silver is the grip on the helping hand

It's a tender moment, and she shouldn't, but she laughs, and it's deep, and -- "Good! I am-- I am Bylgja! I am not so old to be called mum!" Neither of them are saying it out loud, but it's an understanding, nonetheless. Bylgja gives him a bit of a nudge with a paw. Not a jab, but a little nudge. "Den with who you please. I am no... eh. Overbearing parent." The words feel so strange on her lips, but she says them. Her breath is deep, when she inhales again. Exhale. It is only now that she shows how tense, how worried, she had truly been, and it only comes in the exhale, the way she shudders when she breathes. Deep, deep, down, where she could hide it, there had been fear.

But her smile is... still present. And bright.

"I ask you hunt with me, some days. Tell me when things happen to you. Help me forage for herbs, to heal. But it is not an order. This is family, instead." She wishes she had a shield, to bash with her axe, so she could proclaim her triumph to the world. "My shield for you, my son." The way she says it-- an oath, more than anything else. Family in a way that is not precisely mother and son, but-- something else. Guardian and ward, perhaps. She doesn't know. She doesn't think about it.