Bitterroot Valley on this earth not alone we stand
you're going to keep my soul,
it was yours to have long ago
567 Posts
Ooc — lauren
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#1
All Welcome 

he had expected some great catharsis as they finally crested the last shrub-tangled slope and entered the teekon valley. as if by coming here, his faculties would be restored to crystal clarity -- and the months surrounding his departure would somehow be ambitiously erased.

around them the gnarled feet of the mountain sat indisposed by wiry tangles of mountain-brush and sedge; and in the distance the tall peaks' shoulders were sundered by misty clouds. ingram paid their frowning presence little mind, for his heart was fluttering for a reason unknown to him.

as he stared down into the valley he thought it would all come back to him - why he had been there, what he had been before, where he was supposed to go -- yet as he studied the blue ridges in the distance he felt the same; ultimately, simply out of place.

he frowned, disappointed by the feebleness of his mind. in truth, since his mauling and miraculous survival, he had struggled to recollect memories of his past life at all. bits and pieces of his life had remained like the incomplete and skewed surface of a fractured mirror; small, inconsequential memories that told him enough that he knew his name, but very little else. it was pure fortune he had survived and recovered as he had; had the bear not lost his grip as he hauled him up the mountain (and had ingram not limply fell a calamitous height in result of shardik's error), ingram would not have survived at all.

it had been wardruna who had found his broken body, and in haste had dragged him into a sliver in the mountain's face too small for the bear to pursue. and pursue the bear had -- squealing and screaming his fury to see his prey stolen from him.

yet none of this ingram remembered, for fever had ransacked his body for days, and infection toxic and bucolic had ravaged him; what had made ingram ingram had shriveled up in the raging fever, and the subsequent battery of concussions that ailed him.

imrathil, the tall man had called him -- a name that stroked the dying fires of ingram's consciousness, and had eventually stirred dim memory of his true name.

wardruna had done his part to heal ingram; it was no small fluke that ingram had survived once in his care -- if anything, it was a testament to the man's dedication in seeing his charge gradually heal, day by day. for months wardruna had shouldered the lion's share of ensuring their survival.

if ingram was lucky he had plummeted down the mountainside, he was doubly lucky to have found a ward as capable as the noble man which tended to him.

flicking a near-torn-beyond-recognition ear behind him, ingram listened for wardruna's approach. he had managed to limp ahead of the grey-furred wolf, and wanting for wardruna's encouragement, looked behind him with a face that told clearly of his bitter disappointment.
i'm gonna hold a pen
while you drag my arm across the page.
hell is empty and
all the devils are here
133 Posts
Ooc — Mochi
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#2
imrathil ventures ahead of him, limping as they breach into the boundaries of the teekon wilds. wardruna does not rush even when his ward's steps quicken. his pride of losing his wives ( despite that it was largely his own fault ) still stings despite that he spent his time licking those wounds as he nursed imrathil back to health. since his failed fight to the death where he lost but did not die, resulting in the scar, hyphema and blindness in and over his left eye and exile from jötunn spine for the rest of his life he has nothing and no one. nothing but his unwavering fury at the world ...and many times his gods. yet, he supposes sometimes they take pity on him in their own way. they took his wives from him but they gave him imrathil. even as broken as he'd been when the northerner had found him and pulled him into safety away from the furious bear's reach. and oh, how the mighty beast had bellowed and screamed in his fury at his loss. it was a fury to match ...if not out-match the once berseker's own. imrathil was family now.

it is not likely something that wardruna will forget and on principle he intends to stay far away from the mighty ursidae's presumed domain ...if he still lingers here. wardruna eventually catches up to imrathil, his single, functioning eye sweeping over him where his heavily scarred companion looks over his shoulder towards him. there is transparent and bitter disappointment in imrathil's expression. wardruna's ears taper back for a moment and he thinks that he should say something. communicating was never a strong point for the northerner, whom still struggles with common tongue.

