The winds of the north know no home. There is only cold, constant, the bitter drive of a steely blade on through withering tundra. That which wraps its bite in the frigid heart are the same - it follows the star, the wave, the whisper of comforts and the promise of power. The world breaks for the howl of gales. The ice shatters, the heavens pull, and born from the death of winter is wisdom, perseverance, and the sheer heat of ferocity.

By the time Yrsa reaches the tangled barb lining of the Ecrosian Mire, the ice had melted from her furs. Their glaciers formed rivulets through the wheaten plush, cleared the softness from her stony brow. Fettered hairs, gilded with the last touches of frost, frayed and slicked in their hollow corners, the whipped curves of her musculature. Cut, bruised, but hardly worse for wear - her chest is full of all things unsaid and undone, those wills long kept tucked behind temperance and cool ambition.

Something cruel is made where once the babe knew a warmth, as if winter has buried itself in her bones the way she once wished she could bury herself in her mother's battered body.

There was hesitance stead before the border, a moment where she drew all those things deeper inside of herself so as they could not be lost - not be thawed in the humid treachers of the swamp, pulled away by the silt and sludge. A breath, a sigh, a glimmer of something left untouched, and she turned her back to the glacial places of which she found comfort, serenity, affinity. Their dreamt spires wasted to rivers in the mind's eye, icy caverns grown now by verdant ivy, tangled in sphagnum and rot. On to the dark reaches wherein lurching memories rose like soggen beasts creeping from the murk.

Yrsa, engrossed in the dreamstate of hunger and quelled murmurings of warrish rage, groping lunges of sorrow and resentment, made not for the solemn cozy of the den. Bearish, undivine, uncivilized, (should not the princess first greet the smiles of aristocracy upon returning to her palace?) she made for the food cache with disgruntled lopes, hardly graceful, hardly suave.

@Alaric

he had looked for her.

of course he had -- the bear cub was precious to him in a way that he would never admit, but that burned eternal in the charred remains of his heart. a reminder of the fierce mother he had loved so deeply, a passion that had consumed in a way so vastly different to any else. alaric had known two great loves in amaryllis, and he had buried two great loves.

he had looked for her, but when he found no sign of death, no broken body or trail of blood, he had been forced to trust. believe that she would be well and she would return; if he did not rely on such faith then he might have gone mad with his searching.

when her scent trickled through the mire once more he wasted no time, sliding from his den (and his cozied up children) and tracking his firstborn daughter through the muck and mud. alaric does not pause to pick the best paths and instead stomps almost bullishly across the pridelands, splattering aforementioned mud up pale legs and caring little for how he looked when he came upon her.

dirtied and drawn he does not pause, breaking through the undergrowth to invade her space, pressing in to and seeking to draw her against his chest. "yrsa." an embrace marked by his relief, uncaring if his display is uncharacteristic and not stopping to think that it may not be welcome -- his daughter was home and he was happy.

coding and art by dusk

Yrsa had made her decision by whim and ambition. Perhaps a little bit of angst. But overall, she had done so with a single intention: to die, or to survive the harsh of the world, unguided by the soft hand of royalty or the otherwise thrall of politics. The tundra cold had not cared for such trivialities, no room for crown, etiquette, or mercy.

Here in the heat of the jungle swamps, the cold lived on in her bones.

They ached pleasantly, that anguish of living, the peeling from wintry dead; returning to the land of the living from the touch of chilled cavern tombs, icy mountain mausoleums. Though the bog is a dark verdant garden of perils and toxia, it will never hold a candle.

But it is h o m e, isn't it?

Home is where the cache is.

So she pried through the givings, ravenous, famished, pulling skin and meat and bone from the scraps left, a-ripping and a-flaying. She engrossed herself in the flavor and the satiation, the explosion of texture, savoring, grateful, that it was not another scavenged, frozen over cadaver left to ribbons by mountain beasts.

Serenitous, that is, until something full and hard crashes against her, and she is blown aside -- and swept into groping arms. She fussed, snarling, a liver clenched between her teeth, claws dug into leaf and bone and dust because they could not grapple flesh. A yowl, a howl, until her name is laid with all the tenderness of love that she could never deserve; Yrsa.

She relented, pooling into a mass of bloodied furs and silence, accepting the embrace of her father. The cold of the barbaric north seeped meekly from her body, replaced with softness, adoration, leeching the unconditional love of a jovial @Alaric. {Vater...} she sighed, and her heart drummed a soft, silent, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry--- But none heard, none slipped past the hard line of her lips, because -- she wasn't sorry. She had risked the wilds alone, and she was made harder by it.

