Private Tales Endirinn

[Brenna]

Brenna's face dropped: it had all been going too smoothly. At least the woman couldn't see the doubt in her eyes. That urge to laugh rose unbidden in her chest again; the deaf leading the blind. What a pair. Would she had rather lost her sight than her hearing? It was a question she often asked herself late at night when her ears throbbed and ached with the old injury dealt in a blow by a jealous child all those years ago. She had never been able to answer it before but now...

What a horrible thing to think, she chided herself quite firmly.

"I will try my best," she promised and slid one hand along the woman's arm to cup her elbow in a supportive manner, whilst still enabling Skad to take the steps she wanted on her own terms. Being babied had been what she had hated when she had woken broken. "It is probably the poison still, it can take many weeks to pass," Bre just hoped that that was the real cause of the blindness.

"What is your name?"

 

[Skad]

Try my best.

That was not the answer that Skad was seeking. She'd experienced men and women who vowed to try their best and more often than not they faltered by their word. This was likely not helped by the woman's habit of cutting down those who could merely promise their best. Do or die. Thankfully, the foreigner's weight of expectation was slightly less than that of her own people.

There was a grunt as her expression remained blank in spite of this revelation as it usually did, her concentration focused upon each supported step taken by newborn legs.

Could. Weeks. Skad stiffened, the prospect of permanent blindness encroaching the edge of her thoughts. She'd already given the Dark Gods an eye in tribute of her blessing, and now they would take the other? What reason was there in such cruelty?

“Skad,” the blonde replied abruptly, turning her head in the direction of the other woman's voice, her eye searching but finding only the black.

Was this a test?

“Who are you?” she asked, voice as blunt as a Nordwiir war spoon, “why are you help?”

 

[Brenna]

Brenna split her attention between reading the woman's lips and ensuring the path she was choosing to walk along was clear of any low lying furniture. Artfully she manoeuvred them around the coffee table. Truthfully, dividing her attention in such a manner was no problem. She had to do it whenever walking and trying to talk to someone after all. However, telling herself she needed to concentrate on both gave her time to think over how to answer Skads question. Why had she helped her?

Saying it was the right thing to do never seemed to please anyone.

"Brenna," start with the easy question. The wheat-haired girl guided her back towards the bed once they had completed a pitiful circuit of the single-room dwelling. "And as for why," a soft sigh and a helpless raising of her shoulders before they dropped.

"It was not right that they tried to poison you."

 

[Skad]

Brenna.

That wasn't a name from the shovel of soft southern shite that Skad had been sifting through since she'd arrived on such shores. No, not from here but not one of her own either, which could only mean...

...bearfuckers.

The Nordwiir tightened, muscles knotting under the touch of this Brenna. It was an instinctual reaction, one borne in blood as the possibility of this woman being Nordenfiir came to the fold. It was told in legend that their peoples descended from the same line, ancestral cousins whose paths and gifts diverged along salted bloodlines.

Despite their comparative non-bestial nature the Nordwiir were considered the more savage of the two, roving berserkers steeped in the eternal night of the northmost winters. They were a rarity to see this far south as they spent most of their days slaughtering each other, a side-effect of a violent nature.

“Yellow cunts,” Skad spat as she internally swallowed the bile and contempt that she held for the Nordenfiir; it would have done her no good to lash out right there and then, all blind and helpless.

“They knowing they lose so they do dirty,” the blind blonde mused, the poisoning making a lot more sense now that the haze was starting to shift from their mind, fucking southern village snakes, “I eat their goat, we have fight.”

There was definitely more to it than that, but nuance was hard in a broken tongue.

“We get cure from them, yes?”

 

[Brenna]

The wheat-haired Nordenfiir wrinkled her nose.

Of course she knew there was far more to it than Skad having eaten a goat. If the stories the village-folk told her were true, which she had a hard time believing they weren't, then the evening had ended with Skad eating the goat. The events leading up to the feast being the reasons why it had been marinated in poison and not garlic and thyme. She ran a hand through her unravelling braid and thought how best to explain when she couldn't remember how to form the words out loud. With a grimace she ploughed on in with the harsh truth.

"No. They still want you dead and there is no known cure. I had to improvise," if the villagers had had any say in matters they would have burnt the hut down with Skad in it. It was only the fear of a bear walking from the hut and returning to it that kept the humans inline really. Pointedly she guided Skad back towards the bed when she felt her muscles bunching, mistaking the tensing for a sign of strain. "I do not have all my herbs with me but I made do with what I had."

