she enters the personal bubble of another almost without noticing, but as his scent crosses with that of the deer she is pulled from her thoughts almost annoyingly so.
his fiery gaze draws in her attention before the gruff, savage noise that forms in the back of his throat and cuts through the silence between them. just like she, he has disfiguring scars although hers instead adorn her sides, hidden beneath a pelt of alabaster unless one looked close enough.
and, of course, the see-sawed gashes on her front legs from her latest fit.
she bobs her head to take the entire beast of goliath proportions in. his pelage is a drab slate of variegated grays — much like the sky was, that one day, no! stop thinking about it!. his candle-lit gaze is fixed upon her in a posessive, predatory manner and an anxiety creeps up within her that she too is going to become his prey.
and perhaps she will, but not in the way she presently thinks.
her head remains low but her consuming black gaze moves towards the direction of the herd and as she thinks about the ungulates — that this beast would absolutely demolish, — she begins to salivate.
the cold leads her to start quaking. although she does not want to appear any weaker than she is, she is nervous and frigid and there is not much meat to keep these bones warm. she tucks her tail in between her legs to touch her stomach and finally whines in response to him.
the man closes the distance between them with long strides that make him appear otherworldly. he is fixed on her and as he moves closer she can see the gears turning in his head. some just get a look about them.
her anxiety increases before he speaks in a tongue she does not recognize (but does not inherently dislike) before following up in the language of the common — i will not hurt you.
she breathes out through her nostrils, the fog that escapes telling him that she has shifted from discomfort into contentment... or at least as content as she could be given her current predicament.
so if he wasn't going to hurt her, what was the intent of that determination? he continues loping towards her and he does not stop so she freezes, tensing but she does not snap or fight in fear as he noses her throat because he could kill her with ease —
— and perhaps she wishes he would! as she remembers the euphoria brought forth from tearing open her legs, but instead the only way her body chooses to betray her is in the raising of her hackles.
as he is underneath her (what a funny sight, with how small she is), she cocks her head slowly, another soft whine resting deep in her throat.
he smells of a pack, and though it is obvious by his form and structure he smells of no illness. perhaps, she muses, she should be more worried about running off with some stranger who just promises he'll take care of her.. but what she needs right now is to heal.
all she needs to know is what he wants from her in return. her dedication? her loyalty? he has it, just as anyone else who would've taken her as a .. ward. a "thrall," as he so chose to call it though she could not place the meaning.
he asks her name and she decides that she should keep that to herself for now. and it wouldn't be unlike her to not have a name, now would it? she shakes her head at his question, and speaks only his name, Wardruna?
he must think she is dull. but there is.. intelligence behind her umbra orbs as they bore into him, asking without vocalizing.
and he has another thrall! maybe she would be good company.
i had trouble trying to decide on what i wanted wardruna to call her, lmao.
It seems she is to be like Noms: the quiet type. It would appear that Wardruna is attracted to that trait in his thralls as well. No, that wasn’t precisely true. Thralls are meant to be possessions, yes, but also companions and even in a pack full of wolves Wardruna is easily lonely so far removed from the life and culture he has known and still adheres to. He is still a northerner, still a heathen even though he is an exile, even though he is no longer fit to be the commander of the mighty rage warriors. He stills holds the skill but they’re of no use to him for they are skills learned and memorized when he had the function of both eyes and the loss of vision in his left eye — though it had taken away the, at times, unbearable agony ( times when he begged the gods to end his life ) the hyphema caused — he can no longer judge distance and depth as he once had. It is taking him too much time to readjust to and he knows that even if he adjusts to it he’d be too vulnerable on his blindside. Oh! How the seething self-loathing and bitterness tastes as if he’s just drank liquid metal. It is sour and metallic upon his tongue and he threatens to choke on it for a moment.
The alabaster woman shakes her head at him and repeats his own name back at him. Another without a name. That is fine, he thinks. He will just give her a name. He needs something to call her, after all. “I will call you Hella,” one of the many names of the goddess of the dead, fitting in and of itself because that is who she strikes an unbearable resemblance to if Wardruna were to give the goddess a form of flesh. A little bit tortured looking and a little bit ethereal at the same time. “I will take you to the border and we will talk to my leader.” Wardruna informed her, heading in the direction of Easthollow’s borders, still unsure how exactly he’s going to explain her and why it’s necessary that she stay in his den with Noma, but he has the feeling of dread that the presence of a second woman that clearly needs healing will mean that Valette will be much more pressing in the aid of the pack …if she accepts her at all. Yet, Wardruna wants Hella, he’s already claimed her, because perhaps she is a test. Perhaps she is the goddess in flesh form. Many travelers through their clan had claimed of coming across the gods in flesh form so this wasn’t an unheard of tale, after all.
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okay but lowkey i love it. do you want to wrap up here and then get the easthollow thread rolling?
her ears perk up at her new name, and she offers a soft, full-body wag as the syllables roll, clunky from his forign tongue. yet still, she likes it!
hella.
and then something she is
not so keen on. what does this dude mean,
we are going to talk to the leader? surely he understands now that she is almost entirely nonverbal. there are always so many thoughts buzzing in her brain that when she tries to speak it's difficult and disjointed.
but, she supposes, if she
must. she waits for him to lead the way and dips her head at him. she supposes, of course, that she will follow him.
:D! Sure thing! I'll get us a thread started in Easthollow asap!
Wardruna’s jack-o-lantern gaze flickers like the color’s namesake as he watches her give a full-body tail wag as he bestows it upon her. Wardruna has always believed in the importance of names — not unsurprising as his culture does not name children until they are one month of age and once the babes bare names they are therefore protected …but during the period of being unnamed they can be left for dead by the parents or killed by a fellow clansman without consequences; though, from what he saw it was only actually the goði that actually took advantage of that ( and occasionally a jealous lover ). Names could pre-determine a child’s path, their behavior. In Wardruna’s mind it expanded beyond the basic rights and protection that a name offered a child in his culture; and this belief extends to adults, too. He calls one of his thralls fate and the other the goddess of death, both fitting to the women that bears the name, in his opinion.
She dips her head at him and he circles around her and nudges her forward with a gentle bump of his nose to her left hip. ‘I will guide you in the right direction,’ it is meant to encourage; but he’d like to keep her in his line of view at all times all the same.