walking is a song, her footsteps the rhythm, her heart the beat that has echoed through each and every mile. she is quiet, almost melancholy; Before, it would’ve been cause for worry, a knuckle to her forehead to check for warmth - but After has found her tongue still in her mouth, heavy and arduous, a stalactite nestled between those ivory teeth. to move it is to acknowledge, even in the barest of terms, what she has long denied to herself: that she has been cut free, a loose strand in an intricate web, flapping wildly and without direction through tumultuous winds. any day now, she will be crushed by some absent-minded beast and left to rot below the earth, forever a Thing of the Past.

black claws sink into the flesh of her shoulder, drawing her from her brooding with a sharp chirp of protest.

“yes i know, Kass,” she hisses, voice rough with disuse. she shoots the bird a baleful glance, but it merely turns away, feigning innocence. she’d named the thing after her favourite brother, eighteen months her junior, who she’d been most bereft to leave behind. she could still picture his little face all twisted up in confusion as she’d been chased into the wilderness, the voices of their family rising in hysterical prayer -

she cut the thought off with a snap of her teeth, as though physically closing on the memory and wrenching it in two, rending bone from socket. it helped, sometimes, to think of the memory as something she could physically kill.

“enough of ghosts,”she tells Kass, though it’s really for herself. “we’re both too pretty to cry.”

His head is here. Viðarr's head is in it, and so is his heart. Still, there's something in his chest. His desire to head south was stronger than usual, stronger than it ever had before. Until now, he'd been nearly allergic to the place. Now? Curiosity... and something else. Something else. Viðarr's head is, admittedly, somewhere else at the moment. Somewhere he wishes he was. Somewhere that he may have been, if this was another life and he was another man.

But he is nothing of the sort. Viðarr Trygg, bold and brassy, making his way through the east on his way southbound. The heat was sticky on his tongue, around his shoulders. Well and truly, the viking loathes the summer. It put him in a foul mood, and this was no different. He's wilting under the weight of the summer, which is to be expected really.

The words that come to the shadow aren't meant for him. He knows that much, and yet? Though Viðarr doesn't emerge from the shadows, he speaks. Accent playing heavily in his words, and something of a smile too. "This place is full of ghosts." Words measured, though he keeps his distance. Viðarr has his own mission today, and his path won't deviate.
"Viðarr"

the voice startles her for a heartbeat, carnation eyes seeking him out in the shadows. Kass squeaks in fright and takes to the air, then returns to her shoulder with slow, cautious wing beats. medulla can just make out the impression of the stranger, can discern a pair of silvery eyes, glinting like twin chips of ice.

“is that so?”

her eyes roll heavenward as a weight presses itself against her shoulders, almost crushing in its disappointment - but she expels it in the next breathe, sheds it like a cloak. in its place there is resignation, and a determination born of petty resolve. they’d sought to destroy her, had driven her out with complete certainty of her demise.

they’d though her incapable of survival without them…so in revenge, she’d fucking thrive.

”are you a ghost?” her lips quirk into a teasing little half-smile, almost playful. ”if so, i may have to banish you.” she affects a light tone, but Kass shifts uneasily on her shoulder; he is a nervous bird.

Víðarr thinks of the ghosts of his own, the ones that haunt this place. The ones that haunt this place and haunt his head. Bitter thoughts of his older sister, who still exists and lives and breathes here. Thoughts of Tove, too. The pang of guilt, of remorse, the metallic taste in his mouth... Víðarr swallowed hard. The shadow can't help but think of her, and think hard. A knot in his stomach. Víðarr bit his tongue, holding the feelings back as well as he could.

Was he a ghost? "Depends on who you ask." High headed as he speaks, taking a moment to look at the girl. A real slip of a thing, dwarfed in height and weight. Curious as he takes her in. "You can try, if you would like." A slight smile, his head tilting as he takes her in. "Where are you going?" Though Víðarr had an agenda, maybe she had one too. He could always ask.

"Viðarr"

the thing about ghosts, Dulla idles to herself, is that they linger. right now, in this new land with this stranger, she can feel the remnants of her familial distraught melt away like frost on a summer breeze. but in the quiet place between heartbeats, she knows they will return, so vivid in her mind they may as well be right before her. ”i could try,” she acquiesces, head tilting in thought, “but i think, perhaps, i’ve no say where ghosts can dwell.”

she takes a moment to consider the stranger, as he does her; there is something complex shifting across his face, there and gone in a flash. Dulla wonders at it, but she isn’t one to push - if any one respects the privacy of others, it’s her. his question pulls a self-deprecating huff from between satin lips, something wry and equally bitter curving along her mouth. “hah, now that…that’s a question.” the uncertainty of her future makes her stomach clench, makes her want to turn tail and scurry back home.

her teeth clench. never. “i’ll confess to being rather…unfamiliar with this place.” an understatement, if ever there was one. ”perhaps you could tell me where i am? maybe then I’ll have some idea where to go.”

Viðarr's people know long of ghosts and gods, giants, monsters-- all of them. He's heard the stories. He's told the stories, now, to his own children. The stories, they've always had a life and a mind of their own. Though his sisters were far better storytellers, Viðarr gets by. Each tale would morph and change with each telling, each would take on a new life in those that heard it. The legends of his people... he knows them well. They live in his chest, they live in his head. Maybe that's why he can regard himself in the same way. While Viðarr is spectral, he is probably not a ghost.

She doesn't know where she's going, she doesn't know where she is. The shadow cannot hold that against her either. He was the same way when he'd first turned up in Boreas, and if she was just arriving then this too, made sense. Viðarr nodded once, assessing the girl. "This is the eastern edge of the continent they call Boreas." It's a simple enough explanation. The exact name of this field, these Plains, was useless to him. Viðarr hadn't bothered to learn it. He figures this is likely as good a time as any to remember his manners, too. "I am Viðarr Trygg." Volunteering information hasn't been his strong suit really ever, but he would learn. In time, he would learn.

"Viðarr"