Ankyra Sound 별빛달빛

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On their journey towards Neverwinter Forest, Kjalarr had left Ondine slumbering in the safety of where they had bedded down for the night to circle back. Unsettling images had haunted his slumber. He saw blood and the dead. Ragnar, with his mutilated face and missing eye standing over mewling newborns crying out. The thrill of their voices trembled with their fear. The ghost of his father had snapped his teeth at Kjalarr, a vicious sound tearing from the phantom's scarred throat at his approach, warning him to not draw closer. Behind Ragnar the dead were legion as they rallied at his father's back. Odin was their chief but Ragnar...he was their commander, and when Kjalarr had looked in his dream back to Ragnar and rose his gaze to those that had lingered like fog, eyes all he saw, they were gone. “fórn. frigga krefst fórna. eða dauðinn mun verða þeim öllum.” Ragnar spoke to him, drawing his tongue against the shifting, unclear newborns at his paws. Their number Kjalarr did not know. He had awoken with a start and greedy gasps of air, pressing against Ondine for the briefest of moments to assure himself that she was real and he was awake. Only after he'd calmed, he muttered an explanation of where he was going to her (whether she was awake enough to retain it or not he did not know), and after a forlorn glance spared at her body searching for signs of life within her (despite that it was still too early) he had doubled back to the Sound.

He wasn't sure what he sought. A last tendril of comfort? Or some explanation of the völva dream, perhaps. Surely, it was just a manifestation of the stress of Saltwinter's dispersal, and his sudden and fierce fear of fatherhood. The bio-luminescent beach was a breathtaking sight and though it was a source of great grief for him — first claiming Whittier and then Caiaphas — it was also a sense of comfort. These shores had prolonged his survival as a child when he'd washed upon them until Scimitar had came to find him. There was a shadowy figure in the distance, one that Kjalarr did not immediately see but could smell as cool rain began to splash around him. He let out a low chuff to garner her attention, smothering the territorial feeling as it crept into his chest. Ankyra Sound was freed from claim and it was no longer his. The acceptance of that was sobering but he did not fight it. There was little use in it. He had to keep moving forward. This was a farewell, and a hope that he might slavage something from the withering caches to take back to Ondine knowing that she needed to eat and keep her strength up, especially if she was carrying his children within her.

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