To be completely honest, it was a blessing from the Gods Skad had woken up at all really.

 

[Skad]

That sounded permanent.

Fuck.

As she was lead back to the bed, her assisted-wobble around the hut finished with Skad couldn't help but start attempting to devise a way to murder an entire village while blind. Although a small part of her brain was actually noting how disconcerting it was to sit down upon an object without knowing its height. Any thought to actively avoid acknowledging gratitude towards the bearfucker.

“I want they dead too,” Skad stated, massaging the tops of her thighs as if that might have chased away the weakness that still plagued her limbs.

All over a dead goat...

...and the now-dead brother of the man who owned the goat...

...and his now burned down home.

“We go kill them all, get blood,” the one-eyed Nordwiir said with an affirmative nod, still strangely cavalier about her lost sense, “the blood will find way,” and as if the thought of a rampage didn't sound fun enough to Brenna, then Skad would have to butter the bread, “you help, yes? You kind, you smart, you very honour.”

 

[Brenna]

Brenna couldn't help the snort of laughter.

She wondered what her people would think if they could hear another ask her for help in slaughtering a village. The girl who lived in a world of silence that could be ended with just another knock to the head. It was true that she had begun to prove she could do more than write or look after the young but people still looked at her as though it would be better if she were locked inside where it was safe. Definitely not the person a Nordenwiir would want by their side. At least, she corrected as she thought of Kol, not a Nordenwiir who had murdered someone over a goat.

"I know it is hard for your kind not to think of blood, but try. At least for the next few weeks whilst you heal," she helped put the girls feet up and tucked the blanket back around her before turning to the fire once more. It was frigid outside and the last thing she wanted was to lose the precious heat she had been building up all day.

 

[Skad]

Skad couldn't help but think that she was being told no.

This was not something that happened very often, or at all, really. With a low tolerance for objection, the Nordwiir usually dispatched those that both couldn't and wouldn't without a second thought, having no time for those who refused what was asked of them. Her people had long stopped telling her no.

At the same time, Skad was also acutely aware that the bearfucker was stereotyping her people as if they were all blood obsessed lunatics. I mean, the one-eyed woman was a particularly strong example of this but that wasn't the point.

“What you...”

Not that the Nordwiir could anything about these total affronts because she was getting forcibly tucked back in by Brenna, like some kind of helpless and sickly child!

“I go get... blood alone,” Skad objected with a pathetic wriggle, blind and getting bested by blankets. It wasn't so much that she was losing her reason to madness or pride, but it was out of fear of losing her sight forever, “not wait...weeks!"

Just trying to break free of being tucked in brought a wheeze to the Nordwiir's chest as she panted in thick exertion as if the woman had just trekked across miles of wicked tundra. Fuck, she was knackered.

“What....if not...heal?”

 

[Brenna]

Brenna frowned as she struggled to piece together the woman's words around all the huffing and the panting and the wriggling. She had tucked in cubs who had tasted sugar for the first time that behaved better than this. Honestly! Firmly tucking a large chunk of blanket under the mattress, Brenna stood and put her fists on her hips with a mind of telling Skad exactly what she might tell said cubs if they didn't promptly stop being a giant pain and go to sleep, when the memory of her own fear at being deaf for the rest of her life drifted back to her. With a grimace and a sigh of a long suffering care-giver, Brenna relaxed her stance and instead gently sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Then you adapt," she said softly and patted the woman's arm in what she hoped was a comforting gesture. A hand squeeze or a hug would have been better but the Nordenfiir was almost entirely convinced untucking her at this stage, even if she was weak, would result in a nasty tumble on the dirty straw covered floor. If she couldn't heal her, that probably made her as bad or as guilty as those who had blinded her to begin with.

"When I lost my hearing I thought that was it, but it just means you have to find a new way of doing things, not that you cannot do them."

 

[Skad]

Adapt to being blind? Condescending pats did little to soothe the savage beast inside of the usually stoic Skad, who was seemingly facing the possibility of a remaining lifetime as a fully blind Nordwiir raider. She would be useless, what was a hand wielding a broken instrument compared to that of a hand with a blade?

She resolved right there and then to slit her own throat if she could not see by the end of the bearfucker's healing process.

