Larksong Grotto Lokasenna

there had been signs of life within the hollow.
blood, having run cold, spattered the earth. she thought perhaps her call had been answered by a sister of the wood. the thought was frightening, and in that fear lay her answer.
thank you, she willed to the dawn. it was time to hunt elsewhere. this was not her reik's blood¹, of that brunhild was certain.

her path cut across the ice. she made good time.

daughter! where are you? carried her cry.

the forlorn woman held laughter in her heart. she imagined the boom of her father's voice. a smile tugged at her cheeks. he was with her now, following on the wind, howling across the mouth of the foreign grotto as she sought shelter. 

hail, woden, master of souls. hail, father. please bring my daughter home. brunhild praised, praying in the dark. when she stepped out in to the midday sun she cast her chin up, hopeful.

after visiting with each of his sons, mahler had taken a patrol that had not ended in days, walking around the baseline of the peak, within earshot if he was summoned. but filled with a bittersalt determination, he had spent the time setting endless plans for how he might prove to wylla the truth in his heart.
the gargoyle had no belief that her mind might be changed, not after all that had happened between them. it had been long weeks since their clashing, but — he was coming to a time of it, a knowing of how he could best do this.
and so the shadowpriest turned inward, wearily, but with a small ember burning in the darkhaunt of his chest. he would have disappeared into the spruce forests climbing the nearby slope had not a voice rung out.
though close, it was the words that captured mahler; he had not heard his own tongue from another besides phaedra. and so the man turned his trajectory, drawing closer to the grotto and its avian inhabitants. 
"hier ist keine tochter außer meiner."

from overhead there came an answer. thinking first of her guardsman brunhilda was not bothered by the presence, turning to look as the man followed the bluff's curvature.

they were comparable to the menfolk she was familiar with, narrower of build but not by much. an ophidian quality to the face, which brunhild studied only briefly. there was a flicker of doubt in her own eyes, vanishing as his words met her ears.

sorrow would have been suitable. certainly there was pain in her heart to look upon a stranger and hear such a pronouncement. she continued to smile, a grin bursting across her face.

hail! do you live nearby? perhaps someone has seen a man and child pass through. . .? there was hope within her voice, which burst from her in a wave. it was loud enough to shake the entire rotlend according to some. 

a pause. letting the stranger speak if the desire struck him. some measure of distance aft, the guardsman's silhouette slips among the trees. emeric can be heard investigating beyond the grotto as a far-off distress call sounds.
 
brunhild listens, turning an ear. surely the man could handle a squirrel by himself.

ah, breakfast must be on its way. she comments, chuckling.

"das ist mein land." quiet, perturbed by her nearness and the intense focus of her somehow knowing gaze above that odd, broad grin. "ich habe weder einen mann noch ein kind gesehen."
how had she come to lose the family for which she called now? the sounds, breaking his reverie and turning mahler toward it. her joke, half-hidden in the lasting echo of her voice. "wir könnten zusammen essen," the gargoyle suggested in a grit, wanting more of the words and the dour mien of her throat, wanting desperately not to be alone, not when a kinsman of sorts stood so close at hand.