along that streambed. But she hadn’t been paying close attention yesterday, so she couldn’t be certain. “I think we’re lost,” she said in a low voice. “We shouldn’t have left the river. All we had to do was follow it.”

“The river bends and loops,” said Gendry. “This is just a shorter way, I bet. Some secret outlaw way. Lem and Tom and them have been living here for years.”

That was true. Arya bit her lip. “But the moss . . .”

“You’re not going to Riverrun,” Lem told her bluntly.

I was almost there, Arya thought. I should have let them take our horses. I could have walked the rest of the way. She remembered her dream then, and bit her lip.

The next night they found shelter beneath the scorched shell of a sept, in a burned village called Sallydance. Only shards remained of its windows of leaded glass, and the aged septon who greeted them said the looters had even made off with the Mother’s costly robes, the Crone’s gilded lantern, and the silver crown the Father had worn. “They hacked the Maiden’s breasts off too, though those were only wood,” he told them. “And the eyes, the eyes were jet and lapis and mother-of-pearl, they pried them out with their knives. May the Mother have mercy on them all.”

“Whose work was this?” said Lem Lemoncloak. “Mummers?”

“No,” the old man said. “Northmen, they were. Savages who worship trees. They wanted the Kingslayer, they said.”

Kingslayer

Arya heard him, and chewed her lip. She could feel Gendry looking at her. It made her angry and ashamed.

Lem and Gendry played tiles with their hosts that night, while Tom Sevenstrings sang a silly song about Big Belly Ben and the High Septon’s goose. Anguy let Arya try his longbow, but no matter how hard she bit her lip she could not draw it. “You need a lighter bow, milady,” the freckled bowman said. “If there’s seasoned wood at Riverrun, might be I’ll make you one.”

That much was true, Arya knew. Knights were captured and ransomed all the time, and sometimes women were too. But what if Robb won’t pay their price? She wasn’t a famous knight, and kings were supposed to put the realm before their sisters. And her lady mother, what would she say? Would she still want her back, after all the things she’d done? Arya chewed her lip and wondered.

Flames were creeping up the west wall of the septry, and thick smoke poured through a broken window. A Myrish crossbowman poked his head out a different window, got off a bolt, and ducked down to rewind. She could hear fighting from the stables as well, shouts well mingled with the screams of horses and the clang of steel. Kill them all, she thought fiercely. She bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. Kill every single one.

Arya looked at him warily, remembering all the tales told of him in Harrenhal. Lord Beric seemed to sense her fear. He turned his head, and beckoned her closer. “Do I frighten you, child?”

Beric Dondarrion

“No.” She chewed her lip. “Only . . . well . . . I thought the Hound had killed you, but . . .”

The Hound

“Your father was a good man,” Lord Beric said. “Harwin has told me much of him. For his sake, I would gladly forgo your ransom, but we need the gold too desperately.”

She chewed her lip. That’s true, I guess. He had given the Hound’s gold to Greenbeard and the Huntsman to buy provisions south of the Mander, she knew. “The last harvest burned, this one is drowning, and winter will soon be on us,” she had heard him say when he sent them off. “The smallfolk need grain and seed, and we need blades and horses. Too many of my men ride rounseys, drays, and mules against foes mounted on coursers and destriers.”

“I’ll smith for you.” Gendry went to one knee before Lord Beric. “If you’ll have me, m’lord, I could be of use. I’ve made tools and knives and once I made a helmet that wasn’t so bad. One of the Mountain’s men stole it from me when we was taken.”

The Mountain

Arya bit her lip. He means to leave me too.

“The castle’s not closed,” Arya said suddenly. The sergeant had said it would be, but he was wrong. The portcullis was being drawn upward even as she watched, and the drawbridge had already been lowered to span the swollen moat. She had been afraid that Lord Frey’s guardsmen would refuse to let them in. For half a heartbeat she chewed her lip, too anxious to smile.

Walder Frey

Arya would never have a better chance to escape. She could ride off on Craven and take Stranger too. She chewed her lip. Then she led the horses to the stables, and went in after him.

The Hound sat on the bench closest to the door. His mouth twitched, but only the burned side. “She ought to dip him in wildfire and cook him. Or tickle him till the moon turns black.” He raised his wine cup and drained it straightaway.

He’s one of them, Arya thought when she saw that. She bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. He’s just like they are. I should kill him when he sleeps.

Her knuckles brushed the steel the first time she filled the cup, burning her so badly she got blisters. Arya had to bite her lip to keep from screaming. The Hound used the stick for the same purpose, clamping it between his teeth as she poured. She did the gash in his thigh first, then the shallower cut on the back of his neck. Sandor coiled his right hand into a fist and beat against the ground when she did his leg. When it came to his neck, he bit the stick so hard it broke, and she had to find him a new one. She could see the terror in his eyes. “Turn your head.” She trickled the wine down over the raw red flesh where his ear had been, and fingers of brown blood and red wine crept over his jaw. He did scream then, despite the stick. Then he passed out from the pain.

