Stone Circle And the tears of people ran together

for @Bjarna. Private for now unless others get called in :3

Mist swirled around the tall, grey stones. Their shadows seemed to stretch out, reaching out like dark claws in each and every direction. They shifted as the light above moved and swayed, as though batted by an eagle's wing. Like a white eye, the sun looked down from directly above the circle, but seemingly also from within it- which was how the shadows were cast in every direction. There was the scent of burnt earth, even in the foggy haze. 

Vines grew at the base of the stones, but quickly they grew. The boy watched the vines grow up the stones, until he could feel them growing up his legs, holding him still. He panicked. He felt rooted to the spot, helpless and confused. The sun could not be in the middle of the stones! Why was this happening, and how? Vines could not grow so fast! Something was creeping up him, crawling up and holding him still. He could not run, he could not move! The vines began to squeeze, making it harder and harder for him to breathe.

In his sleep, he wheezed faintly. The cawing of a crow jolted him awake, and he panted softly for a moment. It was a dream. Another one. He wasn't sore or short of breath, really...It had all been in his head, hadn't it? 

He lifted himself, shook off a soft layer of snow, and headed for the circle of stones. The morning sun was bright, but the grey clouds above diffused the light. He blinked a bit, and sat with his back to one of the stones where it cast its shadow over him, almost protectively. He tried to sort out his dreams...But the more he thought about it, the less he remembered.

she held a rib bone in her jaws.

it had been a prized possession for a long while. something she had acquired when she'd been younger and kvarsheim had...not been kvarsheim. just a mother and daughter.

but now she wished to show this trinket off to none other than her softer little brother. one who might appreciate it more.

so her hanging tail waved with delight as she spotted him near the stones. wondering if he liked them as much as she did. she only paused to give him personal space, waiting to see if she was welcomed closer or if he wished to be alone for now.

Quietly, he fretted over his dream. The fog of memory seemed to get thicker and thicker, the more he woke up, and the harder he tried to picture what it was he'd seen, the more it seemed to escape him. Something had left him feeling unnerved, though, so when his sister appeared he felt relieved. As though whatever it was that had frightened was something her presence would ward off. 

He smiled at her and waved his tail, inviting her to join him- but then his eyes dropped to the pale, curved bone she carried, which arched out of either side of her lips like tusks. The surprise of it made him pause. The slight aching behind his eyes, prompted earlier by daylight, intensified. He remembered, then, the curving of the shadows, the pale light of the sun between the stones. He felt something make his body stiffen. The kindness fell softly from his features, and left him with a demure, but very blank expression. His absent gaze stared right through his sister. 

The stones were white. They curved up. They were the bone she held in her mouth. Tusks. Boar-mouth.

she approached on oversized (for her tiny body, seeing as she would never grow into them...) paws to settle in next to her brother. happy to see him out, wondering if dagur or yrsa lurked about. perhaps mama or gunnar had them.

but as she placed the bone down finally did she notice his features.

not the image of the happy boy she had come to know and love!

skáld? what is it?

White feathers, falling with the snow. The white boar, tusks flame.

He wouldn't respond to her, not immediately. His head drooped a bit, and his eyelids fluttered a bit. His jaw moved slightly, almost in a chewing motion every now and again, but the episode lasted only a matter of seconds once it had begun. He began to see more of the world before him again, after she'd come to his side and had questioned him. His delayed response ended up being surprise; how had she snuck up on him that fast? 

"Bjarna! Your teeth-" Her tusks were gone and on the ground- it wasn't her teeth at all. "Oh. What is this?" He asked, seemingly unphased completely by his momentary absence.

she did not understand. there was a show of disconnect. he seemed somehow shocked! stunned! she watched the moves of his face and something in her gut stirred. that something was wrong. was it with her or with him?

her teeth?!

she nearly bit down on her own cheeks, as if she might find the problem. only to see it was instead nothing at all. an imagination maybe, as he noticed the bone.

it is a bone. i have had for a long time, before you were here even!

tentatively she leaned forward, hoping that she might gently nudge at him. ruffling baby furs and quietly examining him in a manner that seemed more like the usual doting.

i...thought you may like it.

She seemed concerned, not her usual buoyant self, which was a bit odd. Perhaps something about the bone worried her, though she seemed to value it quite a lot, having kept it for so long. He leaned over to sniff it, touching the smoothe edge of it with his nose. It was quite pretty, really. 

"What animal is it from?" He asked, then. The image of the white boar was still in his mind. He shimmied happily beneath her touch, leaning his shoulders in so she could reach an itchy spot, and thumping his foot against the ground when she did. "It is pretty. It looks like the sleepy moon," He said, not knowing what the word was for a crescent moon.

her teeth combed through a thicket of his fur. wondering if his soft hairs were for the winter. what he might think of when the snow stuck to the land longer than an afternoon.

a stag and it is like sleepy moon, isn't it? she hummed in response, knowing at once what shape he meant. she, too, did not have a proper name.

did skáld nap out here? alone? her gaze briefly fluttered about, finding just traces of the two of them for now.

