Blackfeather Woods death gazes in all directions, as curious as a hand, with blind eyes

The northman’s ears swivel and he glimpses over his shoulder at the sound of footfalls approach but it is not until she speaks to him that he turns that he knows it is her. The mysterious woman he’d coupled with so many months ago. He’s had several lovers but he remembers them all. He remembers Ondine because he had taken her briefly as his mate; a mistake. Not the first he’s ever made in his life and likely far from his last. What they said about the apple never falling from the tree: it was true. Kjalarr had gotten his wish: he is just like Ragnar. Jarl, killer, libertine and a shitty absent father. His suspicions all fall into place as he takes her in with his good, right eye. She looks the same as he remembers though this time she is not cloaked by the shadows of the night and she is not putting off that saccharine scent that has always been a temptation he is not wont to ignore ( call it the viking in him ). Her vague shadow, in his ruined left eye, is a like a will-o-wisp. It writhes in and out of sight though she remains firm and real before him witnessed by his right eye.

“Vaati is my flesh and blood.” Not a question but a statement as it spills from betwixt his lips in the rough hewn, lilting accent of the northmen. Though there is a slight lift of scarred brow as he seeks a final confirmation ( though in truth he does not need it ). He is the right age, he looks like him. “We made a deal when we met for the first time I would show him Sawtooth Spire and he would bring me here, to you. Things happened and the deal never followed through.” Kjalarr had set out on a selfish journey to find himself. What he found, who he uncovered with the help of the Cove, it’s wolves and it’s rituals would have been alarming to his younger self and that the power of self prophecy was indeed strong. He wanted to be like Ragnar so much, a false illusion of the man painted by those whom had not wished to disrespect his memory and Atli got his hearts desire at many merciless costs. “Is he well?” Kjalarr is not sure if he has the right to ask it, not sure if she ever wanted him to know. They’d been strangers and he had known that a child he would never know had been apart of the plan if his seed had taken within her womb. Despite this, the Norns had deigned to intervene and push the father and son to meet and it has haunted his subconscious since: easy to put aside to indulge his selfish tendencies but remained a growing pestilence until finally he caved into it.

“He will know me as Kjalarr,” The northman’s salmon pink tongue draws across his jowls as he considers that the nourisher hardly fits him anymore — if it’d ever fit him at all. “but I go by Atli now. Atli Skrælingjar.” The terrible savage. What a ( horribly ) prophetic foresight from the seer of the Cove. A name that fit him much better than any he’s had before. He no longer seeks Ragnar’s legacy but instead strives to build his own. Charon had once told him he wasn’t a Lodbrok and he’d been right. The northman falls silent now, frosted milky and icy, crystalline gaze falls upon her as he wonders if she will chase him off and half hoping that she does not.