Alpine Lake circles

She seemed to grasp that he lacked the finer points of the very verbose, her answers nice and short and simple. So her kin was gone because of a fire—he knew a thing or two about the devastation that fire could bring. Would bring, he thought, because he knew of few places that did not have their dry spells that turned forests to tinderboxes at the blink of an eye. How even when the sky clotted and grew heavy with rain that it was as much a boon as it was an omen. His ears turned one way and another, listening to the world around them. Almost could he hear the way fire would make the wood crackle and pop, but it was a memory of another time in another world.

“And you walk alone,” he said to reiterate that she was truly alone.

Consideration came to him then, however briefly. He wanted to test her somehow, wondering how suitable she would be to the hringja that had pulled he and Stjornuati here in the first place. This would have been so much easier had his pallid accomplice been with him—Stjornuati was the one with more brains than brawn, though admittedly the two were fairly matched in their skills for either. But his mind worked faster when it came to social events while Solpallur took up the mantle of silence.

“Are you vigamaðr?” She wouldn’t understand this and he knew. His brow furrowed. What was the word he wanted? “A warrior—vigamaðr. This one sees you are survivor. Strong? Maybe. Clever, yes,” he decided—she must have been intelligent enough to escape what others had not. Sure that he had something to go off on, he immediately pressed ahead: “Ansi rauðhærður like travel?”