The sun had not even risen when Bragi had awoken before the cusp of dawn. The sky was still covered with darkened velvet and the stars that littered the dark blue night were obscured every now and then by the clouds that drifted across the skyline, blocking out the moon’s beams even at times as they continued to move lazily. It was hot and humid though the breeze that drifted through the ancient trees of Stavanger Bay’s forest from the sea served as something of a coolant. He had hunted small game to feed himself before setting off.
As he moved south east gradually the sun began it’s ascension into the sky, breaking through the darkness though the overcast day made it hard for the traveler to determine the exact time of morning; regardless, he pushed on. Having no real destination in his mind made the journey and resulting territories he crossed into more enticing than the last as he wondered which one would claim his ultimate attention. Learning the lands surrounding Stavanger Bay would only prove to be helpful to both his goal as outrider apprentice and to the pack as a whole. The young Viking moved with the ambiance of leisure having no real objective other than his own. Plus, it helped him sort out his opinions on Ragnar Loðbrók which were …mixed. Half of Bragi felt admiration for the once great Jarl of Odinn’s Cove, likely imbedded into him by his mother’s own reverence for the conqueror, and trepidation. Bragi couldn’t place this feeling of utter hesitation around the older male, but he wondered if anyone else had realized how much they looked alike? Perhaps it had just been Bragi to make that uncomfortable assumption with it’s equally as uncomfortable partner: what if. He couldn’t be sure and would never know unless someone came clean with him but there was a small inkling of Bragi that thought Ragnar might be Sveið’s mysterious ‘Heimdall’.
Giving his head a quick shake to dispel those dramatic thoughts he turned eyes of Caribbean ice to the Creek he stumbled upon, pausing long enough in his stride to map it upstream, admiring it for a second as he saw that it cascaded from ledge to ledge down the mountainside like a mini waterfall. There had been a tall waterfall whose waters had streamed into Odinn’s Cove and they had always had fun daring each other to jump off of it and into the blue waters below. A soft smile played at the edges of the youth’s lips as he meandered nearer to the banks of the creek, bowing his head down to the water to lap at the cool, crisp water, enjoying the serenity that clung to this undisturbed and unclaimed territory and for the moment reveling in his own solitude.
Fin was on the hunt again. No, not for food. She only hunted for food at night when her prey usually couldn't see her coming. That or she would fish. She didn't like prey that could look at her. It made it feel too personal when she killed them and if there was anything Fin hated, it was feeling awkward and uncomfortable. Fortunately, she never put herself in such situations. None that she was ever aware of, anyway.
Today's hunt had led her on a trek upstream along Otter Creek. She had visited the place before, and actually had a friend that lived nearby! (The world is a lot sunnier inside of her head). Finley had never before seen what there was to see heading North East, though. So after quickly checking to see if Mr. Wolverine was home (which he wasn't, gosh darn, and she'd had so much that she wanted to tell him), she put on her explorer's cap and turned her paws towards a new adventure.
Fin wasn't certain how much time had passed since she'd begun her meandering trek. She'd stopped to snap up a fish for breakfast and had leaped around on the rocks that stuck out like little pimples in the creek alongside the otters, so by the time she stumbled upon the Northerner, she was about ready to explode from boredom. As she spied the peculiar wolf upstream, a grin trickled across her face. It seemed boredom wouldn't take her today!
"Well lookit you," Fin said as she trotted towards him, careful to retain a respectful stance and stop a good distance from him, "I didn't think they made any like you around these parts." Her head canted lightly to the side as her chocolate eyes studied the silver threads that swam across his young, but still decently impressive build. She'd met a half white wolf so far, but not one such as this so pristinely swaddled in sterling and alabaster. And definitely not one with such youthful good looks.
Bragi had drank from the creek until he had his fill of it’s waters, head rising as salmon pink tongue flicked out to collect the droplets of water off of his jowls and chin. His opinion thus far of the Teekon Wilds was that it was vast, and in retrospect the Scandinavian hadn’t even seen remotely half of it yet. His paws itched with the prospect of exploring the territories unconquered by packs, at the wealth that they might hold for him, be it knowledge or peculiar food sources or whatever else kind of wealth there was. It did not occur to Bragi how it might appear to the members of Stavanger Bay that he had recently been accepted and was now venturing out, away from the lands for several hours at a time. Not that he thought anyway was really looking for him, except maybe for the Jarl’s wife who was adamant at barking at him about how he was Ragnar’s son when, as far as Bragi could tell there was no justifiable proof. Looking like him wasn’t really enough because half of the Northmen were light colored with blue eyes, but he wasn’t in her presence and the need to come up with justifiable reasons in which she was inherently wrong about her assumptions (when in truth he felt the seedlings of suspicion himself but didn’t know) was abruptly lost.
