Larksong Grotto Ankärr

@Skorpa <3

Away.
With solemn paws she treads the ridge that overbrows a shady vale. Great waves of sunlight gladden her spine against the wintery chill, but she knows she will be seen here. Better to go where the mountain-sides are deeply rifted.
Descending northward she finds a small glen, whose wild blooms were all frozen over but a stream’s tides rushed clear. Here she would drink and investigate her wounds, praising spirits that she was relatively scathe-less with only superficial cuts save the hot flesh on her soles. The tempest in her simmers again. Another prayer raises that both men would be mortally wounded and die a fool’s death in each others’ bleeding arms. An image that tickled so she heard the churn of her own laughter.
She was freed at last and the world felt new. She could find humor in it once more.

<3

---

on skorpa the gods took a small pity: his life was not forfeit within the mountains where he had fought a drengr over a goat and a woman. such foolishness on his part. muzzle would heal into a mass of criss-crossing scars, and on one side his lip had been torn so badly that he did not believe it would cover his teeth again.

his forehead was a mass of congealed blood, shoulders riddled with cuts just scabbing. but the worst was the gash along his belly. that it had missed his vitals did not matter, not when it had started to ooze green beneath the swollen flesh.

fever took skorpa as he left the stone halls; by the time exile reached taiga, his mind had begun to melt. rudimentary knowledge of plantlife kept him breathing.

he fell into the grotto with a groan, a curse that asked what joking his gods played, to free him once and then kill him again.

here was water scented without the strength to reach its surface.

and as skorpa descended into a heat-marked night, he laughed. regvand was not far, nostrils flaring before he succumbed to fever dreams.

---

A head yanks up with the guttural laugh, one that has become sickly familiar as it was crushed to her ears. The moment drives into another, and with silent caution the huntress wades herself away from the brook to slink between banks of frozen roots.
There he lay in a red heap— the ugly man, the con artist, a monster of sorts in that everything which could have been kind in him was driven out by greed. His wounds fester the air. If he is not dead yet, he will be soon.
The dove flutters closer. How gratifying it is to be the one to gaze down. He could have helped her; they could have both escaped. Now she had her health and he his death.
“Are you thirsty?” Ayovi thinks of pissing on his face and smirks at her own wickedness. She bends over to look for his head, nearly indecipherable in the mass of rot.
Why should she not see him die?

---

his eyes opened to her above him and he felt as though he was dreaming until she spoke. skorpa lay quite still, as much for his ailing flesh as he was in his suspicions of a trap. "så han fandt dig ikke alligevel."

there was a great stubbornness in skorpa which now forced him upright into a shambling lurch. pain provoked a grunt; he turned his battered face toward her, memorizing the rainwater beauty that warrior had meant for himself. " godt. jeg kan dø i lykke, nu hvor jeg ved, at han har tabt." mockery, mockery which made a joke of his demise as well.

clawing next for water, toward its ice-rimed edges as if it were all he could find in himself to do.

---

He comes alive in rough staggerings that thrusts levins of ice through her heart. The huntress rips away, setting a broad space between them in which he could not breach. She feels the stirrings of fear but reaches for anger instead. Survival eclipses what yielding she was taught to present to this man. He sways like a kootsin just before the mortal bite and revulsion mauls her nose. From safe distances, Ayovi eyes the haggard face, made almost unnatural by new wounds. A laceration in the belly nearly glows green.
“Your stench will bring all wildlife down upon us. You must bathe yourself,” she asserts quietly.
Would he understand her? Thus far there was no talk shared but the workings of their bodies. Her shoulders quiver with a new fine edge. Ayovi is grimly aware that her scent, too, will soon call the wilds.

---

life-giving gulps of cold liquid burned through skorpa. he was alive! he breathed. regnvand spoke and he rolled a bleary eye toward her, muzzle cutting toward the water's surface once more. when his belly was stretched with slaked thirst, he fell back on hurting haunches and hung his bruised head to glance at the gnawing of his belly, infected punctures now.

a grunt of pain lifted his head; he scoured the nearby foliage and forced himself into a hobble, a gathering of those things whose name he did not know but whose properties he did understand. for now rainwater woman went ignored, only the man's rasping grunts sounding to echo here and there.

at last he lay back against a sheltered tree and spat the mess down upon his wound, wincing until tendons in neck stood out with a strangled sound. "jeg vil leve. jeg vil leve." a talismanic mutter. a horrendous prayer.

there was some muckchewed greenery left; he let the rest drip carefully onto the cold earth. "til dine håndflader," skorpa mumbled, too weak to do more than lift his own paw and indicate its softer side.

half-lidded, exile slumped back against the tree-bole as fever swirled again in his skin.

