Without realizing it Bragi was intentionally finding reasons to travel outside of Stavanger Bay’s borders. He claimed easily that he was just exploring, learning the layout of the lands for the Outrider apprenticeship which wasn’t exactly a lie but the underlying reasons pressed against his state of denial with a force akin to Thor striking Mjölnir. Stavanger Bay made him a little uncomfortable though he did well to hide it in the presence of it’s wolves, the looks, the comments of his father being the Jarl. Bragi did not know if there was any truth to these assumptions, wasn’t even really sure his own mother knew, but, instead liked her fabricated story of his father being the God Heimdall. Perhaps his insistence of it was nothing short of childish but he couldn’t bring himself to care because he was a child still. A capable child, certainly, that didn’t really look quite the part as the softness of childhood began to ebb away as if it were stone beneath a chisel. His growth was no longer rapid as it had been but even now he was not full size. Gaining closer to it with each passing month certainly but at the end of the day he was what he was: just a boy.

His no-destination in mind exploring had led him further than the last time, through a carnivorous forest where he did not linger long for the strong scents of urine made it clear the land was claimed, before the land yawned before him in a stretch of grasslands. Heather grasses grew wild and tall here, none of them he recognized though he couldn’t help the small coy smirk that tugged at the corners of his platinum silver lips at the thought that Floki would have had a field day in this particular territory. And would be able to name the grasses and if they had any medical uses to boot. Such words had only seemed to go into one ear and pass out the other proving Bragi’s inability to retain things that, frankly, didn’t interest him. He continued forth, ears lowering to rest at half mast, twitching when a cricket let out a loud chirp noise that was instantly answered by several others. The Viking boy paused wondering if that was their way of signaling to one another to avoid being squashed by still slightly over-sized paws. A rustling noise that sounded much larger than a cricket caused the boy to give another pause, knowing it had not been him that had made the noise to peer up from the ground to catch sight of the ebony canine he had missed earlier with his nose and eyes to the earthen floor.

She wasn’t too far off and bravely the boy altered his course and let out a chuff of greeting as he approached figuring that he was allowed to indulge his own curiosity. Whether she decided to speak with him or ignore him and keep going was her decision.

There was a swell of longing within Bragi’s chest cavity that as he took in the stretch of wild grasses, brought to the surface by the simple though rational consideration that Floki would be resolutely giddy in this particular stretch of flatlands. The trickster had always been a little strange and while Bragi had never found it off putting the young rekkr understood how it could have been to others who didn’t, necessarily understand him. He missed Odinn’s Cove, Bragi realized with the same helplessness that someone missed a deceased loved one. He could not go back, would never disobey Sveið so directly despite that her behavior had made him uneasy on their journey to these Wilds. She had something planned, of that he had never had any semblance of a doubt; abruptly Bragi shut off those thoughts not wanting to examine too closely what he expected she had intended to do and the potential result of it.

He wasn’t ready to come to terms with that any more than he was ready to consider Ragnar his father. Both were untouchable subjects, as forbidden as Odinn’s throne was to anyone but the All-Father himself and on occasion his wife, Frigg.

The woman he had chuffed too approached, and surprised though he had made the initial move, Bragi had stopped his own approach allowing her to come to him. Her green gaze was fixed upon him, he saw, her eyes almost a pretty contrast to the darkness of her jet black coat. It was only as she drew nearer that he noticed the splattering of silver that broke the solidity of ebony. Bragi failed to notice her silver toes if only because he wasn’t looking down at her toes. Instead, he kept glimpsing at her eyes, stuck with the resolution that he found them almost captivating in their chartreuse green coloration, coming from a world where there was no shortage of wolves with blue eyes of all hues. It was a nice change of pace, Bragi decided mentally, for even Ragnar’s wife had had blue eyes.

Bragi responded to her posture with neutrality. He wasn’t going to submit to a wolf he didn’t even know but was not so proud or foolish to think himself as anything close to dominant. Not out here, at least. Not in neutral lands where pack and rank meant next to nothing. “Hello,” He spoke to her after a moment, boyish voice soft and accented though he, himself did not hear it having been desensitized to it.

