Hideaway Strath the teeth of the eye of a storm

[hijacks adorable Roarke thread with massive powerplay of Dagfinn, sanctioned by Mix ♥]

“Roarke, little snowbear,” Lotte crooned to the pudgy cream puff, grooming him rhythmically, humming softly a lullaby-like version of the tule kotiin call. “Dag,” she said in their beloved home tongue, “remember when our own mom and dad used to sing us home?” She chuckled, beginning a whole new world conversation about their shared childhood memories. Lotte had a new life now — a separate life — and for the first time this niggled at her and kindled a flicker of anxiety. Things had been beautiful in the Enok Tundra. The siblings, despite being a boisterous, loving lot, had split naturally into two pairs: Lotte and Dagfinn, Bård and Tove. Lærke, on the other hand, had always floated in and out of these pairs with ease. It’d always been a special treat to have the Bear home at last. Listening to his stories and learning his songs had been Lotte’s second favorite thing — doing just about anything with Dagfinn, of course, was her favorite.

“I miss him,” she blurted out, and with Dag she never needed to clarify where her bursts of thought came from. “I thought he’d come back.” She confessed that she hadn’t even thought of him during the fire. Her first inclination had been to call out for her kaksonen, and then for her beau. Dagfinn responded as he always did, in a way that comforted her immeasurably, and confessed his own feelings. Feelings that, big surprise, had aligned perfectly with his sister’s. Things hadn’t happened how either of the twins had imagined they might. Lotte and Dagfinn had followed Lærke with the thought that they might become a trio like the one Lotte had met, only better. Because they were soturit. Because they were Ansbjørns. And while they’d each had their share of adventures, they were far from home and sans the Bear.

It was at this point that Dagfinn suggested the absolute last thing Lotte wanted to hear: that he wanted to return to the Enok Tundra to bear the news of her children and her mate. To Lotte, it felt a whole lot like writing her off. Unfairly, she imagined the whole family getting together and hunting without her and doing just fine, and that rankled. She tried to find the words to convey her insecurities, but she couldn’t. Dagfinn, ever her soulmate, picked up on her mood. They talked it out amidst affectionate insults, and even though neither of them felt particularly good about being separated, kohtalo was an impossible thing to fight. There was a sacrilegious moment where she hated her children and hated these wilds because they stood between her and going where she wanted — i.e. with Dagfinn — but as Eirlys and Roarke nestled against her with contented baby sighs, she told herself with a new kind of serenity that she could still be happy here.

It was a different kind of happy, but it was immeasurable in its own way.

It was in this way and in this moment that Lotte locked away part of herself — the part that didn’t want to live if she wasn’t living with Dagfinn in breathing or yelling distance. They’d tried that already, and just when they’d gotten back together…well, it didn’t bear thinking about. Maybe part of what she locked away was her youth. Maybe that was too dramatic. Lotte had surged forward in life, becoming wife and mother and Banríon — she was a fast-paced girl and she liked having a fast-paced life — but the thought that she’d surged past Dagfinn and evidently past some invisible line that she couldn’t cross back over was crushing.

“I’m not crying,” she informed him as her voice broke and tears began coursing down her cheeks and splashing down onto her son’s velveteen crown. She blinked rapidly, trying to stow them, but it didn’t do any good. “Why would I cry? You’ll be back tomorrow telling me you got lost and I’ll be chasing you out for worrying me. I won’t even have a ch-chance to miss you.” Dagfinn, similarly not-crying, made his own playful retorts. Their words were light, but their hearts were heavy as they clung together and not-cried as one, crushing the poor snowbears between them, but they pasted watery smiles upon their faces as they disengaged and withdrew. Lotte was determined to maintain her façade of looking on the bright side, but at the sight of her kaksonen walking away without her, she cried out sharply, softly: “Dagfinn!”

She’d meant to say something meaningful, like, “I love you,” or, “Be safe out there,” but the words stuck in her throat. Throwing back, she howled wordlessly, harmony to an empty melody, all her grief and all her love and all her worry for both of them — and he filled it with his voice, just as she’d meant him to.