Lone Star Mountain see in the dark

The children were sharp, rising to meet them out of the darkness instead of just cowering and running away. It amused him, just as much as their answers to Stjornuati’s probing did. The boy offered them a curt response, but the girl elaborated further and he saw it for what it was—a means to wave them away. Solpallur’s gaze roamed over and past them to see beyond, but he could not help but wonder why they had been left alone. Hunting in the night was certainly one particular pastime he enjoyed too, but the mountains were not the place for it in his opinion.

His nose worked the air curiously, putting their comment to the test.

“Við veiðum—” he begun in a rumble, but cut off. They would not understand him, just like the others. “This one and this one’s brother hunt,” he supplied instead, the common tongue still a stilted and horrid thing in his mouth. His gaze had come back to them then, resting on the adverted gold gaze of the child before him. She did not favor him, but the deference would not sway his watching eyes.

“Hvað er að foreldrunum hérna?” he asked aloud, this time for Stjornuati to hear. “Þetta gerir þrjú börn sem við höfum fundið, af hverju reika þeir svona?” He did not like it, though his tone any time suggested he wasn’t fond of anything in particular at all.

His gaze shifted to the boy, and then his brother, and he pondered further.

“We call them? Your kin,” he went on, ever-stilted. “This one thinks… börnin not be alone. Not here. The… Stjornauti, how you say stóru kettirnir hunt too now.” His teeth clicked together for emphasis, frustrated with his lack of mastery. And when he rounded his gaze back on the girl and her wary expression, he murmured roughly: “Do not fear.”

But they probably would.