Stavanger Bay "-- you look like somebody just walked over your grave.”

It had been six days and four hours since he'd last imbibed. There was still a swagger to the way the man moved across the sandy beach, weaving one way and then another, until he stopped to stare at the open sea. The sky was emblazoned with transitional plum-to-inferno, which had him squinting.
Hunched there with nothing but the writhing tide as company, the ragged cough that seized the man's lungs was almost imperceptible by comparison.

As the sun sank it cast a red glow to the horizon, and the sky around it was banded with bruising color like the settling layers of a drink. It was clear why they called it the magic hour.

Pier was a philistine and paid no mind to the sunset - his eyes glazed over as if he was in a cubicle instead, watching the minutes spill through his hands like water.

But the dim figure of a stranger on the shore caught his attention. He made his way closer, stumbling in the sand of the shallow downwards slope. The ground beneath him was scalloped and dimpled with footprints and wind.

He barked once, low and restrained, to announce his approach.

it was the cough that initially draws kjalarr's attention; wriggling into his mind and lingering there as he diverts his path: heading to the borders he has yet to establish and ones that needs reinforcing. borders could wait. the ásabragr moves with the purpose of the king he portrays himself as; as the one he intends to rebuild his father's dead kingdom as.

kjalarr does not sneak, does not attempt to conceal his approaching footfalls; cerulean gaze falling upon not one but two interlopers.

he could not totally blame them for their presence, assuming they came into the bay along one of the yet to be established borders: but he would make intentions clear all the same. this is stavanger bay, kjalarr introduces it. i do not recommend loitering. his warning is followed by the escort of the two strangers out of his bay; only turning back into his claim once the two are out of sight.

went ahead and edited in a conclusion for archival.