feeds our hearts and starves our blood

Erik knows that he's not alone in the Maw, but sometimes it feels that way. There's so much mountain, and so little of him. There are so many things happening here. The land seemed to shift beneath his feet, giving way where he walked. Was that... was it him, or was it just the land? Fuck. Fuck. The crystals in his throat and now there was something wrong with his head too? Bullshit. Maybe it wasn't in his head. Maybe it was real. Unlikely. Pretty unlikely. A passing mention to his father had only left him with more questions than answers. All viking had given him was trust the gods. Did he mean that Erik heard the gods? He didn't seem alarmed... but what did Erik know of reading his father, anyway. Did father hear them too? There was no confirming that Víðarr was even his father. Erik didn't know what to think, for the time being.

But this... wasn't that. Erik knew that it wasn't just his father's pack members on the mountain. A very, very different scent drifting from downwind. His head lifted, hackles coming up along his shoulders. The boy was trying to look far larger than he actually was. Just healing from his run-in with another stranger, Erik was undeterred. If anything, the tidily stitched wound made him look even more menacing. An intense glimmer in his eye, Erik stepped out onto a broad, flat rock overlooking one of the small meadows that dotted this part of the mountain. A bitter breeze ripped through his coat and bit into his sides, pulling at something deep in his chest. It's a longing, a call that he can hear. Were these Víðarr's gods too? Could they see him here, beneath their lights in the sky? Erik couldn't say for certain, and he's not sure he wanted to.

His gaze settled on the brown boy, eyes narrowing. He was a scrawny little thing, surely less of a threat than the pup that had attacked them the other day. A rumbling, menacing growl ripped from Erik's chest. "Who?" The singular word slipped from his jaw, voice raspy and crackling on the stiff northern breeze.

"Speech"