Gyrfalcon's Keep for the lives we've betrayed

For @Reiko ! <3

The herds had returned to the Wilds and seeing them as frequent sights was so relieving for the Viking who had begun to think that the pestilence of death and famine would never end. Life had began to return earlier in the month but he had not held onto the hope that it meant that they would not have to suffer for too much longer. Suffering had became a way of his life over the past couple of months. He had endured. He had learned. Yet, there had been a great personal cost along the way. Whittier's death was not so easy to forget or write off as something the Norns demanded. Perhaps it was and perhaps it wasn't but that did not work to fill the hole left in the Viking's heart. As time passed Kjalarr supposed he would regard Whittier's death the same as his father's: a fact of life; but currently it was too fresh and too painful.

He breathed in the salty brine that drifted off the sea on the wind. He had climbed up the Keep but left the Gyrfalcon nests alone. The one he had caught — despite that it had been unintentional! — was limp betwixt his paws where he laid in a comfortable, sphinx like position had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. For the first time in what felt like a lifetime Kjalarr was not hungry. He had eaten until he was full earlier in the morning and was truly grateful to find that there was no guilt attached to the feast he'd caught for himself. Still, he plucked the gyrfalcon's feathers from it's body to reveal it's supple flesh thinking that it was something he might take back to Saltwinter to one of it's caches.