Wolf RPG - so I can watch your face as I take it all away

Still the trance clung to her, like a veil that fell before her eyes, altering the world as she saw it. She lay draped on the cool earth, though her chest felt as if it held a fire, melting quickly the drifting snow that happened to land on her pelt, warding away the frost. Her head she held twisted, gaze on the stars as they drifted in and out of oblivion, seeming to skitter across the sky like water striders. She was always so careful with her herbs, and near always they served her well. The world had shifted and danced, though only a single image held fast in her mind.

The woman realized at some point that she was singing; a low, drowsy toon that praised the stars and the night, nonsensical for the most part, but something to fill the silence. Her voice rose a dipped in pitch and volume, oddly sweet for the vacant woman.

Wardruna hears the singing: the low, drowsy warble of indiscernible words though whether it is the woman’s state or his failure to correctly translate them into words and sentences that he best understands he does not know. He comes across her on accident. The sylph is charcoal with ash and bits of rust and at first, through a trick of the shadows and only one functioning eye Wardruna ( dangerously! ) mistakes her for a rock at a quick, first glimpse. It comes to his attention though that it is she that sings the song and his attention — for better or for worse — is captivated. She stares skyward at the painting of starlight upon the velveteen colors of night, entranced. He has seen similar effects of the young Völva’s growing up in Jötunn’s Spine. The seeresses that would lead the rituals the pack conducted: those that held the gift of communing with the Gods. He wonders what she sees, as he casually and slowly, as not to disturb her, settles upon his haunches. There is plenty of amiable distance between them: he is a firm believer in personal space when meeting strangers if only to protect himself. His blindside leaves him all but entirely vulnerable and though his other senses have since heightened to sharpen and attempt to make up for the lack of sight in that eye to give him a better chance of survival it is still not the same. Not yet. Perhaps in time. For the moment he is content to let her to her trance.

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Movement in the corner of her eye, and the stars are drawn to it, clustering around it and dancing slowly. Her song fades into silence, wondering if this might be a final image, a final sign. Her head untwists, slowly settling on the wolf, the hulking shape that towers above her, And yet, she is not afraid. It is not the release of the drug that lends her this confidence, but rather; "the stars," she pauses, voice lilting. "they favour you."

She was fairly certain that the wolf was real, he was male. He did not exist in the ethereal way that her visions did, no, he was steady and real. And she felt certain that he was important, if not to her than to life itself, for the very stars seemed to leave their places in the sky to dance alongside him.

What little Wardruna knows of stars is of the stories passed down from generation to generation: they are small embers and sparks that had burst forth and been cast out of the world of fire that has been sent into the night sky to illuminate the heavens and the earth. He looks to them and simply sees embers of the world of fire: failing to see the shapes and destinies that some claim to be able to read in them. Then again, he is no seer. He is not gifted with the ability of communication with the gods: he was the commander of the warriors of the Spine and his only destiny during that time had been to die in battle and be taken to the hall of heroes where he awaited the end of everything with the allfather and his legions. He casts a glimpse heavenward before his good eye flickers down to her as she speaks of the stars and how they favor him. There is a bird-like cant to his head, an unspoken inquiry that burns in the gold of his undamaged eye, but he bids his tongue to still. He desires to ask it, oh, how he desires! Yet he knows the dangers of prophecy. Often times it is not specific: a statement that can hide a double meaning and often times one’s own interpretation is obsessed over until it becomes truth; sometimes it means the opposite of what one gleams from it, typically taking what they wished to hear and little else.

“Do you have a name, Seeress?” Wardruna inquires of her, drawing nearer for a moment only to take in her scent in full. She is lone. Yet another lone female that the gods have led him to. This was becoming quite a trend with them and he’s gotten the message by now. He’s building a kvennabúr. It had not been his intention but it appeared to be the intention of his gods and who is he to deny them?

