Long Road Home

A low growl left Valkyrie's lips in an unbroken stream as Aesir tried to explain himself. His excuse wasn't good enough. Valkyrie appreciated how tightly blood bound relatives together, but that didn't open the door for Aesir to break an oath without so much as a word. She would have let him leave if he had asked. Instead he had broken a vow; a thing so intertwined with honor so as to be inseparable.

She stopped growling long enough to coldly say, "What, pray tell, was so important, so time sensitive that you couldn't come to me? Couldn't even howl to let me know? And do not say 'family' unless their lives were at stake in that moment." Valkyrie shook her head at him. Her chin quivered with rage as she fought the urge to bare her fangs at him. "I trusted you. I accepted your oath and I put my faith in you. You are my friend and yet even with all of that you couldn't extent to me a simply courtesy?" She hadn't known if he was dead or what. That mystery could have been with her until the end of her days. "If you could not do this simple thing for me, your friend and leader, how can I believe a word you say now? Does not cowardice walk abreast with dishonesty?"

Valkyrie stepped back further and lifted her chin in a dismissive gesture. "I can only assume those feelings were not shared and that you will say and do anything to avoid losing your life now." At one time or another he had known her. Perhaps he was using that knowledge to play on her weakness now by pretending to lay his life at her paws. "But I am not going to kill you today, Aesir. And it is not my place to forgive you. I cannot absolve you of your shame, either."

"Because we," she almost said the word 'are' again but caught herself, "were friends I will give you a chance. The band currently resides in Sweetgrass Basin. There will come a day when I call for you to answer for your crime. If you come perhaps you will find redemption. If you do not then you will be niðingr and even the gods will forsake you." He may have thought himself cursed now, but the loss of honor was a far graver thing in Valkyrie's opinion. She couldn't think of a worst fate.

-exit-