Katja's paw steps among the redwoods were muffled, but sure. With her shoulder brushing against Alfrun's to guide her she had no need to feel ahead cautiously for obstacles. The young godi led her solicitously around the larger obstacles and with a soft murmur gave her warning when they needed to step over smaller ones. The quiet, dreamy voice describing the world around them for her was soothing, and gave her a glimpse of the world beyond their world that she had only been able to gaze on once, when the All-father had taken Laufey as his avatar, and she had seen the light-rimed creatures all around her, cavorting around her as they raced together. The night she had conceived her only children, fathered by Grímnir, Odinn. Now her daughter saw that world every time she opened her eyes, and as they walked here together the priestess told her of it, and Katja was contented.

She had survived her tenth year, a feat she never thought to do. She had long ago expected to fall in battle, whether by the fangs of an enemy wolf or beneath the hooves or horns of the dangerous beasts they hunted. She had not thought she would instead have outlived so many of her blood, to have come to blind and dull-toothed age, cared for by the children she had never expected to birth. She wondered what had become of Laufey and the two children he'd sired by his concubine and the slave. Without knowing their fates, she could only assume that her children were the last of the Finnvi, and she sighed internally with regret at that knowledge. Perhaps she should have encouraged Kapra to father children, or found Laufey a wife who could have legitimized his offspring. Alas, there was no changing what had already been, and age would claim her before she could make similar arrangements for her own children. Regret would change nothing - she could only hope that they did not make her same mistakes.

She shifted as Alfrun pressed gently against her shoulder, allowing herself to be guided around something - Runa's running description told her it was a large boulder, one that half-hid the den of a wolverine with a sullen red aura.

Alfrun wandered contentedly at her mother's side. Neither of them had any inclination to go anywhere in particular, but the warmth of spring had called to the pair and lured them into the forest. The deep loamy scent of warm earth and awakening plant life curled around them in a rich emerald mist, traced through here and there with color-trails from prey and predator alike as they too made their way through the forest - some shining bright and new, others faded and worn. There, the bright gold trail of a young fawn recently gone leaping through the trees for pure joy, there the faded minty-green of a wolf with the soul of a healer who had passed that way some time ago. There, the alarming orange-umber of a newly awakened brown bear who'd gone lumbering through in his search for food to slake his winter hunger. And there, the sullen glow of red beneath a rock where a wolverine denned, one she was careful to guide her mother around at a cautious distance. Everything, she described aloud to Katja, generously sharing the Other-world the gods had given her the ability to see. Age had robbed Katja of the ability to see any world at all, not the gods, and surely they would not begrudge her this glimpse.

The priestess paused suddenly, both in her meandering and her speech, as a pulsing red tendril of scent-sight seemed to drift down to curl around them. It was something she couldn't quite place, but her hackles rose in alarm and she saw that Katja too, had raised her head to scent the air uneasily. The cheerful spring day felt suddenly menacing and vaguely darker. She hadn't thought before that perhaps they might have been wiser to invite along one of her more physically capable siblings on their wandering - even with so long to grow used to her mother's blindness that knowledge could not erase a lifetime of absolute trust in Katja's ability to protect them from anything untoward. Her tongue slipped out between crooked fangs and gaped lip to touch the side of her muzzle in apprehension. She signaled with her tail silently for Katja to remain where she was, and the former warrior waited with her slender body tensed warily.

Head tilting and rotating back and forth to watch carefully to either side, Alfrun continued forward. A single pace. Two. Five paces.

Perhaps she should have looked up.

A faint crack of twigs overhead and a shadow where all the warning the priestess had before a heavy weight crashed down on her and sent her sprawling.

The pleasant wandering of the day was interrupted suddenly by silence, and stillness, and a scent that pricked at Katja's age-dulled memory like a lance. Alfrun had stopped suddenly and she'd followed suit, raising her muzzle to get a better scent. Alfrun signaled her to remain where she was before stepping away, and scent and sound told Katja she had continued forward. Gather that strange scent. Yes, there. She recognized it, but from where? Not bear, nor wolverine, nor any canine she recognized. No, this rank scent was... feline. Katja closed her eyes, though she didn't need to in order to block out sight, and delved deeper into her memories. The scent of...

Cougar!

A snarl ripped from her chest even as her daughter screamed surprise and pain somewhere in front of her, and ignoring her own disability and danger she sprang forward toward the sound. Toward where the scent of her daughter and the scent of the cat mingled with blood.

The impact of her body against that of an unfamiliar form was shocking without sight to prepare her for it, but the cougar hadn't been expecting a seemingly frail, elderly and clearly blind creature to dare attack him, either. He had been counting on being able to finish off the younger and to his mind more dangerous of the pair before leisurely turning on the second, but his mistake cost him the advantage he'd gained through surprise, and he and Katja both were sent rolling together across the ground. Years of dead leaves and sticks were sent scattering beneath flailing paws and tangled bodies.

The sudden weight, and the shock of pain as claws raked across her shoulder, knocked the breath out of her in a squeal and she was slammed forcefully to the ground. Momentarily senseless, she would have been helpless to struggle against the cougar's planned bite to the base of her skull, a bite that would have ended any hope of fighting him off before she'd even been able to begin to react.

Quite luckily for Alfrun, an impact lifted the cougar's weight from her back and sent him rolling, though she was dragged over in a single roll of her own as the cat's claws pulled her slender form along for a moment. She was left to lay bleeding and sprawled while the two combatants rolled away in a scuffle of leaves. But, runt of her litter or no she was still a Finnvi. She was still a godi, with her faith in the gods and the god-blood that sang in her veins, and though her body was far too frail to excel at it she had still learned the ways of battle as her siblings had. She would not leave her mother to face this threat alone and blind, for who else could have come to her rescue?

Pulling herself painfully back onto her paws she turned to the churning, yowling mess of limbs that was the entangled forms of Katja and the cougar. Weaving, her vision red and wavering with pain, she could not see a way to drag the cat off the viking warrior. The pair was simply too closely tangled in battle. But... the lashing, flailing golden tail of the cougar slammed against her delicate forelegs, and Alfrun instinctively dropped to sink her teeth in halfway between tip and base. The cougar screeched at the unexpected pain and tried to turn to swat at her, but Katja was still there and he could not. Alfrun grimly clamped her jaws and set herself to hold on no matter what, her slight weight dragged to and fro by the much greater momentum of the cougar's movements.