I need silver. The realization made her bite her lip. They had found a stag and a dozen coppers on Polliver, eight silvers on the pimply squire she’d killed, and only a couple of pennies in the Tickler’s purse. But the Hound had told her to pull off his boots and slice open his blood-drenched clothes, and she’d turned up a stag in each toe, and three golden dragons sewn in the lining of his jerkin. Sandor had kept it all, though. That wasn’t fair. It was mine as much as his. If she had given him the gift of mercy . . . she hadn’t, though. She couldn’t go back, no more than she could beg for help. Begging for help never gets you any. She would have to sell Craven, and hope she brought enough.

Arya bit her lip. “Does that mean you won’t buy her?”

The woman chuckled. “It means you’ll take what I give you, sweetling. Else we go down to the castle, and maybe you get nothing. Or even hanged, for stealing some good knight’s horse.”

A half-dozen other Saltpans folks were around, going about their business, so Arya knew she couldn’t kill the woman. Instead she had to bite her lip and let herself be cheated. The purse she got was pitifully flat, and when she asked for more for the saddle and bridle and blanket, the woman just laughed at her.

Ashore. Arya bit her lip. She had crossed the narrow sea to get here, but if the captain had asked she would have told him she wanted to stay aboard the Titan’s Daughter. Salty was too small to man an oar, she knew that now, but she could learn to splice ropes and reef the sails and steer a course across the great salt seas. Denyo had taken her up to the crow’s nest once, and she hadn’t been afraid at all, though the deck had seemed a tiny thing below her. I can do sums too, and keep a cabin neat.

Titan's Daughter\

The dock was shadowed, the steps steep. The temple’s black tile roof came to a sharp peak, like the houses along the canals. Arya chewed her lip. Syrio came from Braavos. He might have visited this temple. He might have climbed those steps. She grabbed a ring and pulled herself up onto the dock.

“You are,” he said, “but the House of Black and White is no place for Arya, of House Stark.”

“Please,” she said. “I have no place to go.”

“Do you fear death?”

She bit her lip. “No.”

“I don’t whisper any names,” she said.

“You lie,” he said. “All men lie when they are afraid. Some tell many lies, some but a few. Some have only one great lie they tell so often that they almost come to believe it . . . though some small part of them will always know that it is still a lie, and that will show upon their faces. Tell me of these names.”

She chewed her lip. “The names don’t matter.”

“They do,” the kindly man insisted. “Tell me, child.”

Tell me, or we will turn you out, she heard. “They’re people I hate. I want them to die.”

That night after supper, Arya went back to her cell and took off her robe and whispered her names, but sleep refused to take her. She tossed on her mattress stuffed with rags, gnawing on her lip. She could feel the hole inside her where her heart had been.

Even sewing was more fun than tongues, she told herself, after a night when she had forgotten half the words she thought she knew, and pronounced the other half so badly that the waif had laughed at her. My sentences are as crooked as my stitches used to be. If the girl had not been so small and starved, Arya would have smashed her stupid face. Instead she gnawed her lip. Too stupid to learn and too stupid to give up.

Arya chewed her lip. “Would it work on dogs?”

“On any animal with warm blood.” The waif slapped her.

She raised her hand to her cheek, more surprised than hurt. “Why did you do that?”

“It is Arya of House Stark who chews on her lip whenever she is thinking. Are you Arya of House Stark?”

“I am no one.” She was angry. “Who are you?”

“Who are you?” plague face asked when they were alone.

“No one.”

“Not so. You are Arya of House Stark, who bites her lip and cannot tell a lie.”

“I was. I’m not now.”

“Why are you here, liar?”

“To serve. To learn. To change my face.”

“First change your heart. The gift of the Many-Faced God is not a child’s plaything. You would kill for your own purposes, for your own pleasures. Do you deny it?”

She bit her lip. “I—”

He slapped her.

The blow left her cheek stinging, but she knew that she had earned it. “Thank you.” Enough slaps, and she might stop chewing on her lip. Arya did that, not the night wolf. “I do deny it.”

“What price?”

“The price is you. The price is all you have and all you ever hope to have. We took your eyes and gave them back. Next we will take your ears, and you will walk in silence. You will give us your legs and crawl. You will be no one’s daughter, no one’s wife, no one’s mother. Your name will be a lie, and the very face you wear will not be your own.”

She almost bit her lip again, but this time she caught herself and stopped. My face is a dark pool, hiding everything, showing nothing. She thought of all the names that she had worn: Arry, Weasel, Squab, Cat of the Canals. She thought of that stupid girl from Winterfell called Arya Horseface. Names did not matter. “I can pay the price. Give me a face.”

