dream in black and white

@Thistle Cloud For Mama Bear! Or brother. Or both. :p Also I played it like this is starting out with Ragnar relieving Thistle for a bit and her coming back, if you'd rather I change it feel free to let me know! <3

Something moved. It was outside the realm of his dreaming, originating in ‘reality’ and it had been enough to jostle him, stirring the eldest Loðbrók child to the precipice of consciousness. Yet it was a state — the state of awakening — he had yet to reach; slumber the Ironside’s captor unwilling to let the child go just yet. In time the shapes, large and lacking detail became darker, and the carefree atmosphere of the dream become somber and sharp. Definitive in that it did not feel good. In Eiríkr’s dreams thunder let out a mighty roar and the sharp crack of lightning startled the boy awake as it split the sky milky blue eyes bursting open wide as he gasped awake and let out a few, panicked pants glimpsing around him furiously, sucking in breath greedily as if he hadn’t breathed oxygen for centuries. As his heart rate became to climb back down to it’s normal pace he listened, not realizing that he did not have to strain so hard to hear the sounds of the world around him but all he heard was the sound of his still sleeping siblings and the sounds of the birds (not that he realized that was what they were) singing from the outside.

He blinked his eyes, pupils still blown wide in their pools of milky blue, seeking the large, still blurry but becoming clearer form of his father. “hvað er rangt sonur minn?” Eiríkr heard his father inquire though he did not know the meanings of the words, nor that his father spoke in a tongue different from the one his mother did. In a moment of trembling fear he pushed himself against his Ragnar’s shoulder, head butting the junction between the man’s shoulder and front right leg wanting the thunder to stop haunting his dreams not realizing that his father would have soothed his worries about the thunder — that it the God Thor was fearsome but was also watching over him — if Eiríkr could have spoken. He was developing quickly but he was still a baby, could not vocalize yet (couldn’t even babble yet according to the guide). So answering his father besides in the coos, cries and whines he could muster was impossible.

Eiríkr did not cry out, and his trembling had stopped quickly though he drew strength from Ragnar’s imposing and colossal presence. Eiríkr had been afraid but he didn’t want Ragnar or his littler siblings (the true babies in his mind) to know it. It was his eldest instincts kicking in already though they had always, perhaps, been there. Slowly, the Ironside detached himself from his father’s arm pit, tugging himself free with unnecessary force that had him tumbling back upon his bum (having just started to walk so he was still fairly unsteady) in a startled moment, his tail squished awkwardly under his right back leg. “Ein?” His father was looking at him with ethereal colored eyes of the iciest and most stunning blue that Eiríkr had ever seen (not that he saw much beyond the colors of his siblings, and Thistle and the dirt and dank darkness of the den). The Ironside thought that maybe that word they called him, that sound ‘Ein’ was in some way connected to him.

Thisle used it too, has used it the other day when she chided him, though her voice had been sharp to get across her point when he had squished one of his siblings by pouncing unjustly upon them and proceeding as his per usual ritual to conquering them by munching on their ears.

Unable to do much else he cocked his head at his father and let out a small, quieted yelp.