Emberwood i don't know how to love anything without sinking my teeth into it
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#1
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Shit, shit, shit.
 
Fuck.
 
Shit.
 
Why did I run in?
 
She’d gotten away from Blixen and her mother, her pace quickening by with each drumbeat of her speeding heart. Each redwood she passes becomes blurrier than the last to the point the world is spinning. The tree tops turn one way while the sky slowly goes ‘round and ‘round, spinning her until she’s tied off and can’t breathe anymore.
 
Can’t think anymore.


“are you brave?” the devil asked,
“no,” she answered, “but I am alive.”
and, sometimes, those two things are the same

 
Dusk seems to settle around her, daylight lost in the distance. She does not recognize her surroundings as she walks through the haze of aspen trees, a light fog looming on the ground everywhere but a small circle around her. Each step she takes seems to move around an invisible force field; brows knit together as her slow pace freezes, looking around her and seeing nothing but a few yards in each ethereal direction.
i'd give anything to hear you say it one more time
that the universe was made just to be seen by my eyes
hämähäkki, muodonmuuttaja, satakieli
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#2
The wolf who emerges from the fog seems woven from its tendrils; she wears a pale collar of it that dips into her plush décolletage, but the rest of her body is a deeper gunmetal gray. She materializes a few yards away from the girl, moving at a quick clip, her black-masked face and coal-capped tail flung high and proud. Her paws make no sound as she cavorts through the gloom — the only sound she makes is a blithe, joyful singing:

Sleep, good, for ever, slow and deep, spelled rare and wise,
my girl ranging the night in the rose and shire
of the hobnail tales: no gooseherd or swine will turn
into a homestall king or hamlet of fire
and prince of ice
to court the honeyed heart from your side before sunrise…


Her singing and her black-stockinged legs come to a rollicking halt at the edge of the ring where her firstborn-bestborn daughter stands. “You have become a great warrior and world-wanderer, suloinen tyttö,” she murmurs, her velvety alto still humming Mallaidh’s song under her breath. She wants to compare Mallaidh to Eirlys because that’s how she rolls, and that’s how her family rolls — good-natured ribbing to keep the competitive nature strong and fierce — but her argent eyes are keen and her love for the girl before her keeps her tame and quiet. “You have been running too hard, my girl,” she croons softly, “and I do not see the devils, so they must be invisible to all eyes but yours.”

Lotte Ansbjørn Fearghal’s eyes pin once more to the clear ring of ground; she lifts a paw to breach it but draws up short. “Oh, rules,” she grumbles. “I do not like them. I cannot cross over, but you could come with me for a time, varjotanssija — if you wish.”
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#3
At first, she does not see her. Her feet slow to a stop, eyes rolling down the length of her muzzle to the ground. One ear swivels outward out of habit. She has only heard the song in dreams, clinging to the voice she’d forgotten long ago.
 
Mama,” she murmurs, turning her head to greet the matriarch as she speaks. She lifts one leg and turns to better face her and for a long time she doesn’t say anything. Time passes by and takes everything with it, leaving only the mother and daughter standing across from one another. Lotte can’t step into her space but she can step out? When she looks down, a shadow takes up shape on the ground. It does not match her stance but it must be hers.
 
Her pale eyes travel back up to Lotte’s face and she watches a moment longer as if anything will make any more sense than before.
 
“Where am I?” she questions. Each direction looks the same, one tree the same as the next, and a thick fog spanning out for miles. “How are you…” she trails off as if the words have disappeared completely from memory. “Am I bleeding?”
i'd give anything to hear you say it one more time
that the universe was made just to be seen by my eyes
hämähäkki, muodonmuuttaja, satakieli
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#4
Thanks for 600! Here’s 300!

“Ah, my girl,” Lotte murmurs sadly, her argent eyes misting with unshed tears. “No, you are not bleeding. No, no — you are perfect. You have always been. I am so proud of you.” She gestures with her muzzle to a nearby ring of stones, six in all. Each of them glows a different color of the rainbow, but the colors seem to shift and change at will. “Six times I can visit with you this way — six times only,” she tells her daughter.

“So, tell me, my fierce one — why do you call yourself Furi? You and — ” She remembers her contract almost a moment too late, but shuts her mouth before she can speak of Drogon and his new name. “Didn’t your papa and I choose a pretty enough one? Or have you other masks you hide behind, like your mama?” Her voice is teasing, and a smile spreads across her maw as she gestures with a quirk of her muzzle for the girl to walk with her. “Do you know the story of why you are Mallaidh Furiosa?”
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#5
Questions swirl through her head without words, almost forming and falling out of reach. She should be overwhelmed, panicked, anxious... it all slides right off and disappears. Lotte appears so poised and proud and her beauty is beyond comprehension.

”I’m not?” she questions, resisting the urge to swipe at her face and feel for herself. The sensation is strange but she blinks a few times and shakes it off, then turning to look at the stones in various colors. She moves back toward the aspiration and takes a step. The circle doesn’t move. When she slips over the barrier, the fog wisps back and forth with the disruption but falls into place afterward. ”I’m sorry, Mama,” she whines and cranes her neck forward a little, slowly slipping into the fog as if she’s scared to touch her.

