the priest emerges from isolation; stepping out of the shadows of the stone circle which he’d clung to like a wraith burned by the sun.
the sun’s warmth is chillier than before, a sign of the coming frosts.
sea-glass gaze narrows and he gives a shake of his coat; unkempt and tangled with leaves. the threadbones’ song had lowered in their crescendo tapering off and freeing him from their spell.
the commanders have gone quiet and in the silence ingram is jumpy, awakened like an unsure cub stepping out of the den for the first time.
<3
a voice calls out to ingram and the hellhound swings his head in the direction of the hail.
the child approaches; unafraid.
sea-glass gaze darts around, looking for a parental figure to come lumbering out of the shadowing foliage. if the other adults of kvarsheim are weary of him, it is for good reason.
and, truthfully, the only one that he could say he even remotely liked or knew ( and that in particular was stretching it ) was tauris.
i am ingram.
he offers his name, smoky reticence rough from disuse; and to her questions he answers,
i am many things but a ghost is not one of them.
astrid.
she's a chatty thing, is ingram's first thought. i've met your father when i joined,
the hellhound offers simply. her mother, he does not know; of his own fault ingram knows. he has not been awfully sociable, even before his period of intense isolation.
though his vague answer had perhaps been meant to dissuade her curiosity, it appears to have the opposite effect.
he lets out a feathered sigh; heavy in his chest despite the lightness of it as it passes betwixt his lips.
many things that could not be discussed with one so young.
a reader of bones, a speaker for gods.
the easiest, and less terrible of things that he is ( though delaney supposes that is debatable ).
my brain is mush from the cold i'm suffering with. please excuse this mess of a post. <3
the bones whisper, if you know how to listen to them.
ingram speaks quietly; hushed as if he were speaking in a sacrosanct place of great reverance. a soft chuckle slips betwixt his lips as she asks then if he can read her bones. she is too young to hear the grim truth of it so he thinks quickly of a way to ... cushion it.
no, the bones are from prey animals, mostly. i cannot read the bones of the living.
he is amused by her grandoise.
i did not know that,
he admits and then adds,
oh no doubt that they would tell me such things, were i able to read them.
never apologize! <3
her disappointment is loud and pouty.
sort of—
but before ingram can explain that the bones he reads are
special; selected for their meaning to him, she is off!
a soft sigh expels itself from betwixt his lips.
while she is distracted finding him, he presumes, a rabbit; he slinks off to grab his actual threadbones.
he arrives back only a few moments before her, tucking the rabbit skin with dried bones between his paws before she plops the meal down at his paws; a grumble in her throat.
he noses it back towards her.
eat, and i will show you how to read bones,
he tells her, a wiry grin tugging at the edges of his scarred muzzle.
my threadbones are not any old bones,
he explains, stepping back from the rabbit fur, nudging it open to reveal them.
some older than others, all of them worried with his teeth in what he called ritualistic markings.
they are significant to me.
two rib bones tied to him by the very shared dna — but he wasn't about to admit that to a
child. though he harbored no regrets, he is not so public about his matricide as he once was.
marked for each thing they represent.
he motions to the teethmarks in each bone; some shallow and some deep.
ingram looks at her then, gauging how she was following before explaining more.