Ripe for the Picking

Her mother's violent death had left Alfrun somewhat adrift. Though she had long ago stopped depending upon her mother, and every fiber of her believed that Katja's death in battle had elevated her to Freyja's hall, she still grieved for the woman who had brought the Finnvi name into prominence in these lands. Without her leadership, the world felt empty, all her children drifted away. Runa was no leader, she knew. She was a priestess, not a jarl. Someone would need to rise to bring them back from the ashes, but she was not that person.

She had been unable to find most of her siblings to bring them news of their mother. Since Katja had left to return to her homeland and Yfir had faltered without her, Alfrun had seen little of her siblings. It had been only recently that she had found Asvor's scent, but the scent was part of a pack now and she had yet to approach the pack to seek her out.

She had not been at her customary den in the gorge for some time, but the pelt of the cougar that had reached death's embrace by Katja's jaws made for a comfortable sleeping nest on the ice. She had preserved the pelt with the skull attached at some deep inner prompting, though she did not yet know what purpose the gods wished it to be for. She had tucked it away before venturing out to find food.

Half blind to the physical world, she still found it difficult to hunt so when she had found the elk carcass the night before she had been quick to mark the spot in her memory for a trip there. It seemed that another had the same idea though. A chocolate female was feeding already as Alfrun stepped up to watch her quietly, observing her aura. It had a familiar color and feel to it. She was certain she had never met the young wolf, however. "May I join you?" Alfrun asked in her dreamy way, head tilted to the side in that odd birdlike manner she had, gaze on the female but distant, as though looking deeper than what was visible.