”I wanted to protect home. I thought if they knew, they’d... I don’t know,” she tries to explain. She struggles to formulate the thought, let alone the words. She’d chosen part of her middle name so that it was still her, devoted to her family. To Teaghlaigh. But it is no more and the allegiance has long since severed, leaving her frayed and floating in the wind. The girl falls silent, tears welled in her ears as she looks to her mother for the story.
i'd give anything to hear you say it one more time
that the universe was made just to be seen by my eyes
hämähäkki, muodonmuuttaja, satakieli
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#6
In which Lotte tells Mallaidh more than she ever wanted to know about her parents’ sex lives.

The moment Mallaidh breaks through the fog, Lotte makes contact — and in the dream realm, her touch is warm and solid. Fastidiously, she licks and nibbles at the girl’s pelage like a mother lioness fussing over her cub. “I am kidding, pikku savua,” she assures the girl, even though she is a little miffed that the pretty name they’d chosen was hidden away for so long. “Your second name was chosen for a woman named Furiosa — your father’s first Póilín. Truly, I did not understand all of Teaghlaigh’s ranks — Furiosa’s job was to be a varjojohtaja. A shadow leader. I think the rank was silly because your father was so magnificent — and most magnificent when he was being bossy,” she laughed, winking conspiratorially. “Still, it was important to him to him, this secrecy.”

She fell silent for a moment, then continued. “I have my own secrets. Maybe the four of you all inherited that from both sides — the need for secrecy and the masks. In any case, Furiosa was your father’s most loyal wolf, and she was killed before her sun should have gone down. Before anyone knew of your father and me — we were meeting secretly, you see; we could not keep our paws off each other — Furiosa told me she believed I should be a queen. If it was up to her, she said, she would give me a crown that I might bear children worthy of it.” She smiled at her girl, so tall and strong. “And I did,” she intoned softly. “I made you. I picked your second name because you are worthy of a crown — if that is what you want — and because I hoped you would be loyal and fierce like Furiosa was. By simply existing, you are everything I wanted you to be — so why are your paws so shaky? What do you fear?”
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#7
Lotte steps up and sweeps her up into the other side. She doesn’t realize how cold she is until they touch and she leans into it. A soft whine escapes her muzzle and she closes her eyes lest they spill over but she is strong—or so Lotte tells her—but she’s seconds away from falling apart. Where is this strength she speaks of? She cannot face her own problems and, instead of facing them head on, she runs away.

Blixen is right about that.

When her mother goes on, she decides she can keep together a little while longer. She pulls away just slightly, listening to the story of some great woman as her eponym. A woman worthy of leadership, of loving her mother, and she bears the weight of expectation she is far from exceeding.

The girl turns her head and presses her face into the woman’s fur, unable to hold back. Tears spill over and meld between her cheeks and Lotte’s mane.

”I am not worthy of a crown,” she says quietly and into her fur. ”I thought if they knew anything, they would throw me out, or think I was a spy,” she tells her, thinking of the conversation with Étoille—oh, how she misses him too—and the fact Drageda would kill her if they found out she’d been lying. ”I am a traitor. I run away from everything. Leaders don’t do that.”

Afraid to pull away and see the disappointment that she is a failure, she stays close a moment longer and releases a shaky breath. ”I did not mean to get lost. I thought I saw Roarke one day, nearby, and...” ran away. She didn’t even stick around or follow after him but he’d been so sure of who he was. But now? ”Maybe if I hadn’t, you’d...” she trails off again and pulls away, eyes lowering to the fog covered ground.

”I never thought I’d see you again,” she says and this time she does not even try to hold back her tears, slumping forward into nothing. How can a mother be proud of this?
i'd give anything to hear you say it one more time
that the universe was made just to be seen by my eyes
hämähäkki, muodonmuuttaja, satakieli
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#8
“It’s those long legs of yours,” she quips, trying to make her daughter smile. “I know one thing — you are capable of more than you think you are. You do not like that you run from things, but that is changed simply — not easily, but simply. Run toward something instead. You are only running blindly if you have no destination — you just need to choose one.” She preens at the girl’s nape, allowing her a moment to break apart, and then tacks on very quietly, “There is no shame in taking time for yourself to regroup and recalibrate, my girl. In battle, we retreat. Running does not need to mean losing. Sometimes, it gives us the respite we need to help us win.”

