Private Tales Paths Diverged

[Sannoru]

The reindeer would tread onward. But there was little to do other than push ahead through the bewildering snowfall. No sense of time, no sense of distance.
The tightness only increasing in san's chest as the cover of snow began to remind her more and more of her hellhole of twenty years.
San exhaled deeply, shutting her eyes, repeating those old words from her love of many years past.

»Why care for something that is not meant to be...« The hind spoke at Sigrith out of the sudden.
»And again I remember, - I- ....we could end it now. Everyone's destined to die afterall.«

»But there's a cerain kind of thread keeping life from unraveling in a single tear.«

»What's that for you? Why keep on going.«

 

[Sigrith]

Wasn't any form of energy that kept the wolf moving now but a keen sense of determination.

Or perhaps desperation.

The gale whisked away haggard plumes of breath. She wore her suffering like a mask of eminent death, listening to the mantra of the elf-creature at her heel. Why keep going.

Sigrith hadn't ever belonged, regardless of where he feet or paws took her. Hadn't ever felt the soulful ambiance of being home. Something beyond the horizon always beckoned, a song not even of Eretejva's voice. She'd traveled to the far reaches of the tundra only to find that not snow, nor ice, nor stone would keep her.

"Because it keeps calling me."

One day she'd find the source of the voice ... if she survived to continue looking. The wolf pressed onward through the whiteout.

 

[Sannoru]

The hind looked forward again, labouring ahead through new heaps of snow. »A feeling. A... heart-call ... 'home'?«

 

[Sigrith]

Heart-call.

Sigrith wasn't sure her heart really belonged anywhere. All matters of the heart had failed to take wing with the woman, though she did hold a deep love for her witch coven. Her heart-call lie there, amidst their mantras and their bonfires, their dancing and their spells, their bonds and their ties.

But her soul ... her soul yearned to be elsewhere.

Home. Did such a place even exist?

"Home..." she choked, the color of her ambient eyes faded in the heat of fever. One moment she was seeing white, the next everything had gone black. In the middle of the tundra, in the heart of a snow squall, the white wolf collapsed into the snow.

 

[Sannoru]

The reindeer wandered further ahead untill a soft crunch of the snow almost deafned them.
Sanno stood still for a few seconds in utter silence before turning their head.
Mid the snow the feverstruck wolf was just a spot of frosted black fur.

The reindeer returned, trying to nose Sigrith up by the side while mumbling something in a pace.
»Sougerisi. Seeiri, seei na«

 

[Sigrith]

During their travels the winds had been wild, calling no direction master. Suddenly, upon the uttered words of the hind, they shifted and drew, powerfully, from the south. Or was it north? East? They'd all but lost the cardinal lines. The path they took now was one of the lost and listless.

That gale picked up and uttered a bellow the likes of which made the fur on the unconscious she-wolf stand ever further on end. A guttural summons of the lands. A divine heralding of something other. Greater.

In the sheets of white, amidst the stinging of sleet and snow, shapes took form in the blizzard of grey and pearl. Large, whole, tangible geists. The thundering sound grew louder as a herd of caribou overtook them in a blind bid for safety from the storm. Somehow, as if by some miracle, they managed to bypass the pair, and when the thunderous echo of their hundreds of cloven hooves finally faded, not but the billowing figure of the great tundra beast stood in silence, in magnificence, towering over them both.

Majesty, mighty and resolute like the greatest mountain peak of all Eretejva, rolled off him in waves of wind and blinding snow and unforgiving ice. Eyes of frozen gold bore a gaze upon them with the weight of a thousand lives.

He waited.

 

[Sannoru]

In vain the hind nudged at the wolf. Even as the evershifting wind had turned into a powerful gale, still the reindeer was unmoved from its duty.
Ears twitched as the hind's call got swallowed in the crunching of ice and the crushing of snow. Her head rose and looked back into the foreboding white.
One moment there was nothing, another and they were engulfed in a herd of reindeer. The hind recoiled at first but soon stood ground before the crumbled wolf. As fast as they rushed, little did they disturb the pair, avoiding them as any other stone or tree.

As the herd had ended, the wind had lessened, if only to have the presence of a magnificent white ox block it before them. Still, like the mountain. Wind turned around its thick fur, carrying light heaps of snow along.