And then she heard it.

“YOU...ARE...DEAF?!”

Skad began to laugh, bursting into a hearty wheezing roar that fought with straining lungs still struggling from the weight of the poison and her own feeble exertions. Eventually, the one-eyed woman exhausted herself upon her own mirth. This truly was the machinations of Spotta, or Hrekkur. A great cosmic joke courtesy of The Dark Gods; the deaf leading the blind.

She laughed so hard that her head grew light from a lack of oxygen, her heavily-scarred features turning scarlet and before long, Skad had physically laughed herself to sleep.

 

[Brenna]

There was a split second, a tiny second, where Brenna considered picking up the pillow and quietly laying it over Skad's face.

Instead, with a shake of her head, she laid another thick woollen blanket over the sleeping Nordenwiir and then eased herself off the bed with care not to disturb her. She could see the funny side of it after the initial wave of anger and by the time she was heading outside to fill the kettle with more snow to melt down for water, Brenna was smiling at the joke herself.

Whilst her patience slept the young Nordenfiir busied herself with preparing the fish for their dinner, gathering more wood, boiling water for the tea she intended to give Skad when she woke, and ensuring the trip wires she had set up around the house were secure. The villagers still looked at her askew every time she went back to the cottage with medicines and she wasn't convinced they had let the whole affair go. Perhaps, soon, she would have to simply take Skad to another place away from the threats here. Maybe somewhere with better herbs.

When Skad begun to wake once more Brenna was there to push some tea into her hands.

"Drink, this helps with the swelling here," she tapped the woman's head.

 

[Skad]

Skad unknowingly flitted through the realms of consciousness, unable to tell what was life from dream due to the all-encompassing darkness that consumed her vision. A blinded fate even in sleep. Or was it all nightmare? It seemed impossible to tell at times. She might have tossed and turned were she not ensnared by Brenna's ironclad tucking prowess.

After another untold period of rest the Nordwiir only knew she was awake due to the presumed presence of Brenna and her pottering around. The hilarity of her bearfucking savour being deaf had already since worn off and a brand new sense of frustration had awoken with her.

She awkwardly took the tea into palms scarred by heavy ritual cutting with a grunt before Brenna gave her cause to flinch by tapping her head. The woman's shoulders hunched and knuckles grew white upon the cup.

Oh, she did not like that sense of vulnerability. Or the idea of having a swollen head for that matter,

“Why you not cure hearing?” Skad suddenly spoke, her blunt question the only manner of aggression at her disposal.

 

[Brenna]

The sound of a deep, intake of breath. The sensation of a slight woman fidgeting on the edge of the mattress as if deciding whether or not to get up and leave entirely. They were the only answer Skad would have to her question whilst Brenna thought through her answer but also made sure her patient drunk more than just one foul tasting sip before she did answer. Once half of the tea had gone she turned and rested her right foot on top of her left thigh and begun to pluck at the laces of her snow boots.

"They couldn't," a part of her would never not be angry about that. Of how much the disability had robbed from her. "It was a head wound, axe," she grimaced at the memory. "When I was small. They said I was just lucky to be alive. By the time I was old enough to learn medicine the trauma was too long healed."

She plucked at her shoelace again then got up abruptly.

"But you aren't an eight year old cub. You'll heal."

 

[Skad]

Skad savoured the silence that followed, feeling as though she had brought some small measure of pain to the woman who had insisted upon saving and healing the Nordwiir. Which, upon reflection was not the normal course of action to take against somebody actively aiding you. At the very least it was a way to release a measure of rage at her own misfortune.

She made a face when she sipped the tea, which in accordance with the laws of medicine, tasted like fucking shit. That usually meant that it was a remedy that actually worked. With such sound logic, the blinded blonde continued to drain the cup.

At least she could respect a woman that got chunked in the head by an axe and lived, even in spite of being a bearfucker.

“Not cub, no,” Skad spat back, choosing to remain ever-pleasant in the face of her saviour before posing some extremely on-brand questions, “who hit child with axe and not finish job? You revenge, yes?”

 

[Brenna]

Brenna's eyes widened in shock before she suddenly burst into a fit of laughter. They might have only had a few conversations in their time together but what Skad said and, Brenna imagined, the way she said it were in keeping with everything she knew about the Nordenwiir. Anyone else would have been horrified at the idea such young children had been fighting with sharp weapons, not that the child hadn't been killed. She shook her head as the laughter begun to subside and wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.

