he lays her, gently, not on grass or moss but on the hard ground. she would have preferred it that way, he imagines, for she was not a creature of soft and gentle comforts. the winter chill is fitting for what he imagines to be her wake -- though he doubts there will be many that come to bid her farewell.

her body is cold but not yet stiff, and as he places her down he would like to imagine her sleeping. sleeping, if not for the ragged wound across her throat, the very one that had sucked the life from her veins.

"they need to see," he mutters to her, as if she might hear him. explaining what he plans to do next, excusing his actions even though he knew she would have supported them. let the children see the cost of this war, this rivalry. let them see what the sigrun will do to the ones that they love if they let down their guard.

and then he turns to the den a few paces away, approaching the entrance and blocking the sight of her body with his hulking form. for a moment. he would not thrust it upon them, but he would show them. at the mouth of their home (which still smells of her, and he fights the giref that rises again) he chuffs for his children, hoping that they had listened and hid away while the fighting had raged.

@Luther ♔ @Bruno ♔ @Yrsa

coding and art by dusk

He does not know the smell of death - not truly. He knows the smell of prey, and he knows the smell of wounds; god knows his parents had worn enough of them over the course of his six months of life. But this? It intrigued Luther, and when he notes the scent of both his parents he - naturally - imagines them both to be conscious when he moves to greet them.

Yet only one of them stood.

The relationship with his mother had been... tumultuous. Hardly the nurturing sort, but regardless.... The gravity of the situation was not entirely lost on Luther, but he did not quite know what to say, and so he would simply approach his mother's motionless flank and stare. She was... eerily still. If it hadn't been obvious before that something was wrong, it definitely was now. Then, after a long moment, he'd look to his sire. He'd never seen his father look so... Strange. Bereft. It was not an expression he was used to seeing on anyone, let alone a man like @Alaric. "What happened?"

COUNTING BODIES LIKE SHEEP

DON'T FRET PRECIOUS I'M HERE, STEP AWAY FROM THE WINDOW - GO BACK TO SLEEP - LAY YOUR HEAD DOWN CHILD, I WON'T LET THE BOOGEYMAN COME - COUNTING BODIES LIKE SHEEP TO THE RHYTHM OF THE WARDRUMS----

TW: grief, death
brief sum-up at the bottom.

Of course she hadn't listened to Vatta's insistence that they remain low and cautious in the humble hearth of the den, without Matta's warmth to comfort them. The yowling and thunder from the edges of the mire had echoed and swarmed her mind with terror, and she had found herself inching farther and farther from the cold left in her absence. After all, the Siggerns would look there first, for the smell of the royal family? Certain was she of this, coming time and time again to each mechanical sequence of horror, the grotesque images of what was to come.

It was only at some moment of epiphany that it occurred to her Matta and Vatta would discover she was gone, and they would fret terribly at her absence, that she crept back toward the den, one rock and rotten log at a time.

She is two logs, three trunks, and a pond stone away from the den when Vatta returns. At first, the hulking silhouette of he and the limp body of her mother appears only as a massive form sloughing through the swamp - a hideous monstrosity, a massive titan of lion-flesh or worse, and she flattens herself in the slick swamp-clay as low as she can. Weak, she knows, every fiber of her heart is thrumming, fight it! mangle it! foolish cub, you petulant mouse, undeserving of your name. But every fiber of her body is on edge, on end, furiously frightened, the tuft-line of her hackles high and thick, her little paws tensed and claws drawn, jaw rattling.

It's only when that goliath-shadow shifts and the smell of her mother and father comes riding the breeze that she slowly lifts.

But there is also the smell of blood, and others.

She waits just beyond the log and no further until the sound of her father's chuff carries over the thick, ruddied air.

But there is still something wrong. She can hear it in his voice.

Yrsa cannot find her tongue or teeth when she stumbles forward, muddied, tangled and smelling of algae - her face lights up when she confirms for herself that it is @Alaric. She beams, mewling a tune that is exhilarated and relieved, and when @Luther ♔ joins them she picks up her pace to greet him - ah! And Matta!