“You are my daughter, Mallaidh, and your father’s daughter. Of course you are worthy — not just of a crown, but of anything you wish!” She laughs as if the girl has said something very funny, but her face is gentle and utterly without mocking. More somberly, “You do not have to carry so much on these shoulders, no matter how strong they are,” she chides her daughter. “If you had not gotten lost, the tree would still have been heavy and weather-weak. Maybe if you had not gotten lost, it would have taken you instead — and that, I could not take.” She noses fondly at the girl’s tear-dampened cheek. “The way it is, I have six strong, healthy, living children, and a beautiful wife, and a handsome husband. I am satisfied — I just wish…”

She draws a deep breath, her argent eyes glittering with pride and love as she looks upon her firstborn. “Well, I cannot say that I wish we’d shared a lifetime, because we did,” she concedes, “but I wish we’d had more time. Maybe you would understand then that you and your brothers and sisters are my greatest accomplishment — that I could have wished for nothing greater than what I already see in you.”
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#9
Lotte’s reassuring words settle within her. In that moment, they don’t necessarily make her feel better, but the will. In due time. For now, she can at least shed the blame that her mother’s death is her fault. If she had stayed, maybe Lotte’s words are true, or it would have fallen on her anyway. Or it wouldn’t. It doesnt matter the reason she’d been beneath it, just that she had. She closes her eyes when a warm nose touches her cheeks and she leans in, quiet, and without knowing a single thing to say. 

After a quiet moment, she leans back into her and eventually sinks her rump to the ground. All the nights she cuddled up to her to sleep, it’s all she’s ever wanted again. One more chance to feel this closeness and to keep the hurt at bay, for a while. Somewhere, she knows she still won’t get it but she can cling to the fleeting tendrils of this world for a little while longer.
i'd give anything to hear you say it one more time
that the universe was made just to be seen by my eyes
hämähäkki, muodonmuuttaja, satakieli
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#10
Per the conversation in #phone-a-friend, there is no formal policy on dream appearances, so I believe I have tacit permission to finish out these threads. ^^

Lotte knows that once her daughter falls asleep in this world, she will wake up in the other — and she wants to beg her to stay awake, to run with her through the misted fields, but she knows that she cannot. The rules imposed upon her for these visits to her loved ones are strict and immutable; she cannot jeopardize her future visits by breaking them. Six visits over the course of each family member’s life — it seems so little, but she is grateful for any minute she has. She pauses when her daughter does, trying to pour love and light into every second that ticks inexorably by — and at last, Mallaidh sinks wearily to her haunches.

After a beat, Lotte seems to grow. The backdrop fades away and shifts; the trees disappear. There is nothing against which to compare the matriarch’s size.

Perhaps Mallaidh is shrinking, instead.

Whatever the case, Lotte stops growing when she dwarfs her girl in size, and when Mallaidh seems about the height she was when she disappeared from the strath. Lotte’s mouth does not move, but her voice echoes through the unseen walls of the dream, singing Mallaidh’s song, singing the tule kotiin call. The two melodies weave together and are not dissonant but instead create an uncanny harmony — but even Lotte couldn’t say whether this was intentional or not. In slow, rhythmic motions, her tongue smooths across the puppy-soft fur that underscores her daughter’s coyote-tall ears. “What a beautiful morning,” she remarks in a velvety alto, the conversation seeming disjointed from the previous.

“Spring is here.”
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#11
She doesn’t seem to notice the change, or maybe she doesn’t seem to mind, but she leans into the embrace as the bigger version of her mother wraps around her like she’d longed for so many times. Even with her eyes closed, she knows the world is changing around her. The fog in the forest turns into a breeze, wrapping around the both of them and the turn into music. The trees turn into lyrics and Lotte’s voice comes and goes and she settles easily into place. 

Every worry, every anxious thought, fades back into the song and she presses close to her mother as a scared—but placated—child. There’s questions and other things she’s dreamt is saying to her mother if she were to see her again but all that falls by the wayside as she’s groomed lovingly into a slumber. ”I love you, mama,” she says softly, burying herself so deep into the woman’s fur she becomes lost, swimming in a sea of mercury and gray and back again.
i'd give anything to hear you say it one more time
that the universe was made just to be seen by my eyes
hämähäkki, muodonmuuttaja, satakieli
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#12
Lotte smiles, but her heart aches as her daughter begins to fall asleep — she can feel the distance growing between them, inexorable and inevitable. “I love you, Mallaidh. I love you, Furi. I love you by whatever name you choose to call yourself.” She feels as though she is being pulled from her own body. She can see, panning away from her, the two forms curled together — and beyond them, a crumbling at the edges of the dream that signifies finality. She doesn’t hear the coyote’s cry or see the green-eyed black wolf who approaches her daughter, but instead sees her own body beginning to shift and change.

At once, she is certain that the girl will be privy to her bruised and broken form in the last moments of her life, and she tries to get her daughter up and away from the hollow shell as she fades wholly away. “Mallaidh,” she says, speaking patiently and firmly so the girl does not panic. “Get up. Get up, my girl.” She sees her own mouth move, sees her own broad muzzle nudge the small girl nestled at her flank — and then she sees no more.
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#13
Never has she been more tired but here, she can rest. In her mother’s embrace, her love, her protection… she never has to leave it again. It’s where she’s meant to be. It’s where, above all things, she’s not lost.
 
Somewhere, the girl is bleeding.
 
Get up.
 
Her mother’s voice brings her back, for only a moment, but she’s gone. For good, maybe. Maybe not. She does not stay long, pulled back from the unknown with a final encouragement.
 
Get up, my girl.
i'd give anything to hear you say it one more time
that the universe was made just to be seen by my eyes