"Another child, we were practising. But we were..." she paused as she tried to remember the word, her hands having lifted automatically to sign what it was she wanted to say. With effort she lowered them and focused on the memory of how the word had felt leaving her lips. "Ri-vals. Not friends," she followed up in case the word was wrong. Her left shoulder rose in a casual shrug. "I don't blame him anymore. Life is too short to stay angry at someone. Besides," she mused as she brought the wrapped fish out of the fire. "Now he has to live with the same a deaf bear can beat him in a fight."

 

[Skad]

Skad wasn't quite sure why that was funny, her culture dictated a pound of flesh way of living. If you were wronged, you sought revenge. They wound you, you kill them. No doubt this way of living had caused their people to stagnant and rarely find their way south, too busy slaughtering each other for this reason and the next.

“He took hearing, you should take life,” Skad muttered into the steam of her shit-flavoured tea before draining the rest of the cup in one fell swoop, “my twin took the eye,” the Nordwiir continued, this fact evident by her empty right eye socket, the sight of which was usually concealed by a head-wrap “I take her life.”

Life lessons with Skad Kin-Slayer, even her own people held contempt for that one. Hella had been a prodigy with a bow and held enough charisma that she could have united their people.

“You fight good deaf bearfucker?” She asked with a genuine interest, tilting her head in the direction of her sound, “We fight one day. I promise not kill you. Only spar.”

 

[Brenna]

Brenna was too busy unpeeling the large lake-side leaves she had wrapped the fish in to catch the first bit of what Skad. Her eyes flickered back to the woman's lips just as she announced she had murdered her twin sister. How much of the conversation had she missed? What exactly had been in that missing bit of speech? She doubted anything that would have made her agree that killing a sibling was the right thing to do. What was wrong with these Nordenwiir? Carefully she put the fish on a wooden plate and fished out the potatoes from the boiling pot along with the stringy looking purple carrots.

"I fight good," Bre said with a confidence she hadn't felt before her trip southwards. Sure, her trainers had thought she was good - better than good, her fathers daughter even - but she had lacked the confidence in herself until she had fought her way across the Nordenfiir kingdom to the southernmost tip. Her disability hadn't gotten in the way. She put the plate in the woman's lap and took the empty cup of tea to set it down on the table where she sat with her own food. "And bears fuck good," her eyebrows rose.

 

[Skad]

“On four legs and in ass.”

In Skad's culture they even called it Nordenfiir style, reserved for those moments in time where you forgot how to be a functioning person and longed to howl at the moon instead. It was a feeling that could take a hold of even the most stalwart salt-veined bastard.

She felt the weight of the plate in her lap and internally frowned, while the woman was able to smell the fish she didn't like the fact that it could not be seen. There could have been anything on the plate.

Although, it would have been an illogical turn for Brenna to turn on her now.

She held the plate up to her chin with her left hand and used her right to eat, calloused fingers forced to feel their way around the meat, potatoes and...and whatever the other things were. Naturally, she had all the table manners of an Orc taking a creamy, steamy shit.

“Where my knife?” Skad asked with a face full of fish (which, was actually decent unlike the regular offerings from the surrounding soft, southern bastards), “Need knife for pray.”

Among other things.

 

[Brenna]

Brenna choked on her fish.

Skad wasn't exactly wrong but it was the way she said it that had Bre trying to laugh whilst swallow the mouthful of food she had badly timed. She debated pointed out there were plenty of other positions the Nordenfiir enjoyed but she didn't want to ruin that illusion for the Northerner. It was one stereotype, Brenna decided, she was happy to keep alive. Her laughter abruptly cut off when Skad asked about her knife and her eyes slid unwillingly towards the vegetable basket she had hidden it in. For some reason she had thought the pile of healthy food was the one place the Nordenwiir wouldn't go near.

"The villagers aren't pray," she said firmly and then spooned up another parcel of food and put it in her mouth. "If your vision doesn't come back by tomorrow we're leaving anyway. I need better herbs. Further North."

 

[Skad]

While Skad absolutely viewed the villagers as prey, she wasn't going to argue the semantics of it with some aid-giving, peace-loving bearfucker.

