King Elk Forest heart the keeper

The salt air was far behind her now, yet the taste of brine lingered on her tongue, a phantom memory of the coast, and of the man the ocean had swallowed whole. She had run until the pads of her feet were raw, fleeing the suffocating velvet of her noble house. They would have sold her off again, traded her like a piece of fine silver to the next suitor, but Belinda had chosen the unknown over a cage. Now, the forest loomed around her, thick and glorious to eyes that knew only manicured gardens and the stark, grey sea. To her, it felt vast, overwhelming.

She was tired, bone-tired, and the hunger in her belly was a sharp, twisting knot. She had paused to rest near a thicket when the thundering steps of a stranger vibrated through the frozen earth. Her body froze, almond-shaped green eyes widening as she spotted the large male moving with a confidence she envied. He seemed made of this land, sturdy and flush with health, while she felt like a brittle leaf blown inland.

The grating noise of tine against bark shattered the silence. It was loud, heavy, and spoke of a beast far larger than a wolf. She saw the stranger freeze, his alarm mirroring the spike of fear in her own chest. Belinda shrank lower, her belly fur brushing the snow, making herself small. The breath hitched in her throat, and words from a life she had just lost tumbled softly, instinctively from her lips.

„Hvað er þetta…?” she whispered, the norse vowels round and trembling in the cold air. She looked from the shadows toward the stranger, half-fearful of the unseen monster in the trees, half-fearful of him. „Er det... et skrímsli?” The woman did not know the beasts of this deep wood; she only knew the monsters of the sea. And in this moment, the towering shadows felt perilously alive.