Stone Circle Beholden to the dust that adheres

Hoping for a @Bjarna <3

The princess had fled. Breathless and in a blind panic, she discarded everything she knew as she ran. The Mother, flung into the chilled air of early spring; her name, dropped and left to rot in the melting snows; her restlessness, her bitterness, all her inexplicable dissatisfaction with the only life she had ever known, all of that just scattered into the breeze. She would be someone new.
When she came to the scents of many wolves, the already-frazzled girl was overwhelmed! She did a dizzied half-frantic half-thrilled dance at the borders and howled shakily. Hello?! Is anyone here?? She willed them to appear, to talk to her, and maybe unlike that boy she'd met, they would actually like her.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

calling. calling. calling.

she had been prepared to take her trip any moment now. yet she could not say why she stayed. maybe to see the new members settle, to make sure they did not threaten gunnar's status or disrespect inkeri.

bjarna felt dizzy with the sudden responsibilities.

this time, she found herself also overcome with the look of the girl before her too. no, surely not. no. impossible!

somebody had taken her but given it more color. now it stood before her. breathed on her borders.

hallo... but her voice quaked even as she straightened her body.

SAME

What met her was a pale mirror of herself. The girl was unsettled, and it showed in the lift of her hackles and tail, in the slow silent curl of her lips as she started to back away with her back arching in her best approximation of an angry cat. Fear was written into every aspect of the reaction, an intense flare of it that ended almost as quickly as it had begun. She was disturbed by the resemblance they shared, but recognized the girl as no threat.
Abruptly ashamed, the ruddy girl slid into a prone position, elbows hitting the ground hard. It frightens me, She began to explain in hushed tremulous tones. To see myself in your face. The girl breathed slowly, voice drifting, muttering, I might become you if I stood forever in the snow. You might become me if you bathed in blood.

no.

this was a cruel joke. for a brighter version of herself to come with anger in its heart. dressed in fire and blood. it would take her own and she would —

it sunk. down with regret into the snow.

bjarna could nearly not hear for the way her heart thudded so heavily that her ears hurt. perhaps it was for the best too, that anxiety gripped her into a deafness. she would not have understood the words crafted for her anyway.

she hesitantly lifted a paw, held it to her chest. followed a song and dance of what usually occurred — despite the fact that this was very far from normal.

bjarna,

her voice soft. trembled and wary.

you?

She expected her to run as the boy had, but she did not. Instead the princess found herself peering in shy relief and growing awe at her pale doppelganger as she introduced herself. Bjarna. The fear was gone now, and she felt something else. What was this?
Kinship, perhaps? Did she know what that felt like? I do not know, She said, answering herself more than Bjarna. She had been pensive as the fear and guilt faded, but now her gaze turned intense on the pale girl. But I think you might. Bjarna, will you come with me? Will you stand in the snow with me? And I will bathe you in blood. The ruddy girl shivered with quiet delight.

bjarna. you. come. me.

she blinked owlishly. she did not understand who this thing (how cruel!) was and why it had come to her, attempted to lure her from kvarsheim.

bjarna did not believe in spirits and yet she felt something otherworldly here. to look at the bloodstained form of herself. wrong and muddled. yet it was bear like.

bjarna had always placed importance in bears first, for reasons unknown and held onto from childhood.

had a spirit of a bear come to her now?

halp? need halp?

she could think of no other thing.

The pale mirror understood. Yes. Help, They would help each other. They were the same, only different. It mattered somehow, though the princess did not yet understand everything. She only knew that they were connected, they had to be, that could be the only explanation.
I have been lost, She explained, an imperfect summary of a life that never felt less than lonely. But we are the same. That had to mean something. It had to.

she thought of reverie.

but reverie had been safe. she had been wolf shaped (in all ways that bjarna could tell) and helping her had come easy.

now it was like she was a girl again. one who looked into the river and saw her difference clearly. only that figure in the river had crawled free and came to her now, asking for help.

but bjarna wore a caretaker's heart above all.

bjarna care. bjarna halp.

still her voice quivered softly, but now she dared a step closer. closer. looked with the gaze of a healer for where hurt may be or what things she might offer.

The distance between them dwindled and the ruddy princess began to tremble. She was not used to touch. She didn't know if she dreaded or anticipated it. But she tried to hold still, she tried very hard.
Only, she couldn't. If there was anything the girl needed, it was a hug. She couldn't stop herself from shifting and reaching out for that contact. And if it was allowed, a small noise would slip from her throat like the soft sound of something breaking just before she dissolved into tears.

oh.

but maybe it was more like reverie than she had realized. the swelling of bjarna's heart and the sudden acceptance at what was shown.

if this was herself given another form, it seemed very much like herself. disjointed and not connected with the rest of the world. tears were familiar even for bjarna. even if she turned her sadness into a silent, drifting melancholy nowadays.

she opened her arms, prepared to welcome the girl.

safe,

her voice soft, but now it did not tremble with uncertain fear. it held a carefully crafted emotion of protection.

as if she healed herself by healing this blood tinted version.

Safe. She did not know what it meant, not truly. The princess could not conceptualize something so foreign to her, but she knew then that she needed this, whatever it was. Whatever it meant. Safe, She repeated, still trembling fiercely in Bjarna's embrace.
They were the same, but so very different. And perhaps that was the way it was meant to be. Like two pieces of a puzzle, mismatched but perfectly paired. Something just seemed to click in a way that the ruddy girl knew she would never, ever be able to replicate.
So she would just have to stay with Bjarna forever.

safe.

yes, this. kvarsheim had always been safe for those who were welcomed. had always been safe for those who were...different. odd. not of the common world.

look at bjarna — the nornir, daughter of the once great móðir. a girl who would not have survived in the world if not for the blossoming beginnings of kvarsheim her mother had built.

stay? she offered now. uncertain how she could help somebody like this from a distance. uncertain if she could let somebody like this be only at a distance.

no.

they must keep one another. two odd, bear-fated creatures.

The princess smiled at that, and trembled a little less, because she thought it was funny. She had asked Bjarna to come with her. Now Bjarna asked her to stay. Which would it be? Both? Neither? Both, yes, She decided. And then... Then...
It would be better. What would be better? She didn't know what better looked like, anyway, but now they would know. We will see what it looks like, and maybe it will be beautiful, The princess murmured, and trembled once again.

if u want her added to kvarsheim lemme know! otherwise i'll note her as a guest <33

trembles.

familiar in an unfortunate kind of way. bjarna was nothing but a tremble when it came down to the most volatile of moments.

a poor guardian, if you asked her.

perhaps it was why she was caregiver.

a soft touch to the familiar figure's crown. then one last word offered as she moved to sweep towards kvarsheim. come. bjarna could bring her to a place of healing. a small den that once housed her family and now seemed emptier than ever.

this bear-touched could give it life again.

Yessss add her, she can be referenced as generally haunting Bjarna and otherwise staying in the den <3

So they would see. The princess followed; she knew obedience well, perhaps better than anything else, and so she eagerly offered it to Bjarna. It was a relief in a way to have something to offer at all, something more than whatever unsettling connection existed between them.
But more relieving was the knowledge that things would be different now. That she would finally know what different really meant. It meant she would be happy, she assumed, but still the girl could not picture it. What was happiness, anyway? Was it this; the too-fast drum of her heart and the shaky weak feeling in her legs, the tightness in her throat and the clashing feeling of wanting this but wanting also to scream and cry and break it — was that what happiness was?
She would just have to see.