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.

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.

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.