“Pray to Dark Gods. Need knife,” the Nordwiir reiterated before chucking a potato into her open mouth, her people's lack of table manners ingrained in rampant mastication so magnificent and primal to behold that perhaps it was for the best that Brenna was, in fact, deaf.

She paused, looking towards the sound of the Nordenfiir and then stared in that general direction, her expression void of any strong form of emotion.

“We march tomorrow? What if ambush?”

If she laid eye upon a deaf woman leading a blind one then Skad would have thanked the Dark Gods for such easy targets.

 

[Brenna]

"Then you can watch how bears fight, maybe you will find it as interesting as how we fuck," the slight raising of her eyebrows as if daring the other woman to argue or waiting for some other snark remark.

Skad was in no fit state to fight. Even if she had become more accustomed to her lack of sight and had learnt how the other senses could be used to more than make up for the loss of one, the poison was still thrumming through the woman's veins. She was weak and would be more of a hinderance in a fight than a real help. Brenna's eyes did drift silently once more to the vegetable basket where the knife was safely stashed and debated whether she would give it back to the woman on the trek. She would need to be more vigilant on their trip and watching out for an attack from the person she was trying to help, the very same person who was likely the person who any ambush would be coming for, was a split of attention she didn't need.

As for her prayers...

Her nose scrunched up as she thought back to the scars along Kol's body.

"You shouldn't give yourself more injuries."

 

[Skad]

"I can watch, yes?" Skad inquired with hidden malice, taking advantage of Brenna's momentary lapse in memory. She seemed that kind of kind-hearted soul that would balk at such an offensive faux-pas.

Like telling a deaf woman to listen.

Still, the Nordwiir's face remained impassive, her judgement always internal and rarely painted across her heavily scarred visage. At least her guide was confident in her abilities to defend them both, albeit on four legs, the same way that she fucked as she no doubt barked at the moon. Irrelevant as long as the deaf woman was strong.

"It not your Gods. Not your flesh."

She stopped to polish off the rest of the meal, fingers touching upon the plate with her fingers to ensure that no morsel was missed. Strength would be needed.

"Give my knife."

 

[Brenna]

The flaxen-haired Nordenfiir had the decency to blush when she realised her blunder. The blank expression on the woman's bandaged face only made it worse and she had to clear her throat to dislodge the embarrassment gathering there. it was also hard to argue the point about the knife any further after her blunder and with a reluctant sigh she wandered over to the basket, then made an act of walking to another part of the room too and rummaging around there and then another place; if the woman was trying to follow the sounds of her feet to find it again later she hoped it confused her enough.

Of course, first she would have to get the knife back.

With care she made her way back over to the bed on whisper-soft feet and laid the knife across the woman's lap and then took the empty bowl and tray away. If Skad lunged at her at least she could use the wood as a makeshift shield...

 

[Skad]

Skad, naturally, was listening out to see if she could discern where exactly Brenna was hiding her blade but quickly realised that she didn't even know what any of her surroundings looked like. She still held sight during her initial bout with the poison, but at the point in time, the Nordwiir had different concerns.

The knife was exchanged for her empty dish and Skad offered an empty nod, which was generally as polite as the one-eyed woman tended to get.

<Likami, my body is your body,> Skad spoke in her native tongue, before immediately wrapping a hand around the hilt, grabbing a matted hunk of her own hair from the side of her head and chopping it off in one swift motion.

She tossed the hair onto the ground; a lesser tribute but a tribute nonetheless.

"Need blood for march," she conceded with a grunt before taking her knife, decidedly not giving it back and laying back down to get needed rest before their trek tomorrow, "you get rest too," Skad ordered as she got comfortable on what was presumably Brenna's own bed.

 

[Brenna]

It was extremely unnerving watching a blind woman swing a blade.

Brenna pursed her lips as she watched the straw like, matted hair fall to her freshly swept floor. The floor she would be sleeping on. What was even more unnerving was that the blind woman was keeping the knife and clutching it like a child might a comforter. The odds of surviving the night if she did try and get some sleep seemed an even 50:50. On the one hand, Skad might have realised she wouldn't get far without her help. On the other hand, Skad might just decide the price needed to get her sight back was blood.

Her blood.

"Mm-hm," she agreed in a long, drawn-out way as she stepped back towards the door. "I'll keep guard. Shout if you need anything," and with that she slipped out into the bitter night. She'd much rather sleep like a bear out here than in there anyway.