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The stars seemed to falter in their dance, returning slowly to their static places in the sky. She breathed out slowly, blinking before gathering herself and pulling herself up so that she sat, facing the male. He calls her Seeress, and she is glad for it; not many offer her the title she had taken those many months ago. "yes," she breathed only, pausing. Still, the world danced and was lit with the glow of the drug, trees shivering and lights blinking in her vision, and yet it faded, now. Drawn up as she is, all sharp angles and narrow limbs, she adds, as if an afterthought, "I am Akirea."

Her head cants to the left as she regards him, gaze somehow vacant and intense at the same time, mind fogged and yet curious. Perhaps she ought to be wary of strangers, but, truly, what use is wariness when the jimson weed lends her strength? And if the stars danced for him, surely she should not fear.

Wardruna watches as she rises from the cold earth into a position upon her haunches, his functioning eye sweeping over her once more. She responds with an airy ‘yes’ to his question, the word rolling off little more than a breath but he hears it all the same with cupped and attentive ears. She introduces herself as Akirea and he tries the name out in his head, metaling sounding out the syllables. He knows that when he goes to repeat it that it will not sound as she has spoken it: his accent will add his own soliloquies to it. “Akirea.” It is not a name native to his mother tongue, the northerner thinks. He could be wrong but the name feels different on his tongue: it sits and rolls in a way that is inconsistent with the fluidity of northern names, as Noma’s, Sif’s, Hella’s or his own. “I am Wardruna.” He offers his own name to her though she does not ask for it; and his offering of it is not strictly without reason and certainly not because he is attempting to conform to social obligations.

“In my culture,” Wardruna begins, salmon pink tongue drawing across his jowls as he thinks through his words and translations though he finds that the longer he stays in these Wilds the more easier it is becoming. “Seeress are of great standing,” They are coveted and trusted and constantly with work, thus Wardruna struggles to understand why she smells lone. He scents at the air, just to be sure. There is a mingle of medicinal plants that he doesn’t recognize: faint but laced so intricately with her scent that he doesn’t think much of it; but there are no scents of others and if there is they are not constant or strong enough to have stayed in her presence for very long. “Why are you alone?” He inquires with a curious, bird-like cant to his head as if she is a puzzle he is determined to figure out. Perhaps, in a way, she is.

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He repeats her name in a manner that makes it seem foreign, taking the syllables and sounds and twisting them into something new. He offers next his own name, and it suits him well, she decides. "wardruna." on her tongue the word to is altered, made softer, though it does not lose its strength. For a moment her focus waves and fades, though snaps back when he speaks of seeresses and standing. Why is she alone? For a moment, the memory is hard to draw forth, and she is silent in what may be mistaken for sadness, though in truth, she was empty of regret for them. "they died." It is a vague, simple answer, but it is mostly the truth. First they starved, and then came the other, stronger, starving ones that usurp the leaders and took what they wanted. And there was no more place for her, and thus she left easily, making her way back here. She draws in his scent then, finding interwoven with it the scents of other. "you are not alone." It is said questioningly, for the woman is intrigued, and lonely, and her herbs are dying from the cold. She needs something.

His name sounds softer as it rolls off of her tongue, absent the harsher inflictions of sounds he instinctively does as his native way of pronunciation demands of him. There is a stretch of silence between them and what Wardruna perceives to be sadness that emits from her, leaking into the silence that lays yet unbleached until she speaks once more. Her words are simple, vague and unflinching. They are dead. Wardruna shifts his weight then, favoring his left leg for a moment before his weight shifts back to all fours evenly. He is not sure if he should express sympathy or not. She did not specify how long they had been dead for and Wardruna was not exactly hard-wired to be sympathetic. So the northerner settles simply for a small noise of acknowledgement in the back of his throat. “No I’m not,” Wardruna responds in a quit murmur, a concur with her assessment. He knows the scents of Addie, Sif, and Poet cling heavily to him. His wives. “I am traveling with my wives.” He tells her, reclining back upon his haunches as his haunting, jack-o-lantern gaze sweeps over her again.