She stifles a squeak of pure euphoria to see that her suspicions were dashed, dotted with a silly what were you worried about, little mouse? as she pads and plods to her mother's sleeping form. What a grace! What wonder and faith she had and held and stammered in those dark places dreams dared not touch - to imagine Vatta or Matta tattered like prey, to imagine their sockets hollowed and empty like gazelle-skulls praying to the sun; to imagine some lurking Siggern wandering the swamp with their nose to the air, hunting babies to throw into the Big Water.

What greatness they are! She was bold to think of them now as kings of mountains, the slaughter-show that they must have proved! Those cries and wails of horror must surely have had been because of them, and she imagines Matta and Vatta batting off cruel forms of mutilated lions, back to back, one grins to another, a wink, and they bull through the awful army of daemon like gators treading black waters.

Yrsa is too pleased with her parents to even hear Luther's, What happened? Her heart is a bird caught in a cage beating against the rungs - her lungs swell and her chest flutters, she smothers a visceral squeal of revelation as she slips, trips, lumbers and takes care not to collide into her brother as she rushes Matta.

She is so tired, isn't she? But then again, why wouldn't she be? It must take great strength and energy to bat off that baby-drowning hoard one-by-one, to warn and ward each mottled, twisted face that pulled from the writhing shadows. Yrsa imagines that her lungs must be so spent, her muscles worn, and her fur is so warm and plush anyways, the cub knows how hot she gets whenever she runs around the murky swamp, sweating and panting and throwing herself on the stony ground. How easily she sleeps then.

Yrsa hums softly as she presses her skull against her mother's - how still and strange, she ponders, she must be really tired.

How cold she feels, though. Cold and unyielding, too much so than usual. Anyone's voice is a drone in her head when that bird is suddenly beating itself against the golden fence, thudding and thumping and sputtering and bloodying itself. And speaking of blood, when she pulls her cheek from her mother's skull it is sticky, and when she leans to smell it her nose wrinkles.

So tired.

The cub is seeking out that wardrum heart so urgently that she does not realize she's slipped and fallen thrice on the hard ground just getting to the place Erna's ribs meet her spine. She doesn't realize she's growling, breathless between the noise, pressing her little ear as hard against her mother's body. But inside she sounds empty, like the whorling space inside a log.

The little bird drops dead at the floor of its cage.

Her eyes raise franticly to Alaric - anyone else is naught but a blur on the edges of her sight - her ear still pressed hard against Erna's back, smothering her face in the blood-tangled brown furs.

So horribly tired.

She doesn't know how to cry. There's a lump that starts writhing in her chest and then it crawls up, up, her tiny throat. But it stops there, something caught between a scream and a sob, rolling there no matter how many times she tries to gulp it back down. Still she listens, she waits, refusing to be torn away, knowing that she'll hear it. She'll wake up. She'll kick Yrsa away and growl, weg von mir, kleines ding. And all the dreams that left Yrsa will then flood back into her like a wineskin, and Vatta will stop looking like that, and all will be alright again.

She doesn't know how to talk. Her violet eyes are staring at Vatta but her little mouth trembles and tightens. If she could talk she would only echo Luther's words, a useless addition, some wailing, weak whimper that would be a meager shadow of his princely voice. Suddenly her gaze is wild and blinded by fur and fury - she only sinks and sinks into the stone and Erna and won't stop until she is a part of both, never herself again.

German: Away from me, little thing.
TL;DR: Yrsa's burying her face in Erna's back, trying to listen for a heartbeat.

broken boy, how does it feel?
It had been perhaps the worst night of their lives, spent cowering and crying and fearing for things they could not yet understand. Bruno's sides cramped with what felt to be a permanent stitch, the muscles worn thin from shaking sobs of panic the boy had endured for so long. They could hear it all – that echo of carnage and agony, more horrifying than even the worst night terrors the prince had endured. Some part of him did not believe it would ever end, and while it was slow, the echo did quiet. Parties broke off from the frenzy and the shrieks of anger were replaced by lower-pitched howls of anguish. They eventually faded into haunting silence.