“Faces must be earned.”

“Do they frighten you, child?” asked the kindly man. “It is not too late for you to leave us. Is this truly what you want?”

Arya bit her lip. She did not know what she wanted. If I leave, where will I go? She had washed and stripped a hundred corpses, dead things did not frighten her. They carry them down here and slice their faces off, so what? She was the night wolf, no scraps of skin could frighten her. Leather hoods, that’s all they are, they cannot hurt me. “Do it,” she blurted out.

The Wheel of Time:  Who is Min?

Elmindreda "Min" Farshaw is a woman, originally from Baerlon, who has viewings at times, of auras and visions that can tell something about the future of the person being viewed. Min has also become a recent student of philosophy since the death of Herid Fel. She is the second woman to become the lover of Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, and is his only lover who is by his side at all times.

She is considered very attractive, described as 'uncommonly pretty' if short of beautiful. She is slender with short brown hair that curls about her neck, and large, dark eyes. While she adamantly refuses to wear skirts or dresses, she now wears breeches that are tailored to show off her petite curves.

"Min was always smiling, always a little amused by everything."

Min grew up in Baerlon, under the patronage of a father who did not curb her tomboyish tendencies. After he died, she was raised by her three aunts (Jan, Rana, and Miren), who failed miserably at making a "proper woman" out of her. Her full name, "Elmindreda," comes from a character in a story who spends most of her time sighing over men and trying to get them to compose songs about her. This is very unlike her, which is why she prefers to go by the diminutive version of the name. Min is fiercely independent and has a wry sense of humor.

The Game of Thrones:  Why is Arya like Min?

Arya took after their lord father. Her hair was a lusterless brown, and her face was long and solemn. 

 One day she came back grinning her horsey grin, her hair all tangled and her clothes covered in mud, clutching a raggedy bunch of purple and green flowers for Father. Sansa kept hoping he would tell Arya to behave herself and act like the highborn lady she was supposed to be, but he never did, he only hugged her and thanked her for the flowers. That just made her worse.

A soft knock at the door behind her turned Arya away from the window and her dreams of escape. “Arya,” her father’s voice called out. “Open the door. We need to talk.”

Arya crossed the room and lifted the crossbar. Father was alone. He seemed more sad than angry. That made Arya feel even worse. “May I come in?” Arya nodded, then dropped her eyes, ashamed. Father closed the door. “Whose sword is that?”

“Mine.” Arya had almost forgotten Needle, in her hand.

“Give it to me.”

Reluctantly Arya surrendered her sword, wondering if she would ever hold it again. Her father turned it in the light, examining both sides of the blade. He tested the point with his thumb. “A bravo’s blade,” he said. “Yet it seems to me that I know this maker’s mark. This is Mikken’s work.”

Arya could not lie to him. She lowered her eyes.

Lord Eddard Stark sighed. “My nine-year-old daughter is being armed from my own forge, and I know nothing of it. The Hand of the King is expected to rule the Seven Kingdoms, yet it seems I cannot even rule my own household. How is it that you come to own a sword, Arya? Where did you get this?”

Arya chewed her lip and said nothing. She would not betray Jon, not even to their father.

After a while, Father said, “I don’t suppose it matters, truly.” He looked down gravely at the sword in his hands. “This is no toy for children, least of all for a girl. What would Septa Mordane say if she knew you were playing with swords?”

“I wasn’t playing,” Arya insisted. “I hate Septa Mordane.”

“That’s enough.” Her father’s voice was curt and hard. “The septa is doing no more than is her duty, though gods know you have made it a struggle for the poor woman. Your mother and I have charged her with the impossible task of making you a lady.”

“I don’t want to be a lady!” Arya flared.

“I ought to snap this toy across my knee here and now, and put an end to this nonsense.”

“Needle wouldn’t break,” Arya said defiantly, but her voice betrayed her words.

“It has a name, does it?” Her father sighed. “Ah, Arya. You have a wildness in you, child. ‘The wolf blood,’ my father used to call it. Lyanna had a touch of it, and my brother Brandon more than a touch. It brought them both to an early grave.” Arya heard sadness in his voice; he did not often speak of his father, or of the brother and sister who had died before she was born. “Lyanna might have carried a sword, if my lord father had allowed it. You remind me of her sometimes. You even look like her.”

“Lyanna was beautiful,” Arya said, startled. Everybody said so. It was not a thing that was ever said of Arya.

Lyanna

“She was,” Eddard Stark agreed, “beautiful, and willful, and dead before her time.” He lifted the sword, held it out between them. “Arya, what did you think to do with this … Needle? Who did you hope to skewer? Your sister? Septa Mordane? Do you know the first thing about sword fighting?”

