katja awoke the morning after the blot feeling much less like time and space were eddying around her. She could not entirely shake the feeling of being in a dream, but the world around her seemed to have returned to normal.

Normal, but for one very important detail.

She was pregnant.

It was far, far too early to know physically, but she knew, deep in her bones. The wise one, the ancient one eyed male, had given her a promise. Her children, conceived in the throes of celebration, would bring greater prosperity to the line of the Finnvi than ever they had seen. It was no surprise to her that the Wanderer had chosen Laufey as his vessel - the only Finnvi of his generation, the young male was an asset to their bloodline. Her only surprise was that he had chosen her as the mother.

Her mind wandered to Raisa as she awoke with the knowledge of what grew within her. How surprised Raisa might be to know that she carried the children of the gods. She regretted that these children would never know the fierce, loving woman as Raisa's pups had known her. Raisa had many strengths, much knowledge that she could have shared with the pups, a warm, caring mentor to teach them the fire that Katja had admired within the former alpha. Maybe it was simply that Katja missed her. Whatever the reason, the Xanilov's absence weighed heavily upon her heart this day.

She moved to seat herself upon the edge of the gorge - she had returned safely to her den, though she could not remember how. The wind whistled cold and piercing around her, but she paid no heed to it as she gazed toward the rising sun that stained the sky and snow equally blood red.

The sunlight that shown into the den's mouth may as well have been a wall of fire as far as Laufey was concerned. Just looking at it scalded his eyes.  He felt awful, absolutely dreadful. There was a terrible pain in his head and a heaviness to his body that made laying completely still for the rest of his life sound like a valid game plan. Evidence in and around his den suggested that at some point - perhaps a few points - he'd gotten horribly sick. To sum up the extent of his woes, Laufey felt like death. Oh, but he needed to talk to Katja.  There were huge gaps in his memory and what was left in their wake were vague feeling, tiny inklings, of what had happened. Those little snippets filled him with dread. What had he done? Somehow he felt like he'd made a fool of himself. It was all very confusing; his inability to recall the events of the blot in detail reminding him of the time he'd been swept downstream and bashed his head against a rock. After slowly getting to his paws Laufey slipped from the den and promptly stumbled under the weight of the rising sun. His eyes burned fiercely; the pain bringing tears to them. With much effort he blinked the stinging away and took off - very slowly - in the direction he thought he might find Katja. It didn't take long to find her. She sat on the edge of the Gorge with her back to him. Uncertainty froze him in place. He'd give anything for a better understanding of what had happened during the blot. He needed answers. Laufey cleared his throat. "Um..." He didn't know where to start. "Katja?"

A familiar deep voice pulled her from her morose reverie, and she turned her head to see Laufey standing uncertainly behind her. She tilted her head towards the edge of the gorge in questioning invitation - would he care to join her? - before turning her gaze back to the blood red sky as it brightened and wavered with a weak light. "How are you feeling this morning, Laufey?" she asked with a faint rumble of amusement. The little lemur's mead kicked like a mule, and she could imagine the effects of more than the simple taste she'd had of it would be much less pleasant. She found herself feeling... strangely, as though the world had not quite gone back to normal yet after the dream state she'd been in the night before, but not sick as she might have expected to feel if she'd overindulged in alcohol.

The banging in his head hadn't lessened any. The last thing he really wanted to do was sit on the edge of the gorge and stare across a bright (!!!) white landscape. Still he crept closer, wordlessly accepting the invitation and moving to settle down beside Katja. "How are you feeling this morning, Laufey?" Like death. Like he'd been turned inside out, turned right side in and then had his head stuffed full of woodpeckers. "Dreadful," he groused in a gravelly voice. "If not for my own culpability I might'a had to kick Kaprasius' ass." He growled to himself and then regretted it immediately as the sound roused the woodpeckers and briefly worsened the banging in his head. Scowling under the weight of his migraine Laufey squinted down into the gorge before turning a searching eye on Katja. "Did you fare any better?" The question was vague enough. He had so many questions, but uncertain of the level of sensitive required he wanted a soft start. She hadn't immediately wheeled around and chewed his face off, so that had to be a good sign, right? Unless of course she'd invited him to the edge with the hope of pushing him over.

Katja rumbled in sympathy for the giant. It must have been a great ordeal, to have been the temporary avatar of a god, though no doubt the aftereffects of Kassander's mead had a great deal to do with it. "I have suffered no ill effects," she returned neutrally, not wanting to seem as though she were making light of his suffering, then fell silent a moment, her mind returning to the subject she had been dwelling upon when he appeared. To distract herself she wrenched her attention back to Laufey. Did he realize the import of what had happened? Often she forgot that he had not been raised within their ways - he always made such an effort to adapt to the culture. "It may not seem that way yet to you," she told him, referring to the aftereffects he was experiencing, "But the gods have blessed us greatly." She blinked slowly, thoughtfully, into the distance. "These pups will bring an unprecedented prosperity to our family, and it is through them that Yfir will find the greatest glory." It did not even occur to her that Laufey may not have considered the ramifications of their union - in her mind it was an inevitable conclusion.

Blessed them...greatly? He blinked once slowly as he tried to understand what she was telling him. He was blessed with a headach- OH. For several long moments he was silent as he processed the depth of what she was saying to him. What it boiled down to was that it was okay. Everything was okay. He hadn't cosmically fucked up, hadn't ruined his or her standing in the pack, hadn't embarrassed himsel- okay, that one was still up in the air. He pinched his eyes closed. Everything was so fucking swimmy. Some snippets of what had transpired the night before stood out with vivid, cringe-worthy clarity but others were so vague he could only recall a vague sense of what those memories meant. Children. His children. ...with Katja. It was an alarming, uncomfortable thought, one that had made sense last night, but now that he could think clearly he couldn't believe he'd shagged his cousin. Honestly that was his only real issue with it all. Vessel of the gods and all that, that he could handle. More kids of his own, that he could also handle. But the actual making of those kids with someone he admired greatly and maybe feared a little? He wanted to wedge his head under a rock and invite the whole pack to jump on it. Had he treated her alright? Laufey stirred and opened his eyes. ”I believe it, Katja.” He may have been weirded out by the details but Katja appeared nonplussed, so on that particular issue the brute felt like he needed to deal with his discomfort quietly. Her reaction wasn't at all what he'd been dreading; he wasn't sure what else there was to say if no apology was needed.

Lost in her thoughts as she was, it took Katja a moment to notice Laufey's continued discomfort despite his professed belief in her vision. She tilted her head to look back up at him rather than at the blood-red light of the sunrise. She'd seen overindulgence enough at her family's gatherings to recognize the symptoms of it, though it didn't occur to her that there was more to it than that. She did take pity on the poor boy, though. He was not, perhaps, as used to such debauchery as his viking relatives. "Why don't you go see Kassander?" she suggested. "I am certain he will have some concoction or another to take the edge off. I shall be summoning the pack for a meeting sometime soon, so it would do you good to recuperate."