Bruno could not help the way he jolted to his paws at the sound of their father's approach. He scrambled to the mouth of the den, eyes wide as he stared up at the ivory lion with knitted brows as if searching for some kind of sanctuary in Alaric's matching set of jade. If he were any other son with any other father, he might have tried to hug him. If he had any favor, he might have asked what happened. If he felt deserving of information, he might ask what his father was thinking. But, he did not – he was only Bruno, a timid boy who tiptoed around his parents to avoid their ire.

When he was finished staring at Alaric, he dared to weave around him as Luther did. Bruno could only hear the loud ringing in his ears contrasted against stillness as he gazed upon their mother's crumpled form upon the ground with his siblings crowded around her, his expression pressed downward in harsh creases as he stared. He said nothing. He did not cry.

---

|| december y7 | four months | EM royalty | at ecrosia mire | @Alaric @Luther ♔ @Yrsa ||

_{BG — ART — CODE}

nothing ever went the way it was planned, did it? he had imagined a softer introduction to death, warning them of what they would see and why they would see it. perhaps it was better this way -- for the world was not a soft place and they had not been born in to a family that would bring them peace. there would be death yet to come, and so it was better they know it now. make death their friend so that when he comes they do not tremble or cry.

let them know him, so that they might greet him with fearlessness.

there are only two in the den -- two that emerge with almost identical expressions. it was what he had expected of @Luther ♔, but @Bruno ♔... bruno surprises him.

for a second he fears that @Yrsa is gone, that she has travelled too far from the den and been snatched by some ocean-loving heretic. the scene plays out so clearly behind his eyes as he blinks, seeing her tossed to the roaring waves, sinking to the depths and becoming no more than shark food.

relief, then, when she arrives, though his heart clenches painfully at the joyful squeaks. yrsa all but throws herself on her mother, and for a while he is frozen in his spot. watching her with an almost detached expression, as if he wished himself anywhere but here. as if he, too, could not bear to face the reality of this night.

"she's dead," he finally says, and moves to reach for yrsa, to pull her from the lifeless body and draw her to his chest. the boys he would welcome, too, but only if they sought his touch. "sie haben sie getötet." they killed her. there was no question who they were, was there?

but just in case...

his voice is harsh when he speaks again -- "this is what the sigrun do." venomous eyes trace over the lifeless body of his wife, feeling the swell of pain and grief that is accompanied by rage. "wir müssen stark sein." we must be strong he switches easily to his native tongue, a language he and erna had ensured the young ones would know. "starke," he repeats, emphasizing their name and the meaning behind it.

a paw reaches, tracing lightly over the drying fur of her closest leg. there were remnants of blood but she was mostly clean, and were it not for the jagged wounds on her neck (and elsewhere) she might very well have been sleeping. "für Sie. für uns." for her. for us.

COUNTING BODIES LIKE SHEEP

DON'T FRET PRECIOUS I'M HERE, STEP AWAY FROM THE WINDOW - GO BACK TO SLEEP - LAY YOUR HEAD DOWN CHILD, I WON'T LET THE BOOGEYMAN COME - COUNTING BODIES LIKE SHEEP TO THE RHYTHM OF THE WARDRUMS----

The sound grating on her ears is the wind through the swamps, the voices of her family, the trilling of the toads - all are muffled into seamless, wordless jumble that makes her yearn for them to instead be the drumbeat inside her mother's body. She wishes for them to be the pulse, the flutter, a breath; her ear is numbed by pressure and heat and yet she presses on, on because she must. Somewhere in there Erna is sleeping, curled in the hollow thing of her skins and Yrsa will find her, she will find her and bring her back and everything will be right.

Everything will be r i g h t.

And Matta will destroy the Siggerns and their awful foul spawn, so that none of this will ever happen again. They can live in peace, far from the Deep Water, not worrying of great salivating beasties to come roaming through the swamp seeking cubs to drown.

Everything will be right. But she will still not be weak. She will not cry.

The cold inside Erna is reaching to the warmth inside Yrsa and it is tangled in her, seeking every depth until she does not know where she ends and her Matta begins. And she is fine with that - let her become Matta, let her be her heartbeat. Let her be the great bear woman, scarred and furious, strong, stronger than anyone. Yrsa is curling her whole body in the crevice between Erna and the hard floor below when Vatta reaches for her.