---

Did she dread to see him rise? Or was it a relief? Truthfully, Ayovi does not know as she watches the wild man founder through the wood, intrigued to see him return to make a paste, though his offer for her paws falls on deaf ears. It would have been easy for her to turn away from him then, if not for the smell. Ayovi was a woman who could swallow pride and fear long enough to get things done.
“Let me help,” she doesn’t know why she says it. He won't understand her.
Careful steps approach him, a face veiling fear. The mere action might bait the wildling, but Ayovi is confident, or otherwise foolish enough, to believe he has little left stowed of strength.
Close, now, and for the first time she has a clear enough look at the man. He is broad, with a prominent jaw and a cut like neither Wide Fang nor Ashēer. Tight glances volley between the bloodied mouth and the draining slash on his belly.
“No tricks— or I’ll finish you myself,” Ayovi’s voice is a sharp rouse, bordering on fearsome. She lifts a paw to his tender flesh, flicking to watch for a mal reaction. Then she braces the second against his wound, hesitating for a breath before pushing to expel the foul green matter from his side.

---

that pain was violent and ceaseless and nauseating. skorpa held vomit behind the rows of yellowed teeth, going to the arched tension of a curved sapling beneath her paws. wide eyes shouted his agony to the heavens and a ragged shout cut him off from the world for a time.

he dreamt. he did not know how long the blackness had lasted, nor how long he had closed his eyes. his belly felt as though it had been stuffed with angry hornets, stabbing, stabbing from the inside.

he watched her in a gaze, not comprehending if he was awake or asleep. she was northern and not. she was built for long distances, a rogue traveling high snowy ridges. not one of his own. not like he and the warrior who had fought so hard for her possession.

skorpa mumbled some snippet of a flyting joke before his head lolled again. despite his great power and horrendous reek, he was nothing in this moment. had she the wish to open his throat with her teeth, now was the second she should seize.

Keeping composure was no simple task, she fought back her own grit in favor of calm. But once in a while, a snippet of emotion would leak through and she'd be straining alongside him until at last she could leech nothing more from the laceration but clear tears.
“Alright! Alright it’s done!” But something in him had disentwined. He lay, slumped on the ground while Ayovi fights for control of her own breaths. She clears the mess from the snow and returns with water, dribbling its ice into reels of gaping flesh.
She had done everything she was supposed to do— learned the traditions of women, practiced herbs, kept the warlords at bay, listened to her elders on every rule and action… and for what? To find herself alone in the wild, tending to the half-dead man who’d threatened her only hours earlier?
“Do not act as though you don’t deserve this,” she whispers to the northman, who now appears fully subdued beneath lidded eyes. “I doubt this folly will even be a lesson. You’re not ever going to change, are you?”
There’s a little satisfaction in mocking without repercussion, with no one to curb a slanderous mouth.
“Look at you— at the mercy of a woman,” she smiles to imagine what he might think of that as she packs the last gash with the rest of his salve.

---

she was very pretty when she smiled, he decided. more than pretty. her diminutive paws were notchings of silver porcelain next to his own, but she wielded them with a wounding precision. or mending, perhaps.

"jeg måtte give ham en lærestreg, kan du se det?" skorpa mumbled, feeling the snowy earth crunching under the back of his head, sending ripples of overwhelming sound through his harsh-healing skull. "men jeg ville ikke have gjort dig fortræd," the exile went on in that same distant voice, using the last of his strength to peer pointedly at her. "eller havde du."

into darkness he began to sink. "du ville ikke have os." above him, the sky danced in odd whirling colors. "det er bedre at bytte sig til en kvindes seng end at tvinge sig selv ind i den." a quick smile flashed toward nothing. "hun bliver varmere, når hun har din byttehandel."

inside the warrior of middle age was a hurting boy, and it was this boy whose visions blackened skorpa's consciousness for a time. he dreamed of home, of brunhilde and sigurd receiving him in shouting welcome, in feast, in a shower of many gifts. and in this time, he was the only son! the only son; the only favored.

***

he did not know how long he slept, how many hours or days. he knew only that the bite in his flesh was reduced and the fever had at last broken. burntbranch eyes searched now for his savior, a worker of seiðr if he had ever known one. and to her now, skorpa owed a great debt.

Fortuity muted one’s words to the other.  Ayovi wouldn’t have believed him, anyway.

…

Morning had come and gone, it was afternoon when the huntress awoke, light-headed, but at ease. Finally her paws scabbed over, no longer would she be moving on tenderness. They feel strange and rough but there is no pain. With relief she watches the soft noon on the wings of sparrows who dwelt here, fluttering between bare trees, and stretches out her legs. There is nothing to eat, but she ferries down to the brook, rinsing in the chill before returning to the fortified tree under which she’d left the northman last night.
He was there, stirring, copper-hewn eyes watching from the dark mask. Ayovi is nervous again. She remembers in a rush the things that she’d said; what he’d done. But he appears languorous still and she chances a few steps forward to examine the cuts. They were healing nicely. The flesh is calm. She nods her head and leans back, lowering into a gentle seat.
“Good.” The blue eyes attempt to express affirmation with their openness. It was not so much the warrior then that unnerved her, but the tingling within her at the man’s nearness. Soon her skin would grow too warm, and she feared she would no longer be able to think.
“Have you seen kootsin on your travels? Great horned-creatures? Um— big…hairy.” Her paw stamps the snow, drawing a circular mark. With a claw she indicates a pair of curled tusks.
It looks like… nothing.
Still, her eyes meet his, searching for any evidence of discernment in the void of his mask.

the drawing in question