Nobody has ever explained whether the direwolves choose their children or the children choose them

Take this from a man who has rebuilt. Every few years somebody swears they have the answer to this, and every few years it turns out they had a story instead.

The question, put plainly: whether the direwolves choose their children or the children choose them. I think the plain answer is the true one, and everybody has talked themselves past it.

There is a version of this where the truth is dull — a bad decision, a bad winter, nobody's grand design — and I have never once heard anybody argue for it.

That is the whole of the lesson, and it was dear.