But it is not Vatta. It can't be, in this place. There is only Erna and Yrsa, and the outside world is a numb blur of cold and pain - let her return to that emptiness she will find the warmth in. She does not hear she's dead crawling up her father's throat like retching needles. She doesn't hear the soft noises of her brothers or the awful sounds of the swamp. How could she? She is holding out for the pulse, the gasp of life, the disparage of her mother's voice, telling her to get away.

Something touches her and all she knows is that it does not belong in this place. She reels on her heels, sputtering and spitting, claws and teeth and anger, denial, seething contempt and a deep, wounded despair - she makes to bite a toe or two, clawing the bloodied dirt with her, tearing at the ground beneath her Matta she is being torn from.

Sie haben sie getötet. Madness! Is it what grips her now, pulling her from her mother's cold body? Is it them, they who killed her, who pulls her now? She struggles still, sprawled on the firm ground, caked in mud and radiant with fury, she pulls the distance between she and Erna with persistence beneath the paw that has her because They killed her is silly, inane, she's not dead. Any moment now and those cold, rolled eyes will blink. They are still hungry, still furious, Yrsa sees it and recognizes it.

This is what the sigrun do. The Siggerns. They were warned before. She heard their names in the den whisperings. The awful, wet, stinking, ruthless sea beasties with their mashing jaws frothing and furs matted, peeling - and ah! It is not the Siggern or death that pulls her but her Vatta; she finally looks to him then, little violet eyes round and cold and pining still with the reflection of Matta. But she stops fighting, stops gnawing toes and yields to the weight of his paw, curling under it.

The Siggerns. It's all she knows then. She looks to her mother's limp body coldly, distantly, her eyes in their doll-roundness hollowed with terrible things. I'll kill them. It rolls around in her chest, she clenches her jaw and clicks it, grinding her teeth.

For her. For us.

I'll kill them.

@Bruno ♔ @Alaric @Luther ♔

His siblings began to gather, as expected, and Luther would simply side-eye them both in steely silence as they converged on what would come to be one of the most uncomfortable experiences of his short life. While he hadn't felt a particularly strong bond with his mother, she had always been there. A constant; just like @Alaric, just like @Bruno ♔ and @Yrsa. He had never known a warm maternal touch, but it did not mean that he would not miss her - in his own way. So it was jarring when Father confirmed Erna to be dead. No more. That.... was it. He had no frame of reference for anything beyond this realm; even if he had been told of such, he would not believe it. And so, mentally coming to grips with the fact that he would never see his mother alive again, he rocked back on his haunches. It surprises him that the others do not start to cry. All he had known them to be thus far were.... weak. Or, at least, weak in comparison.

Luther would never cry, especially not for a woman like Erna.

Alaric starts to speak of the Sigrún - the family they warred with; the ones Luther already hated simply by association and by the reverence of his father's word. Ah, so they are the ones responsible? The young boy's lip began to curl, and as he straightens himself up - quick to rise to the occasion of the eldest son - he would fix his father with his full attention. It was easy to tear his gaze away from the body of his mother - it made him uncomfortable, for so many reasons. And then he would nod, expression as stoic as he could muster. His tongue felt like lead - for now, he could not find the words. And so he would simply rise to his paws and sit closer to his father's ankles. Not close enough to touch, but close enough to be there.

"Things will be different now," he murmured quietly, shifting his attention over to Yrsa and Bruno. "We will have to work harder." I will work you both harder.

broken boy, how does it feel?
"They killed her." Such a simple thing to say, so vague, and yet Bruno knew enough to understand. Whatever light they possessed in their world, the Sigrún's were the darkness that sought to take it away. Bruno laid his velvet ears back against his skull as he watched his sister's dramatics, and perhaps he envied her at that moment, turning rageful in her emotions. Bruno, in his youth, decided that this was the way of women. They could fly into madness with their emotions, tearing at others and themselves until their frenzy was complete and they had dragged everyone down to their own level.