The bone of a stag. He was impressed. "It is very pretty," He said, though something about it still haunted him slightly. Perhaps it was because it was a relic, a remained of something gone long ago. A talisman, perhaps, as it carried some importance to Bjarna- and thus, likely had some hold over her affections. He felt both very curious about it and wary about it all at once, but not wanting to offend his sister, he did not ask those questions. 

Instead, he blinked as she asked him about how he'd got out to the stone circle. "I...I had a bad dream." He said, with a weak tone. "It....It left me very sad. Scared. I saw something...I've never seen before." He admitted, and looked up at Bjarna, his eyes troubled and ears turned back.

gunnar had seen her in such a state.

sad, scared, rattled from nightmares. bjarna was no stranger to the sensation. so all at once she was prepared to comfort. soothe.

bjarna has had that before. a lapse in her grammar as she delved into the emotional. would you like to talk about it? she would never force her brother to. the choice would always be his.

Skáld's gaze grew sad. He did not want for anyone else to have dreams like the one he'd had, but it seemed that his sister, too, had had them before. He had to think, for a moment, if he wanted to talk about what he'd seen. He wondered if it might make her feel even more sad, if she heard what he'd had to say. Bjarna was a caring sister, and it troubled her to see him confused- but he knew she wanted to help. Likely, she would prefer to know what it was that troubled him, then to know he was having bad dreams but be left out of his healing process. 

"I do not know what it was, that I saw," He said. "But it was here, in the circle. There was...There was a light, and it was...Inside the stone circle." He explained. His gaze went distant as he delved into memory, trying to pry the dream free from the dark place in his mind where dreams went to be forgotten- or saved for later. "There was a creature. It had hooves, like deer, but it was much shorter...Its body was bigger. Its face...long, and it had teeth, that curved up, like...When you had the bone in your mouth." He explained. Something which had been sung to him in a song, or told to him in a story. Something he'd never witnessed, but that his mind had put to shape from the folklore shared with him when he'd been an infant. Now, it had come into his dreams. 

"It...Wasn't a bad thing. It had kindness in its eyes. It was pure white, but...It left. I could not follow, I was....Stuck," He said. He felt very vulnerable, explaining all of this. She shuddered. "It left, and I could not follow." He repeated softly, sadly.

she listened intently, as any good sister (or caretaker) should.

a great big light. a pale beast with looks that seemed to deceive the kindness it showed. with teeth like how the bone had curved in her mouth.

it had left behind skáld.

do you think it meant to...show you something? is that why you wanted to follow?

she tried to piece where her brother's sadness had come from. perhaps it had been nothing more than witnessing the monster that had left him with these emotions.

yet still, she was not oblivious to the wilderness of dreams and stories weaved.

The questions she asked him were difficult to answer. He hadn't really been able to process what he'd been thinking while he'd been in the dream. All he'd felt were his emotions, his reactions to what he saw. He'd felt that the creature was frightening, but benign, somehow. He was mixing his dream up with the images his mind had conjured moments ago, and he found it impossible to separate them. They were one and the same, now. 

"I do not know if I wanted to go with it, just...That I did not want it to go." He answered. "When it left...Something started squeezing me, and it became too hard to breathe. I couldn't move," He said. "It felt...So real." He said with a simple shrug.

she shifted, so that she might drape her head over his shoulders if he did not decline. gently nosing at the ridges of growing shoulder blades.

they do, don't they?

so real. she remembered the hot tears she had wept after her first nightmare. that she had felt like she was dying in the moments after. choking on her own breath.

you know bjarna and mama will always listen to these things, don't you? gunnar too...

Bjarna understood. He felt a bit less frightened, knowing that this was something that happened to others as well. He felt there was something wrong with him- but maybe the dreams were something that happened to everyone. Leaning into her was like relaxing into a pillow, warm and soft and comforting. He closed his eyes and sighed softly, nodding his head below her chin. 

Step forward...

The thought was small, and he didn't move; he'd hardly registered it. He licked his lips, easing some of the tension in his jaw, which he didn't realize had been cramping up a bit. He pulled his tongue back in, raking it against his teeth which closed, and pressed together again. He leaned his head into Bjarna's fur, hoping the warmth might quell the ache in his eye. 

Step forward. 

