Stone Circle moðir

she came to the place that was familiar.

the closer she got, the more obvious the stones became. crooked teeth set in green gums; but the green was yellowed now, slipping from autumn in to winter.

gray clouds overhead darkened kvarsheim's view, while she came to darken their doorstep once again. lingering, watching, but quiet.

Moðir of the stone circle. Founder of Kvarsheim. The woman who birthed Skáld. A wolf who should have warranted her great respect.

Tauris rises from the monoliths, her sawtooth spine outlined against the discolored sky. A command scorches from her throat with the heat of a flame freshly stoked:

“Leave.”

a woman approached.

at first she had hoped it was one of her children, and was delighted; but she had forgotten their faces.

if this was one of her's, she'd never know it. besides, there was a single word spared for sanja and that elation she experienced staled.

but this is home. a statement, a plea.

There is no recognition; the woman does not know her. She’d been too absorbed in her own selfish woes to remember.

But Skáld does- and so does Tauris.

The plea aims to appeal to her pathos. Tauris had none of it for Sanja. Only resentment.

“Not for you. Not anymore.”

as realizations go, this was not of great surprise, but it did sting. sanja could not help the fluff of her shoulders or the lash of her tail, which stopped and became stiff against her hocks; she felt at once possessive of this place and furious to be denied, yet also, she understood. she had not been kind to those born to her — only bjarna; and her daughter's scent was no longer here either.

without me, there would be no heim. she points out, a fact she often enough used to get what she wanted in the past. a furrow to her brow — where gunnar? i speak with him.

the old man would clear this up! who was this woman? sanja was too agitated for the time being to find a name for that face, but she felt she knew it now, barely. her eyes squint, and she looks one way then another, around tauris in search of the elder.

Tauris bridles tall against the other’s indignance, her face a whetted blade. She is too wild to feel anything but the pure and rousing instinct to protect Skáld;

To protect her son.

“No- without Gunnar, there would have been no heim,” she corrects, her gaze piercing.

“He has passed. Bjarna is still gone.”

“So go. You’re good at running away, Sanja. Shouldn’t be hard for you now."

gone?

all gone?

with gunnar went the last of the love for sanja. a punch to the gut!

I... wanting to protest, and for once fight for what she wanted; but this was a short-lived instinct, which did not settle well inside of her. an alien feeling.

she would go. downcast, utterly defeated. no will to fight what fire she saw in tauris now.

sanja turned and fled.

Tauris stands and watches her go. She finds no appeasement in the sight of her flee.

Sanja had not asked about @Skáld. Sanja had never once concerned herself with him. The woman mourned in the wake of Bjarna’s disappearance, and for herself, but never once did she see the boy who had been so desperate for his mother’s love-

Sensitive, clever, soulful, brilliant Skáld. She gave him up- as thoughtless as how branch in autumn discards a leaf.

But he was never Sanja’s. He had always been Tauris’. They just hadn’t found eachother yet.

. . .

That night she sleeps outside under the stars with him in the makeshift bed he’d made for himself. She holds him, tells stories, presses kisses.

“Goodnight, my love.”

My love, my love, my love- her mind speaks on into the infinite cosmos until the realm of waking blurs with sleep.

My love; my life.