He had never been allowed this, even by those very same women. Where they wailed, he was struck silent. His eyes began to sting with emotion, though whatever tears he was capable of had been used up in the terrors of that night, leaving him shriveled and dry. He found, that the thought that cut him most sharply, was that she had died disappointed in him. His mother had not lived long enough to like him, and she never would.

Without a word, the boy lowered himself to the ground so that he could lay at her side, the energy seeming to leave his body entirely. He could not see anything beyond that moment – no possibility of going on, dizzied by the scent of her and her blood.

---

@Alaric @Yrsa @Luther ♔

_{BG — ART — CODE}

a better father would have cooed to them, hushed them, chased away their fears. a better father would have tugged them close and forced them to his chest, soothing the ache that would inevitably grow. or, he thought as he looked to his eldest, perhaps not.

yrsa's violence is met with a steady paw, ignoring the scrapes carved in to his flesh by her teeth and claws. they are small, miniscule in the shadow of the gnawing agony in his chest, the empty place where his heart had once beat for her.

the lump rises hard in his throat as he looks to her lifeless body once more, a deep and painful ache that forces him to wrench his gaze away. she was his best friend, his closest confident, and so, so much more. without erna...

shaking his head he felt the small form of his daughter go still and slipped in to the role of the doting father for at least a second, lowering to clear the mess from her face. luther at his side and bruno by his mother and alaric knew it would do them no good to linger.

"come," he commanded, then, "let us give her body back to the earth." it was time to bury her, and the wheat king had no intention of straying far from their home to do so.

rising, he ensured @Yrsa was steady and looked quickly to @Luther ♔, trusting the boy would follow suit. for @Bruno ♔ a light brush of his nose across the boy's head, urging him to place the emotions aside for the moment.

"starke," he murmured again, his voice firm and bordering on commanding. strong, they must be strong.

alaric would then seek to gather his wife's body before leading his small children away from the den, to find a place where they could lay her to rest.

-exit w/cubbers?-

COUNTING BODIES LIKE SHEEP

DON'T FRET PRECIOUS I'M HERE, STEP AWAY FROM THE WINDOW - GO BACK TO SLEEP - LAY YOUR HEAD DOWN CHILD, I WON'T LET THE BOOGEYMAN COME - COUNTING BODIES LIKE SHEEP TO THE RHYTHM OF THE WARDRUMS----

The stalwart force of her brother pulls her briefly from the sight of Matta. Her eyes daring not well with water, but a rage, uncontested, that grow when his voice pervades that soft space. Barbs, lecherous and deviant, crown the gnarling spaces about her heart; what tenderness of a cub should be, writhes with a hardening faction of blistered woe. We will work harder, he says, the leader always, the monger, the brute. And when something cruel flickers in his eyes, those wrangling thorns around her heart cut deeper.

She wants to wrench. Gnaw. Rip. She knows this only - the rites of love, she l o v e s @Luther ♔, and she knows he loves her, and this is the way it must be. Harder, he says. She wants to shove his face into the mud curdled by their mother's blood, and that bird-heart cocoon trembles inside itself to think what a dastard thing that must be to do. Is that love? It wouldn't matter, Luther would bull her instead, and she would let him. That is love.

Instead, she begins to grind her teeth and looks back to Erna with a longing so deep it feels like hell.

@Bruno ♔ moves to her side - and oh! She longs to join him again, may they both bury themselves in her skin, make her spirit, her fury, her warmth. But instead she narrows her eyes upon him and clacks her teeth beneath the rumble of @Alaric. Let us give her body back to the earth. Ohhhhh, but she writhes at that - grinds her teeth even harder as her blood boils and her heart thunders; she cannot be given to the earth. She will come back, she will wake and return to her terror, her rage, her great gifted beauty in undeathly reprise!

Yrsa's little claws dug deep against the muddy slate as she snarled, placated briefly by her father's reminder. Starke. Her lungs swell with it. And, kicking the hard dirt below her back feet, she takes off into the dark of the mire, back to the den. But the rest of her, her soul, her coldness, the winter of Rike buried too deeply in her heart to be wrenched from it, too rips from the canvas of her mother and paints Amaryllis in its promise.

exit.