The woman’s returned greeting was jarringly flat to the young rekkr who recoiled some, the velveteen fur of his brows furrowing slightly at the unexpectedness of it. Bragi could not shake the feeling that something was expected of him in this situation but he was at a loss for what it was. It had never occurred to Bragi that she was under the misunderstanding that he wanted something from her other than her company as to which he didn’t. He was left grasping at vast confusion which felt very similar to trying to grasp smoke betwixt his jaws. He could find no purchase on the writhing, evaporating substance and never would. This confusion felt elusive like smoke did.

Or at least that was how it felt until she asked him if he needed something and slowly the puzzle pieces began to fall together in his mind painting a rudimentary picture of understanding. It made sense, instantly and within the next few seconds sparked the wonder that maybe this was one of those cultural barriers he had heard the more seasoned travelers speak of back in Odinn’s Cove and Freya’s Moors. Perhaps where she came from one did not stop and socialize with strangers just to socialize. It wasn’t like Bragi had anything else to compare it too. This was the first time he was outside of his own culture. Mixing and mingling the Norse ways and tongue with the ways and tongues of all these strangers. Even Stavanger’s Bay wasn’t made up entirely of Vikings. It felt a little bit like home but the wolves were still too different to offer the young, lonely teen any comfort.

“No,” Bragi responded honestly after a soft ‘ahhh’ hung in his throat as he reached the apex of his conclusion. “I only wanted to speak…—” He paused and gave her a boyish little grin. “— or just some company.” But of course he wouldn’t and couldn’t force her into anything she didn’t want to do. His tail flicked amicably against his haunches, his ears twitching as a honey bee buzzed past his ear on it’s way back to it’s hive or to a flower to pollinate. Besides the twitch of his ear Bragi paid it little mind. “I am Bragi.” He introduced himself freely, shrugging his broadening shoulders as if to tell her that it didn’t matter to him if she wished to indulge him or not.

She seemed to accept his wanting of just conversation, or if not conversation then at least a little company. Bragi was slowly growing accustomed to being on his own, of having his own den, of having to hunt and take care of himself. Maybe it was stupid teenage boy pride that pushed and fought against the desire to lower himself to asking for help — not that he’d had any situation in which he required it yet — especially not from Ragnar or his bitchy wife. Bragi had never had the displeasure of coming across a woman he didn’t like but he supposed that old saying ‘there’s a first for everything’ seemed to hold some semblance of truth to it. Bragi was self sufficient, either way, and had even contemplated leaving Stavanger Bay and finding a home in one of the other packs to get away from Thistle and Ragnar who gave him a sense of disorientation every time Bragi so much as looked at him. It was disorienting to look at another wolf and feel like you were staring in a mirror that had scarred you and aged you; besides that it brought with it the uncomfortable consideration that Thistle had been right in her accusation that Ragnar was Bragi’s father and as it stood Bragi did not like being told something he believed for the majority of his six months of life was inherently wrong.

He twisted in on himself slightly to scratch behind his right ear with his back claws as he watched her make a circle around him as the bee buzzed past. He had missed the initial flinch she had given but did not call her out on it, no matter how weird he found it as he settled upon his haunches after scratching, flattening the heather and wild flowers that had the misfortunate of being beneath him in the process. She stated that she was ‘famished’ and not knowing any different for the Norse to English translation in his mind was not so complex enough to include famished to mean ‘hungry’. “Nice to meet you,” Though it sounded like an odd name to him, his tone was sincere enough to convey that he had thought it was her actual name. In truth, all non-Norse names were strange sounding to him so it didn’t even click in his mind her joke having went way over his head. “No,” Bragi glimpsed around wondering how anyone could live here. It was so far from the ocean, and there were nothing that he could see but grasses and flowers but he understood that just because that everyone had their own personal preferences. “I live on the coast, in a pack called Stavanger Bay, not too far from here.” For now because he hadn’t ruled out relocating. “Do you live around here?” He returned the question, having assumed she didn’t actually live on this particular territory since she had asked him if he had.