Not even the king emperor dragon held her voice hostage. A reluctant gaze shifted at the wolf behind.

 

[Sigrith]

The great tundra ox gave his head a light shake, sending piles of snow falling from the mass of overthick coat. With this gesture a curious shift in the wind - no longer billowing from behind the Pale King, but catching at the back of the hind who stood before him. It brought their scents: elf and Nord, but it brought something more.

More. Dark. Corrupt. Sickly. Growing. Infesting. Cancerous.

The Pale King's eyes widened as his nostrils gaped, his behemoth skull raising and thrashing through the air. One massive, cloven hoof stamped at the ground and he leaned into a mighty bellow the likes of which would make the frozen mountains crumble. The wind switched suddenly again, bursting from the ox and slamming into the hind and her wolf companion with the might of a god creature's full will.

Sannoru had no means to stand her ground against what felt like a tidal wave of frozen air, snow, and sleet. Sigrith's prone body flipped and flopped, tumbling away in the gust as heedless as a fresh corpse falling down a mountainside. The thunder of the King's call sent their ears ringing painfully, and by the time it was all over they'd become lost in the gale again.

The Pale King was Gone.

Sannoru would find herself crumpled back into her elven form. Nearby Sigrith lay free of her fur, back to the Witch San knew her as. Her arm was bleeding heavily from a blistering that had taken the skin where the corruption once was. It stank of death and the arcane, but the tundra Witch breathed still.

 

[Sannoru]

Nothing could prepare her for a moment like this. Sannoru's vision briefly turned to pitch as the bellow brought a powerful, bone-shivering gale. She hadn't even realized that her eyes had closed, or that she'd been tossed like a ragdoll and buried by snow.
To her frost-worn body, it all felt the same. There was nothing left to feel pain.

An eerie and familiar still befell them both, and Sannoru, now elf again rose to her feet, first clutching herself before gazing around to find Sigrith.

The moment the nord was in sight, Sannoru rushed to check on her wellbeing.

 

[Sigrith]

"My arm..." Sigrith sputtered, her good hand reaching towards it and feeling the blood-soaked binds of cloth and leather and fur, "-fire."

It felt like fire. A cold fire. Frostbite - not that Sigrith really knew what frostbite felt like.

The winds were dying down now, swirls of snow calming from a torrent of white to a haze of flakes. The clouds were beginning to clear around them. Somewhere high above, the silver gleam of a moon manifested itself like a ghost.

"Am I dead."

 

[Sannoru]

Sannoru knelt down, her face side by side with the moon.

From the light that finally came, Sannoru's pupils gleamed cyan, appearing as deep as the sky when they stared at Sigrith's.

Sannoru shook her head at Sigrith.
»We're not in the hindlands yet.«

 

[Sigrith]

The Witch's eyes slivered open, green and purple to take in those of midnight blue. She stared at the elf for a time, letting her exhaustion take hold, weighing her body into the snow. With the storm passed now to a gentle wind now slowly blowing clouds across the light of the moon, Sigrith felt like she was floating away.

Were it not for the rock hovering over her, anchoring her to reality, she very well might have.

Hindlands.

Sigrith swallowed, feeling her throat ache from the tightness of pain.

"What happened. How long was I out."

 

[Sannoru]

»The Pale King bellowed and... left. I am just as lost in time as you.« Sannoru offered Sigrith a hand. Her eyes trailed to the blood. At first it seemed as if the blood came from a more severe injury, but now the elf could see clearly the true state of the limb.

 

[Sigrith]

There was an amusement to the elf offering the Nord a hand up. Sannoru was stronger than she looked, but a Nord sunk into exhaustion in the snow was about as easy to budge as a sleeping Nordenfiir. She took her hand and committed to the notion that they couldn't stay here. There was nothing to build a fire and no shelter from the cold. With a pained grunt she heaved herself from the ground and with San's help found her feet again. Sigrith's good hand clamped onto the elf's shoulder, using her smaller form to steady herself.

A few harrowing, painful breaths filled the air between them with fog. The Witch turned her eyes upwards, blinking into the light of the moon and the stars now revealed from the clear skies.

"Not when...where. We're...nowhere near the Sanctuary."

In fact ... she dropped her gaze, looking first left and then right, finding her orientation by the stars and landmarks far more easily than she would have suspected.

