Ankyra Sound 별빛달빛

@Kjalarr ♡

NOTE: In Seelie’s personal timeline, this takes place after her thread with Rigr.

Immediately following the night of celebration, the little Groenendael traced the shoreline eastward. She bade farewell to the pinnipeds and their rocky shoals, danced her way across the mirror-like river delta, and looked with poignant fondness upon Marbas’ island. Restlessly she wandered the cape, nimble paws carrying her past a series of rocky cliffs as she chased a pod of dolphins, stopping only when territory borders forced her to. Kierkegaard’s scent drew her to the sirens’ hallowed ground; and yet, a pressing need to keep moving spurred her onward. At the eleventh hour she bathed in seawater set aglow by bioluminescent plankton — and just as the first glimmers of dawn began to outshine the glittering expanse of stars, the inky ingénue set her sights further north and turned away from the breathtaking radiance that surrounded her. With a single backward glance and a fierce ache in her heart for those she would leave behind — Doe, Marbas, Kierkegaard, Dagfinn, Starbuck, Szymon, and Chusi — Coelacanth left the Teekon Wilds entirely, intent on finding her wayward twin.

And she had failed.

The past four months had been the hardest of Coelacanth’s life — and the toll those months had taken was manifest in her waiflike thinness and the otherworldly sorrow that glimmered now in her bright seablue eyes. Catlike paws ghosted soundlessly along the riverbank, tracing a meandering path upstream; and this time, when she neared Kierkegaard’s home, she stopped. Tufted ears twisted gracefully upon her skull as she inhaled deeply, tasting brine and autumn leaves and only the faintest hint of wolfscent. Kierkegaard, she realized with a heavy heart, was not here. Worse, the territory borders appeared to have recently fallen into a state of disrepair. Meticulously minding them regardless, the atramentous sheepdog cross threaded her way down to the shore, wading into the glowing sea while her feathery fur formed an inkdark halo about her. Bioluminescent plankton turned the sea to crushed star sapphires, and she delighted in the beauty that surrounded her — but there was an untold story here and a sadness unspoken. Tipping her muzzle skyward just as a chill autumn rain began to fall, Coelacanth closed her eyes.

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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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A low, guttural chuff struck the air, winging through the rain to the little Groenendael’s sensitive ears; they twisted sharply toward the shore, miniscule droplets springing from their tufted tips like silver sparks. Blinking moisture from her bright seablue eyes, she scanned the shoreline — and when her fawnlike gaze fell upon the platinum-furred berserker, her first, joyous thought was, “Kierkegaard!” On slender, supple legs she melted from the shallows, bioluminescent plankton yet clinging to her fur with a faint blue glow, but as she drew nearer the differences between this stranger and her serpentine protector became unmistakable. Instinctively she responded to the strength she saw — the heavy musculature laid across his tall, broad warrior’s frame; the three vicious-looking cicatrices that slashed across his muzzle; and his fierce, regal bearing made an intimidating, even fearsome impression. The little Groenendael felt as she thought Doe must have felt when first she saw her leviathan.

Tufted ears folded demurely against her finely-sculpted crown, and her sumi-e brush tail sketched an appealing note of eloquent greeting before its tip curved around her hock. His Caribbean blue eyes were piercingly, startlingly beautiful, even from a distance, and in their crosshairs she made herself small, her tiny body made tinier by her submissive posture. A soft, airy whine, the only sound she could manage, spilled from her shyly smiling lips as she tipped her head inquisitively to one side, then the other. “What is wrong?” she wondered, her gaze focused carefully on his sand-colored paws as she nestled in the sand at his feet. There was a storm living in the strange warrior, one that Coelacanth could feel churning at the edges of her sentience — and although this was their first meeting, the empathetic sheepdog longed to quiet it if she could.

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The woman emerged from the surf, bioluminescent plankton clinging to her dark fur, the starry, night sky personified. For a moment, the northman was fascinated, the glowing points notable to him against the dark of the sand, the water and her fur despite the monochrome world devoid of color that he'd always known. It was her tufted ears that drew his eye next, perplexing him. Never before had he seen a wolf bear tufts of fur atop their ears and was hit with the realization that she was likely mixed though her lineage had no immediate bearing upon the viking aside from the fact that her tufted ears were interesting. Kjalarr watched as she made herself small before him, submissive. This both sated some deep instinct of his and made him feel guilt. There was no need for her to submit to him, these lands were no longer his and he was a king without a crown. Which was to say not a king at all. “You don't have to submit to me.” Words that felt heavy, strange upon his tongue as they spilled from betwixt his lips. It had been the first time that he recalled ever uttering them.