He rose stiffly, clumsily, teetering lightly. His jaw slackened slightly, before he tipped over, and the convulsions began.

she's calling in @Gunnar if that's okay! :D

she did not catch what was happening until it was too late.

her brother moved in ways she was unfamiliar with. convulsing. she thought of prey, fighting against a dying breath in hunts. it was enough to strike the fear of the heavens into her.

sharp and blooming.

she crouched alongside her brother, wondering what could be done to stop it. all the while she frantically called for father bear, her panicked voice declaring the importance of the situation.

Of course <3 I hinted this might happen in my first ooc *is sly, but not too sly*

He lost consciousness just as he stepped to his feet, jerked by contracting muscles and some instinct that told him what to do. He barely had time to realize what might happen before it did, and fortunately for him, he was out before he hit the ground. He made a sound as air was pushed up through his chest when his muscles tightened, and his jaw clamped shut. 

His muscles would seize for about a minute and a half before he went still, and his muscles relaxed at last. Blearily, he began to blink softly, confused, and a bit sore.

Gunnar heard the call and ran with all his might. Whatever he had been doing, whatever it was he dropped it and ran. Large legs, tore up the ground. He forced himself to push to remember what it felt like to run as he had as a young man. He tapped into that force, that thought and pressed.

He made it to two of the children he had grown to love. He pressed his nose to Bjarna and then gently to Skald.

Bjarna? Skald? What has happened elskurnar

He nosed again at the pair, concern written in the gray of his eyes, hidden behind the mask of sand. Gloves of warmth and solitude pressed himforward as he sought to look them both over.

that minute felt like forever.

hours, a century. she remembered the way bodies had gathered when mother bear had problems. she wondered now if a mountain savior would come. heal her brother and bring him back.

but gunnar was there.

bjarna, crouched protectively, kept skáld close. perhaps smothering him in doing so.

he...he shook. it was not — he didn't...he fell and shook. for she knew no other way to describe it to gunnar! now she sought to begin the frenzied grooming of a concerned caretaker over her brother. who had the wonderful misfortune of both the event and waking to these things.

Bjarna's closeness kept him warm, and she was lucky this time that he didn't kick her or scratch her with his claws. 

He yawned and worked his jaw a bit as he sat up, confused to Bjarna's sudden concern, and the way Gunnar fussed over him as well. Bjarna explained something, but Skáld was confused. "Did....When did that happen? Bjarna, not so rough," He chuckled faintly, lifting a paw to gently dissuade his sister from getting his curly fur all messed up and tangled. He felt fine...But she was clearly fretting for some reason.

He looked up to Gunnar. A question came to the forefront of his mind, in the aftermath, though the boy wasn't really shaken or upset. "Do you know where Mother is?"

Gunnar could not be sure, but if what she described. He had only ever heard of it, and had no idea how to heal it. It was one of those things that killed you eventually, or so he thought. You could only be helped during and to treat the symptoms, but it never went away. A sickness of your head, that caused uncontrollable things and movements. One must be sure not to let your bite your tongue.

Gunnar sighed softly and shook his head. Truth be told he hadn't seen Sanja in a bit. I have not Skald. But I will see if I can find her

nobody else seemed concerned.

they moved on to talk of her mother, skáld seemed not aware of what had occured. she wondered if it had been her with the problem.

so carefully she pulled herself away from her brother, leaving his curls alone. amplified by her grooming.

you...you two should go find mama. she encouraged softly, forcing a smile onto her features.

everything is okay now... a warm nudge to her brother. finding that as much as she had forced herself to give him room, she still fretted.

yet she wished for room. to think and fret in private.

She would be around somewhere, she always was. She was quiet sometimes, but since having moved the youth to the stone circle, he felt he was supposed to be spending more time on his own, rather than being babied in the den. This was her way of giving him time to learn and explore, though...He would have much preferred to be someone's shadow, than to be left in the shadows of the standing stones alone. 

Gunnar would go find her, and when Bjarna encouraged him to go with him, he looked up at her, concerned. It wasn't like her to send him off with someone else, unless she was too busy, and for whatever reason...He didn't think she was busy. But he'd do what she asked. When she pulled away from him, he leaned back toward her long enough to give her cheek a kiss. He gave her a smile. "We will go find Mama. Then maybe we all get food!" He said.

Gunnar motioned for the young male to follow, though he met the gaze of Bjarna with a soft smile.

Perhaps you and I can have a chat later about some other things Bjarna.

He canted his head only slightly towards Skald, hoping that Bjarna understood he was not trying to ignore her concerns, just not do them in front of the child that was afflicted yet.

They had to understand what they were dealing with and go from there.

Come along Skald

last from me <3

i will find you berries!

impossible with the cold seeming here to stay, but she felt she might rummage some somewhere. anything for skáld. always, anything.

softly she nodded her head to gunnar. not fully understanding but intending to take him up on such an offer.

then she turned, off to seclude herself in overgrowth. mindlessly looking for distractions.