test my will, test my heart

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Any hope Ragnar had harbored that Thistle was calling him to put their fight in the past where it belonged to fully lay it rest had been quickly diminished the second he had gotten within hearing range of the words being exchanged between Thistle, who sounded irritated and a strange male voice. From voice alone the male sounded like he was in the tantamount of his puberty but the words the two were exchanging were anything but polite. A low growl rumbled in Ragnar’s chest as he shrugged through the bramble that caught at the loose tendrils of his fur and pushed through the tree line, eyes of Caribbean ice observing the two of them from afar for a moment. His eyes found Thistle easily enough though his gaze moved from her to the stranger at the borders recoiling back for a moment in shock. The boy looked like Eitri but that was impossible because Ragnar’s father was dead. Odinn had taken his soul to Valhalla as his body had bled out staining Björn’s pallid coat of snow white. It occurred to Ragnar, then, that the boy looked startlingly like himself at that age before the scars that marred the left side of his face and head, even with the eyes to match. Ragnar heard the boy mention Sveið, that the Shield Maiden was his mother and flinched when he heard ‘She is only a name to me’ spill almost cruelly from Thistle’s lips. Granted, the boy had spoken that Ragnar was only a name to him but he had not inflicted it cruelly, or at least Ragnar had not taken any sort of offense to it given he didn’t know the boy. "Enough!" Ragnar snarled quietly as he closed the distance, moving from his observing sport knowing that it was better he intervene before the two of them went to blows with one another. "Do not take your anger at me out on him, wife," Ragnar warned Thistle, feeling almost disappointed in her. This was not the Thistle he knew. If he needed too, he’d pull rank over her again even though he knew she didn’t like it and he would keep doing it so long as he felt that it was necessary. He didn’t know what happened to his wife but he wanted her back. This cruel and vicious siren was not Thistle. Ragnar turned his attention on the boy, resisting the urge to recoil once more by the déjà vu like feeling that he was starting at a younger version of himself and his own father. It was proving to be a little …disorienting. Ragnar had heard enough of their conversation to glean why the child was here so he didn’t ask the question he already knew the answer too, instead settling for, "What apprenticeships can you offer the Bay besides your Berserker training?". He didn’t have to hear Bragi say it to know, it was evident in the muscles that were hardening faster than the softness of childhood was slipping from him, and he knew that the Shield Maiden would have taught her son. "What is your name son of Sveið?"