A voice drifted towards him and turning his gaze away from the creek, where it had absently settled as he let his thoughts get lose, towards the woman that approached him. To him, any wolf of the Wilds carried an accent and sometimes they sounded extremely individual from one another even if no one else but him could discern them. Despite the coy smirk that tugged at Bragi’s lips her potentially underlining flirtation went largely unnoticed by him. “That might be because I’m not from here,” Bragi responded after a prolonged moment of silence while he assessed her in turn. His voice was still boyish but was still in it’s own awkward transition of puberty but it was soft nevertheless and heavily accented. “I am Bragi.” He introduced himself to her, turning his side to the bank of the creek so that he was facing her.
A brief inhalation of her scent told her she, too, was from a pack though it was a different one than him. Idly, it made him feel the inclination to figure out through exploration how many packs these Wilds held but that was a trip or a series of trips, for another day.
Fin's ears perked as she listened to him speak. The lilt of his voice and accent upon his words made it clear he was most definitely not from around these parts. She liked him. She had a feeling he would fascinate her if she gave him the chance.
"Finley," she replied easily, casually striding towards the creek and peering down into the clear water. It was an attempt to seem nonchalant and to give him a view of her full body, but really she was checking to see if there was dirt on her face or if her hair was messed up. Perfect as always. Good job, Fin.
The silver female glanced back in his direction and casually settled down onto her haunches. "Where did you come from then, and what brings you here? You seem like you're a long way from home," she asked, genuinely wanting to know, but genuinely not wanting to seem like she cared too much. It wasn't that she was interested in him--She did recognize how young Bragi was (too young for her, sadly). But that didn't mean she didn't want him to be interested in her.
In exchange for his own name, given out of what he contorted societal obligation to be his own free will, she gave her own. Finley. It was rather simple as far as names went which wasn’t, Bragi reflected, necessarily a bad thing. He tended to stumble over names that were not Nordic in origins and his pronunciation of many words was altered and twisted by the accent in which he spoke with. It was otherwise unnoticed to the young rekkr who had became desensitized to it until it clashed starkly with the different accents of other wolves, each of them varying to him; or until he tried to pronounce names or words and they did not come out sounding exactly the same. Bragi watched as she strode to the bank of the creek and peered down into giving him a view of her body that without realizing he was doing it, he took the liberty of observing for a few moments glimpsing at the sky just a few seconds before she turned back to him.
Her inquiries were a little bit personal but the casual way in which she asked them made him see past that with an errant shrug of broadening shoulders. “From the North, a place called Odinn’s Cove,” The Scandinavian wasn’t sure if she would have heard of it or not. In retrospect it all depended upon where she was from. The pack was rather notorious for their raids and battle skills up North. 'They fight like demons, like men possessed, with no fear of death…' had always been Bragi’s particular favorite description of them sounding almost poetic which was ironic given that he was named for the Norse god of poetry. “That depends on if you want the reason everyone tells me I’m here, or if you want my real reason for being here,” Bragi responded with a coy, albeit wry smile though his weight shifted in slight agitation at the unwelcome barrage of memories and what he thought might be a mutual dislike between Ragnar’s wife and himself.
The young man's age didn't go unnoticed by the Blackthorn. She grinned a secret grin in her mind at his attention, but gazed passively as he responded to her query. If he found it too personal, it went unnoticed by the silver woman. Fin rarely second guessed herself and even more seldom put a filter on her impulsiveness.
"Ohhh, how mysterious and intriguing," Fin replied with a smirk, "If you're willing, how about you give me both and I'll guess which reason belongs to you and which one belongs to everyone." She assumed there would be one reason that would be, well, reasonable, and another that would be just full of drama. Unless Bragi had come here as an undercover agent, she was prepared to assume that the dramatic opinions were coming from whoever this "everyone" was.
Bragi’s smirk as it danced across the edges of his lips was coy though undoubtedly roguish in it’s design. It was a twitch of lip muscles that rivaled Ragnar and the devil’s own. Eyes of Caribbean ice danced with the mischief his smirk aimed to hide, soaking up her words of mysterious and intriguing being applied to him as flattery. Or if the words were not in regards to him specifically they were in the regards to something he had spoken, nevertheless. Bragi had never been overly arrogant, but he wasn’t under modest, either. Perhaps it was nothing more than teenage shallowness that reveled in the attentions of the opposite sex, especially an older woman, who, had been around and had likely seen all walks of men and boys alike. It was unclear, yet, given his youth, if Bragi would be a Casanova as the men of his family (for it was presumed he was in some way related to Ragnar’s family) though, currently, it stood to be a logical assertion to make.
