Blackfeather Woods nothing but the burnt edge of an unfinished history

it's sooo good. my favorite so far! ^-^

Kjalarr follows Potema into the Web dutifully. He is almost surprised at how easy it is for him to let her take the reigns, to lead him, to control him. Especially as he’s spent his whole life defying authority and clamoring towards his own. Taking it and then throwing it away when he gets too bored with it. Not good qualities for a king. Perhaps, he thinks, it’s a sign that with age does come wisdom and that he’s heading down a path of personal growth with Potema at it’s center: right where he wants her. Kjalarr cannot explain the never ceasing pull he feels to her: that insistent thing that keeps bringing him back and he thinks it doesn’t need explaining. All that is needed is that he feels and heeds it. Whatever spell she's casted binds them together but now…now he bears a physical brand of the bind. He is marked as worthless …he is marked as hers.

At her gesture, the shadowmarked lays — slowly as to not further aggravate her handiwork — down upon a bed of moss, glimpsing around the tidy infirmary with the curiosity of someone who has no idea what any of the things she’s gathered and chewed into a poultice is for. Cobwebs are simple enough, at least, he thinks. His ears perk atop his skull and then flutter back to rest at half mast as she lets out a bitter laugh in initial response to his question and then launches into an explanation. Vaati, it would seem, has not been idle …and evidently not in a good way, necessarily. She is not detailed about the mistakes their son has made but Kjalarr is smart enough to deduce that his mistakes also effect her and the wolves of the Woods as a whole. Dangerous mistakes, then. “They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Kjalarr muses envisioning himself as the tree. “I’ve made a lot of stupid and reckless mistakes in my life because I was hot-headed and couldn’t stand the idea of being wrong or ruled. It cost me my family at least three times over, my friends —” though it wasn’t as if he could claim he had any friends because …he didn’t. “and almost my life on two accounts. I regret them. All of them.” Kjalarr cannot claim, cannot promise Potema that Vaati would eventually realize these things: or that he would ever come to regret his decisions. Vaati was not Kjalarr anymore than Kjalarr was Ragnar.

“Maybe he will and maybe he won’t,” …and maybe he wouldn’t live long enough to get the choice either way though Kjalarr does not speak this aloud. Kjalarr wasn’t sure that behavior was genetic per say but he almost feels inclined to apologize to her for the trouble Vaati is causing. Potema is silent as she works and Kjalarr falls to silence as well, focusing on the feel of her tending to his fresh brand in an effort to keep himself distracted. “I am shadowmarked, I am yours …but what will happen to me officially?” He assumes he will be some sort of captive but he doesn’t dare make assumptions in these dark woods.

534 words