"you are auðmýkja," wardruna muses as he steps to his companion's side. "ah...what is the word dis .... disa — point... disappoint?" it still does not sound right to him but his tongue is stubborn and does not want to form the word correctly; and somewhere along the line, the translation got crossed in wardruna's mind and while it landed in the general vicinity of words meaning a similar thing they are not the same. the common feels too heavy ( even after all this time ), too easy for him to get tongue-tied but it is a shared language ...and wardruna thinks 'disappoint' is close enough to what he means.
your hands are wet
with blood of an empire.
you lick it off.
you're going to keep my soul,
it was yours to have long ago
567 Posts
Ooc — lauren
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#3
the ankyrian male was morosely silent as wardruna pulled up alongside him and inspected the desolate sweep of hinterland with one unclouded eye. when the thick-furred guardian fixed his gaze upon ingram, ingram offered a quailing hint of a smile. even then, his discouragement could not be hidden -- and wardruna had spent enough time with the male to be intimately familiar with imrathil's inward demeanor.

he was disappointed, and nodded in defeated agreement to the viking's assessment. the slouching hills and fen-studded dales brought no living memory to the broken male; only a clouded, overwhelming sense of futility.

"it doesn't mean anything." he murmured bitterly, nosing the air with a sharply outlined muzzle. "where do we go?" ingram deferred to wardruna in every retrospect; the male had been his guardian, his savior, his captain -- and he placed his full trust in whatever path the man chose.
i'm gonna hold a pen
while you drag my arm across the page.
hell is empty and
all the devils are here
133 Posts
Ooc — Mochi
Offline
#4
wardruna looks out at the valley spread before them, stony and stalwart, after imrathil gives him a ghost of a smile. wardruna does not know what to offer him in words and is not quite sure how to process the fact that he wants to offer comfort. comfort falls just beneath the northerner's area of knowledge...as was evidenced with his (ex) wives. he is not exactly a nurturing beast. at least where 'feelings' were concerned. wrath, he understands well. lust. jealousy and pain. but concern and affection are still foreign to him. that was how he'd grown up though. one of many sons all striving for the same goal: to be better than the other. better than the father. there hadn't been room to feel affection, not when you were in constant competition.

"hmph." the northerner lets out with a roll of his eye in blatant disbelief as imrathil tells him — with bitterness — that it is nothing. "það er ekki neitt ef þú finnur það." wardruna counters under his breath and then speaks in common for his companion's benefit. "it is not nothing if you feel disappoint." wardruna's grammar is wrong but he doesn't care enough to try to amend it. imrathil knows what he means to say. beyond that, wardruna doesn't push. if imrathil wishes to speak of it further, the northerner assumes that he will.

his functioning eye scours the valley below then, yawning wide like an invitation for the duo. "it is haust...the harvest." wardruna speaks, musing out loud. which meant that prey would begin to migrate and their likelihood of survival would dip to a low. it is not yet cold and they have some time yet to figure it out. "the frost has not come. but it will. we have time to ah...expl — explore." he stumbles over the common word but acts as if he hadn't. wardruna isn't willing to gamble with either of their lives. "we join a pack. or we make one. or take one." the possibilities were endless and wardruna hails from a place of raiders. of conquerors. and this outlook does not strike him as barbaric in the slightest. "for now, we see what is new and go from there." wardruna concludes. he has a bit of a reputation ( or, rather, he assumes he does ) and while he isn't sure about imrathil as far as 'reputation' goes ...getting a feel for what has changed seems a good place to start to wardruna.
your hands are wet
with blood of an empire.
you lick it off.
you're going to keep my soul,
it was yours to have long ago
567 Posts
Ooc — lauren
Offline
#5
the guardian does not believe him; ingram -- imrathil did not miss the dismissive sweep of the man's sundered gaze, yet he remained silent for now, fixated on the lonely frontier ahead. he had no will to argue, for the man's fumbling words had a decisive point. all the same, imrathil wished he did not have to endure he crushing weight of his feeble psyche.



as wardruna spoke of the change gradually overcoming the wilds, the ankyrian struggled to recall if he even remembered frost; it conjured images of coldness, dislike -- yet the memory that ought to summon images of wildfire red leaves, shaking grey timbers,  hills grey with frosted grass was blank; or, not blank -- simply clouded behind an impenetrable resolve to remain hidden.

he sighed to himself, a shallow exhale that met the cold air and faded. each prospect the one-eyed guardian mentioned seemed equally appealing; without memories to tether him to this world, ingram -- imrathil -- was one desperate to prove he had a place here; even if that place was in death.