"We're just north of Faarin, on Lake Olstir. But how..."

They had been hundreds of miles west-north. This was impossible.

 

[Sannoru]

Yet, it felt different. But how. Why.

It mattered little now.
»Tell me not that the sanctuary is touched by gods.«

How long were they gone... How far did the wind carry them...

»We can discuss it later-you need to rest first and take it as a blessing.«

 

[Sigrith]

Faarin.
A few hours later.
Twilight.

As one of the few Nordenfiir settlements that still spoke Fiirevik more than common, Sigrith was made to translate to gain passage in and back to the guest hall where the Queen had ordered their passage to stay. They were given a new room with a roaring fire, a bed of furs and pelts, a plate of food, and tankards of ale. Tea wasn't exceptionally common here. Sigrith asked for water for San instead and the local healer for her arm.

By the time she was cleaned up and bandaged Sigrith was too tired to eat. Too tired to care about what the Healer had said of her arm. No corruption, no sign of plague, just deep, hideous blisters that would likely scar. Almost like she'd been caught aflame.

Even bereft of her affects and half naked, the Witch cut an imposing figure of scarred, chiseled brawn. She pulled her hair free of its ties to let it fall free and wild before stretching to sink onto the bed. Resting with her eyes shut only long enough to catch herself before drifting into slumber, they snapped open second before half expecting to wake up in that cave again.

"San," an utterance over a tired and ragged breath, "lay by me?"

Sigrith had a hard time admitted she'd become accustomed to the elf sleeping at her side, curled against each other for warmth. She'd spent so long traveling on her own she'd forgotten what it was like to keep company in such a manner.

 

[Sannoru]

Sanoru was not a picky eater, nor choosy. Even if frostbitten to the bone, san would not utter a complaint. Choices of beverages even less so, but the elf usually went along with anything.


Living among Nordenfiir in her own body, however, felt strange on such a day. A short longing came to the elf, as if all the memories were not left behind as they should.
San truly lived here now. No longer a visitor to do this and that task, guard this and that figure.. It only now dawned how strange it all really was.

"San,"
The dark elf turned their head, obliging to the request with a nod and slowly laying beside. Everyone had some kind of weakness, and Sigrith never seemed like a person nerding closeness when they've first met.

 

[Sigrith]

Much as she suspected, as soon as the elf's presence was beside her she felt much more at ease. Strange how she had come to be so protective of the woman. Fond, even. She turned her head to the side, sunken into the down-stuff pillows, to look her companion over.

"We'll go back south," a quiet offer, "to Withereach. Maybe farther. Where it's warm."

 

[Sannoru]

Someone of Eretejvan origin yearing for warmth of the land instead of fire? San wouldn't have believed, but as usual, the elf was quiet, listening, observing.
Ear twitching a little.

San's pupils dilated more than usual and her breathing briefly stalled.
"Kootahi."

 

[Sigrith]

Violet and blue watched the elf back, pondering the notion of a journey to the Summerlands. A place ripe with green, so they say, where the sun warms your back all year round. Sigrith wasn't sure what to make of those tales, but the closest she'd ever seen to a swathe of verte valley was the Sanctuary.

Kootahi.

Sounded familiar. The witch thought she'd heard her companion say it before, but never with an explanation.

"What's that?"

 

[Sannoru]

»A place between ice and fire.«

»...Homeland.«

 

[Sigrith]

A hand quietly moved forward, warm fingertips curling lightly along the cold flesh where the elf's neck connected to her shoulders. Cold. Always so cold. Sannoru wasn't meant for the frozen wastes.

"Is that where you want to go?"

 

[Sannoru]

»Yes.«

 

[Sigrith]

The witch curled her fingers lightly around San's chin, leaning to plant a warm kiss on cold lips. It was a short gesture that lingered for only a moment.

"Then that's where we'll go."

Time to put the endless winters behind. Sigrith settled back into the pillows, drawing a pelt up over the elf's diminutive figure. First, though, a break from the cold and the travel.

 

[Sannoru]

Sannoru froze at the unexpected touch but made no sound or fuss. Their eyes remained focused on the ceiling bfor a good while efore the elf turned back on their side.
It was not natural to sleep just yet, but Sannoru was exhausted and empty.