Her shy, small whine caught his attention and he read the question she implored within the inquisitive tilt of her head. So much. Yet, his burdens were his own and he did not particularly feel comfortable sharing them with a stranger. Instead, he offered her his name. “I am Kjalarr.” Though he assumed that it would mean little. For a moment, an image of his dream flashed within his mind's eye. The dead were legion. “If your story is already written, is it possible to rewrite it? To change it?” He inquired rhetorically, not actually expecting any sort of answer. Kjalarr's will was strong, this had been proven over and over but was it strong enough to go up against the Gods, the Norns and survive? That, he did not know.

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“You don’t have to submit to me,” the silmë berserker quietly intoned, freeing the girl whose metaphorical wrists crossed entreatingly before him without question or coercion. Gathering courage, Coelacanth tipped back her finely-sculpted head to regard him more intimately, tufted ears pressed forward upon her velveteen crown as her seablue eyes somewhat worshipfully searched his savage expression. He was the storm personified — Haloisi, she named him — and the offering of his truename incited a flurry of movement on the sand as her feathered tail whisked genially, stirring the moon-silvered granules. “I am Coelacanth,” she thought, a flicker of sorrow dampening the bright luminescence of her gaze before she rallied and bobbed her streamlined muzzle in greeting. His question to the inky ingénue required only the simplest of replies: yes, bespoke her vehement nod, punctuated by a toneless bark. She sat up, dwarfed by his great height, and again nodded. If there was any creature that could dig furrows in the sands of time or crack the scrying stones of one’s future, it was Kjalarr — or perhaps Doe’s leviathan.

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Kjalarr could not say if he felt relief or a pang of sorrow as she listened to him and found her courage. Perhaps both. It was not that he enjoyed seeing other subservient to him (he was not a tyrant after all) but these sands had once belonged to him and that possession was not an easy thing to shake even though he knew it very much to be true. The ghost of his crown bore a phantom weight upon his skull but he had abandoned it to the waves when Saltwinter had fallen. For as long as Kjalarr could remember all he had ever wanted was power: to shove himself into a position of leadership to prove that he was his father's son. Those moments appeared when he least expected them, though, not when he willed them and he had ascended to leadership when he had earned it not just because he demanded it. Still, the desire to do better than Ragnar was strong within him. So far, he wasn't succeeding and Kjalarr knew it.

He wondered for a moment why she did not verbally respond to him but understanding came a few moments later when she gave a soundless bark, and nodded vehemently at his rhetorical question: that he could rewrite what the Norns had already decided for him. He came to the conclusion that she was mute. He did not pity her for it, instead choosing to recognize it as something that made her unique: as his monochromacy made him. A terse frown pulled at Kjalarr's lips as he doubted her response. “To what consequence? I think of myself but not of those whose lives are tied into my story.” No, perhaps it was better not to battle against a force Kjalarr knew he could not win. It was a romantic notion — defy the Norns and win — and perhaps he would win but who would suffer for his victory? Maude? Ondine? Floki? His unborn babes? The Frostfurs? He offered her a tense, apologetic smile, not having meant to let loose the turmoil of his thoughts upon her when they were naught but strangers to one another.

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Heavy upon the starsilver berserker’s crown rested a wreath of iron knotwork fashioned of turmoil; Coelacanth was helpless to lift it from him, but in her own way she sought to ease its weight — her feathered tail beat a fluttering tattoo against her slender hocks as, with a hesitant pull of slender limbs, she sought to draw nearer still. Her slim muzzle extended slowly, shyly upward, pausing just before she broke the barrier of physical contact. If Kjalarr allowed it, her lips would part and her tongue would graze the underside of his jaw and the tip of his chin — well away from his vulnerable throat or even his cheek. Privately she thought that no wolf could fully predict the consequences of his actions — the future was a fluid, ever-changing thing dependent on factors far beyond even a king’s grasp — but she had no way of making this known. The best she could do was offer comfort and companionship if he desired it, though if he preferred his solitude she would willingly make herself scarce. A soft, purring hum took up residence in her breast as she looked upon the berserker with limpid Neptune eyes, willing him to understand that his secrets were uniquely safe with her — and if he no longer wished to talk, she was no stranger to silence. She wished only to offer him sanctuary.

After a beat, she inferred that the platinum northman wished to be alone with his thoughts, and with a last gentle touch of her tip of his nose to the tip of one of his toes in homage, she retreated into the shadows.