Everything is Under Control
11-12-2017, 06:47 PM
Her path had taken her on its meandering way southward over the year, but always she was drawn home once again to find relief from the strange lushness of the southlands. Nowhere did she feel as connected to the gods and her ancestors than here, in the lands where the cold came earliest and hardest, and survival was a constant struggle for those who did not know its secrets or respect its dangers. It did not encourage, nor allow for, the slothful negligence of the south. It did not truly bother her to know that this land could very well claim her mother before the winter was out, regardless of what they willed. It was a hard land that created a hard people, and she knew that, did it happen, her mother would return again through her descendants, lending her strength and wisdom through her blood again and again. Still, her mother's knowledge and experience would be greatly missed, so Alfrun was taking pains to remain near enough to help care for her as winter approached. But there was something fluttering in the back of Runa's mind as she followed her mother's tracks through the hoarfrost to the stream. Some inkling, some hint from the gods, the seed of an idea. She did not see the whole of it yet, only the faint sense it was there, so she simply left it alone to germinate and grow. The gods would speak when they were ready. Her mother's prints were lined in bright red in her Other Sight, the shifting fog of darker color filling them like the darker red of old blood. The residual heat of passage, the pulse of a heart's blood. She was not far behind. And so she was not, for Katja had only just broken the ice on the stream and begun to drink when Alfrun ambled over the ridge to see her, then paused to cock her head to the side at something only she could see - the fall black soft black feathers like a gentle snowfall. The tip of her tongue passed delicately through the gap of her crooked teeth and cleft lip, the gesture a thoughtful one, her expression serene as she watched both the feathers and her mother. |