"okay." he affirmed, not that his affirmation would have mattered; he would have followed the grim face of his guardian off the face of a cliff, if it was so commanded.
i'm gonna hold a pen
while you drag my arm across the page.
hell is empty and
all the devils are here
133 Posts
Ooc — Mochi
Offline
#6
wardruna ponders his own words for a long moment. it sounds grand. it sounds easy ...but if there is one thing wardruna has learned in his life this far: it's that nothing is ever easy. wardruna glimpses at imrathil out of the corner of his right eye when his companion offers an affirmation and wardruna makes to offer in return a bump of his shoulder against the dark and scarred male's own, mindful not to hurt him if imrathil allowed the contact. there are only three places wardruna wishes to avoid at all and every cost ...two for his own selfish reasons and one for imrathil's sake. but three territories out of the uncounted number that stretch before them is insignificant and would hardly impact their journey. they stand in the northern reaches of the wilds and south or west seems like two of the most logical directions to take. "west or south?" wardruna asks for imrathil's opinion, swinging his head around to face the scarred male in full. it is habit, despite that he is sure to orient himself so that imrathil is always in the line of sight of his functioning eye.
your hands are wet
with blood of an empire.
you lick it off.
you're going to keep my soul,
it was yours to have long ago
567 Posts
Ooc — lauren
Offline
#7
wardruna pondered alongside his charge; imrathil was uninformed of his wonderings, yet somehow drew the same private thoughts himself. how the world delighted in presenting unexpected obstacles -- how when things seemed so close to grasp, they slithered out of reach.

such was the way of the world ingram (and imrathil) knew. a world that was callous and insensate to the struggles of those that lived within it. a world that turned on its own cruel orbit, senseless and ever marching forward.

west, or south?

he was aware wardruna was looking at him then. his gaze roved from the western rims, to the distant southern peaks. on impulse, guided by an unseen memory he hardly knew, he replied.

"west."
i'm gonna hold a pen
while you drag my arm across the page.
hell is empty and
all the devils are here
133 Posts
Ooc — Mochi
Offline
#8
west imrathil decides and wardruna's pumpkin orange gaze focuses on the direction with an unbridled intensity. west would guide them towards the coast ...which wardruna does not hold issue with but too far south along the coast and they would be in the mighty ursidae's domain...if he still remained. like with wandering for too long once the frosts come wardruna isn't willing to play fast and loose with their lives to risk finding out of the beast remains. there is not much in the world wardruna fears but death by the mighty ursidae is one of the rare things he does. he is not the berserker he'd once been ...and even if he would have been there is an unlikely chance he'd survive a one-on-one tussle with a bear.

"then we go west." wardruna concludes, drawing in a breath and letting it out as he tucks thoughts away of how he'd found imrathil and the danger they'd narrowly escaped. wardruna takes a step forward, breaking from his place beside imrathil and heading deeper into the valley. the deeper he ventures — expecting imrathil to not be too far behind — the more aware of permanent game trails formed by deep ruts in the soil he grows. it's a relatively open shrubland with a snaking river cutting through it in the distance. "gott veiði," wardruna murmurs out loud nonchalantly, more to himself and doesn't realize at first he uses northern. "good hunting here." he adds in common, reminding himself to try to make a point to use it more. he knows few wolves know his native tongue in these wilds. temporary shelter was a secondary priority along with finding a territory that offered decent and recent hunting trails. "not much skjól...ah, hmm cover?" perhaps, wardruna considers as he spares a glimpse over his right shoulder looking for imrathil, a neighboring territory might offer something better for shelter.
your hands are wet
with blood of an empire.
you lick it off.
you're going to keep my soul,
it was yours to have long ago
567 Posts
Ooc — lauren
Offline
#9
it is true imrathil did not have the same reservations as wardruna -- his mind clouded, and memories obscured. yet he knew distinctly the keen pull that told his feet where to march when his thoughts were mindless - it was an inexplicable sense that kept him moving, and perhaps, the same inexplicable sense that had somehow evinced his survival between the narrow jaws of death.

he looked along the broken expanse as wardruna commented on both its boons and its shortcomings; imrathil agreed, and gave a nod in answer. yet his gaze was drawn ever towards the blotted horizon, which was dappled with the tall shoulders of strong mountains, and sheathed in a shimmering fall mist.

"lets hope we don't need cover," the dark male replied wryly, already falling in step behind wardruna with his sharp eyes looking forward.
i'm gonna hold a pen
while you drag my arm across the page.