There was a moment of prolonged silence in which Bragi contemplated Finley’s offer of a guessing game of sorts and after he took a soft breath, the crisp air tainted with her scent filling his black, leathery nostrils only to be expelled in the next three heartbeats, he had decided that there was no harm in indulging her. He wasn’t ashamed, simply annoyed. Bragi didn’t see the fairness in someone who didn’t know him, or his mother shooting their mouth off about who his father might be. He knew who his father was: Heimdall. Why did it have to be any more complicated than that? “Very well. One reason is that Odinn’s Cove was no longer safe for me. The current Jarl is a cruel and vicious man and treats his wife and my mother, his consort like utter shit and that he potentially feels threatened by me despite that I might be his son, but I might also be the son of his bastard brother who is a fierce and well respected warrior within the pack. The other reason is that I have came to these Teekon Wilds in search of my might be father, and said cruel Jarl’s older, full blooded brother who liked to play it fast and loose with his women, my mother included as one of his dalliances.” Bragi named them off to her keep his voice stoic through both, determined to make the game as hard as he could. Having added a little extra flair of his own, as a natural born Saga-teller to the first option, they were not that different and if he didn’t know that the first was the reason why he was here, despite that his mother had not came right out and claimed that Váli was threatened by him and that she planned challenge him to single combat he was seeing clearer and able to piece the puzzle pieces together with relative ease; even though this whole ‘mystery father’ business made Bragi extremely uncomfortable.
Finley listened quietly as the Northerner spun his twin tales. Drama twisted around both stories, leaving her with more of a challenge than she had originally anticipated. Which one did she believe: a tale of jealousy and danger, or the classic tale of a boy searching for who he was by seeking the father who had abandoned him? While Bragi was young, Fin couldn't see him running away from his home because he felt threatened, but nor could she see him being so sentimental as to search out his long lost daddy. Decisions, decisions...
"Before I answer," Fin said, mischief flashing in her eyes as she got to her feet and began to slowly circle him, "What happens to me if I get it wrong? And more importantly--since I'm never wrong, as no woman ever is--what happens to you if I get it right?" She gave him a playful smirk and waited to hear their fates.
Bragi’s lips twitched slightly for show, as if he were fighting the smirk that he wanted to let loose as he noted the answering mischief in her eyes and watched her, with the eyes of a predator, rise and slowly circle him, his head moving to aid his eyes in their path of following her. Unable to help himself the young rekkr let out a low chuckle when she warned him that she was never wrong, taking in her questions with lazy attention as if he played this game all the time. While Bragi was still, in ways, understandably naïve he was not so untaught and ignorant that he didn’t realize that this game could very well be considered flirtatious despite the sizable gap in age. He had a penchant for charisma naturally, and with proper (or improper) training it could be honed to specialize in the talents of a Casanova. He didn’t think much of age, at least not currently, and anyway he saw no harm in having a little fun with her.
“You choose,” He encouraged. It was her game, after all, so she must, surely have some kind of idea for both. Besides, it never hurt to be chivalrous and there was no better time to practice it than in the current moment.
Bragi's response made Fin giddy with excitement. Dealer's choice, was it? Ohhh that was always so much fun! Momentarily forgetting the fact that she was having fun flirting with him, she turned her attention to having fun messing with him instead. "Oh excellent," she replied with a smile, "I love it when they don't know me well enough not to say that."
Turning away from him for a moment, she peered at her surroundings, trying to find something good to threaten him with. She thought briefly of Mr. Wolverine further downsteam, but that would take too long to get to him. She needed something more immediate. Slowly, her eyes drifted up towards the top of the cascading waters, from ledge to ledge until she spotted one high above the others. She liked that ledge. She liked that ledge a lot.
"Okay, here's the deal," Fin said as she turned back to the white wolf, "If I'm wrong, then I have to jump into the creek from the highest ledge over there." She nodded behind her at the ledge she had spotted earlier. It wasn't so high from the water that it would give her any pause at all, she had jumped from much higher after all, and she assumed that the pool of water below was probably deep enough that they wouldn't break any bones or die or anything. Probably. "And if I'm right, then you have to do it."
Fin looked back at him, proud of herself though completely naive of the fact that he had done this before and wasn't likely to balk at the prospect.
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Finley smiled as she waited for his answer, excitement coursing through her veins. She had decided on her answer, but it didn't really matter to much to her whether she was right or wrong. Both outcomes sounded like fun to her, whether it was Bragi taking the leap or her. Actually, the silver fox was really trying to come up with a way that she could make them both to jump. She was going to be pretty jealous if he got to leap and she didn't, but she didn't want him left out of the fun either. What to do, what to do...
Fin grinned at him as he accepted her terms. "Excellent," she replied. Taking another moment to ponder her choices, she turned her gaze back to the waterfall. Not knowing for sure which was which, there really was only one thing to do. "I think you came here to find your father," she said finally, returning her warm eyes to his icy ones, "Although I'm thinking it's because parts of your previous story are true. Maybe you want your papa to go back with you and save your mom from this tyrant?"
It seemed to be the most likely answer in her mind. Too bad she was probably wrong, but if her mother were being tortured in such a way, you'd better believe she'd be running to daddy to ask him to save her.
Whatever the boy's answer was, Fin was not destined to find out, for at the moment she finished speaking, a howl rang out in the far distance. She turned her head in the direction of home, recognizing the voice as her alpha's. With a frown, she excused herself from the youth with a promise that she'd be hunting him down for the answer and she'd hold him to their bargain. And then she was off, dancing through the trees and disappearing.