Septa Mordane

All she could think of was the lesson Jon had given her. “Stick them with the pointy end,” she blurted out.

Her father snorted back laughter. “That is the essence of it, I suppose.”

Lady Smallwood welcomed the outlaws kindly enough, though she gave them a tongue lashing for dragging a young girl through the war. She became even more wroth when Lem let slip that Arya was highborn. “Who dressed the poor child in those Bolton rags?” she demanded of them. “That badge . . . there’s many a man who would hang her in half a heartbeat for wearing a flayed man on her breast.” Arya promptly found herself marched upstairs, forced into a tub, and doused with scalding hot water. Lady Smallwood’s maidservants scrubbed her so hard it felt like they were flaying her themselves. They even dumped in some stinky-sweet stuff that smelled like flowers.

And afterward, they insisted she dress herself in girl’s things, brown woolen stockings and a light linen shift, and over that a light green gown with acorns embroidered all over the bodice in brown thread, and more acorns bordering the hem. “My great-aunt is a septa at a motherhouse in Oldtown,” Lady Smallwood said as the women laced the gown up Arya’s back. “I sent my daughter there when the war began. She’ll have outgrown these things by the time she returns, no doubt. Are you fond of dancing, child? My Carellen’s a lovely dancer. She sings beautifully as well. What do you like to do?”

“I look like an oak tree, with all these stupid acorns.”

“Nice, though. A nice oak tree.” He stepped closer, and sniffed at her. “You even smell nice for a change.”

“You don’t. You stink.” Arya shoved him back against the anvil and made to run, but Gendry caught her arm. She stuck a foot between his legs and tripped him, but he yanked her down with him, and they rolled across the floor of the smithy. He was very strong, but she was quicker. Every time he tried to hold her still she wriggled free and punched him. Gendry only laughed at the blows, which made her mad. He finally caught both her wrists in one hand and started to tickle her with the other, so Arya slammed her knee between his legs, and wrenched free. Both of them were covered in dirt, and one sleeve was torn on her stupid acorn dress. “I bet I don’t look so nice now,” she shouted.

“Under Harren’s roof he ate and drank with the wolves, and many of their sworn swords besides, barrowdown men and moose and bears and mermen. The dragon prince sang a song so sad it made the wolf maid sniffle, but when her pup brother teased her for crying she poured wine over his head. A black brother spoke, asking the knights to join the Night’s Watch. The storm lord drank down the knight of skulls and kisses in a wine-cup war. The crannogman saw a maid with laughing purple eyes dance with a white sword, a red snake, and the lord of griffins, and lastly with the quiet wolf . . . but only after the wild wolf spoke to her on behalf of a brother too shy to leave his bench.

That night they gave her back the face of Arya Stark.

They brought a robe for her as well, the soft thick robe of an acolyte, black upon one side and white upon the other. “Wear this when you are here,” the priest said, “but know that you shall have little need of it for the present. On the morrow you will go to Izembaro to begin your first apprenticeship. Take what clothes you will from the vaults below. The city watch is looking for a certain ugly girl, known to frequent the Purple Harbor, so best you have a new face as well.” He cupped her chin, turned her head this way and that, nodded. “A pretty one this time, I think. As pretty as your own. Who are you, child?”

Summation:  There is no way that ASOIAF would not include a tell like Nynaeve tugging on her braid for one of its characters because it would be sacrilege IMO.  That is why I believe Arya is always biting, chewing or gnawing on her lip.  What Nynaeve did over 14 books quantity wise Arya has already surpassed in 5 books.  If you missed her tell then you weren’t paying attention.  Min was named after a storybook character named Elmindreda who spent most of her time sighing over men and trying to get them to compose songs about her.  Arya is told she looks like her Aunt Lyanna.  Prince Rhaegar sang a song so sad it was said it made her cry giving a nod to Elmindreda.  Also like Min Arya doesn’t like to wear dresses and prefers to wear clothes that boys would normally wear.  Both of their fathers did nothing to curb their behaving like tomboys. 

Prince Rhaegar proclaming Lyanna the Queen of Love and Beauty

Prince Rhaegar and Lyanna at the Tower of Joy

Anyone who has read TWOT knows all about the smoothing of skirts and Nynaeve tugging at her braid so I see Arya chewing her lip as simply a homage to Nynaeve.  Her playing with small swords and daggers is a homage to Min.  Nynaeve was a strong female character within TWOT and Arya is and continues to be a strong female character within ASOIAF.

Comments encouraged.  Love to hear the idea’s of others.  Most believe that since I present my idea’s as “fact like” I’m not open to change my viewpoints which is far from the truth.  I simply look at the information presented and go from there.  If you can shine a light on another way of thinking that opens the door to debate.