{I had to know,} she forced, stuffing the knot in her throat beneath pained, muffled gulps, refusing to fracture even in the slightest. {-to know I could.} The bear's brow knitted, her violet eyes lidded to glacial sheets, feralty still alive and rampant.

this world is dying in our arms

the retaliation is fierce and swift, spitting teeth and sharp claws. alaric bears the brunt of it, uncaring if either finds flesh, oblivious to any wound that might rise from her scuffle. nor does the starke king retreat, clinging almost desperately to the blood of his first, holding her tight until, finally, she relents. recognition births softness and he can feel the ice melt as he buries his face in to her thick fur so like that of her mother. @Yrsa gives reason for her absence and it is nothing more than he had excected. "you are your mother's daughter," he rumbled, and it is drenched in tones of admiration. a compliment if she chose to take it that way, for erna was nothing if not a survivor. eventually, reluctantly, he pulls back enough to lay sight on her face, to rove across the youthful flesh and fur and seek any sign of harm that might have come to her. there are signs of her struggle but they go hand in hand with the clarity of her success. "she would be as proud as i am." even as he says the words he knows they are not entirely true. erna might have felt some measure of respect for her children, perhaps even the pride that he speaks of, but he knew damn well she would not have given it easily. was he failing the memory of her, then? for being so wretchedly soft? alaric had done well to teach them to fight, to hold their own, to defend themselves and those they love. but he has given them kindness, too, and words of affirmation when he witnesses their achievements. he gives them easily to her now, along with a twitch of his lips that could almost be considered a smile, the first since he had returned with his youngest in tow..

code // art

You are your mother's daughter. What a cut, a rue! To wear the bulk of her mother's furs and fury, and yet to never know the pith of her soul, those last scraping moments wherein her breaths stilled and the winter found her waiting. By a Sigrun. By the awful wretches of the ocean-spit, their ruthless war and greedy thirsts slaked on the idol that had been Erna, undeserving of their claws.

Was Yrsa also undeserving?

She fastened her claws subconsciously on the grip of his arm, unaware and unabashed if it drew blood. She would be as proud of you as I am. Deeper then. Burying their sharpness in fur, fiber, future. A growl rolled and roiled in the pit of her throat unbidden and she smothered her face into the thickness of her father's mane. {No.} she gruffed, muffled by the tangle of plush. No she wouldn't. Yrsa was still a worthless whelp, even if the winter had not devoured her for her impudence.

Soft, win-less, loathsome creature of a rage she could never understand.

Yrsa pushed herself wildly from @Alaric's embrace and ripped into the hides of the cache, tearing and shredding meat, furs, bloodying the fine marbled coat of her own, tainting rotting flesh without even a taste. But it felt good, she learned. Of all things that were supposed to feel good, gnashing and tearing and mangling the bulk of things had always provided her the serotoninous high nothing else would ever provide.

this world is dying in our arms

"Oh," he says as she sinks in her claws, bloodying his fur. The King does not jerk from the touch, nor shy from her grip. He does not flinch when she whirls away and rains fury down on the stock of the Mire. Instead he watches. With a calculating eye, in silence, he watches. Claws and teeth and angry snarls, laying waste to all that they had carefully collected. There would be consequences for that, and surely he would task her with regaining what has now been lost, but in the moment he does not seek to correct her. Alaric watches, and thinks of the thick-furred woman who had once owned his heart. Reminded of her rage, her beautiful fury, and how perfectly deadly she had been. There is no doubt in his mind that Erna would be proud of the weapon she had become. One word spills from his lips when eventually she would slow. -- "Yes." Whether @Yrsa wanted to hear it or not she was her mother's daughter, and Alaric was cruel enough to not let her forget..

code // art

There is no occurrence to Yrsa of replacing what she ruins. There is never a moment that she stops to contemplate the chaos she brews, the dastard destruction that lay in her wake - she is a torrent, a whirlwind, a griping spriggan consumed of all her hatred, wrath, the death of softness.

The winter has eaten away all of her softness. What is left is stone. Hard, jagged edges, solid and cruel.

Her teeth gnash bone and claws render flesh, and oh the sweetness - oh the comfort of it; cleaving, shredding, biting, ripping. There is a yearning to stuff the void within her with a learned violence, and it only takes and takes and takes.

Even when she stops, breathless and huffing, her body wracked with sobless grief, the yes seeks her warmth and finds only cold. She turned to him unabashed, unafraid, even knowing that what her passion has wrought will only bring more labor. So be it. Yrsa scowled, wrapped her face with bloodied paws, reveled in the metal, the soot, the musk of hide, pulled the skin of her cheeks with the roughness of her palms.

And she shook her head slowly, sitting amongst the wreckage, the beautiful carnality of split ribs, severed guts, mutilated carrion.

{There is...} she struggled for words with the terseness of her voice and the pandemonium of her mind, her violet eyes swelled with the beauty of the raze. Emptiness, want, fury. A huff and she flicked a bone back to the cache pile, feeling exasperated. {I will be worth.} Worth pride, worth blood, worth steel. She looked back to @Alaric, earnest, far from ungrateful, but so maddened with a chaos she could not sate. {Promise.}

She would be worthy of winter.

this world is dying in our arms

She is beautiful in her destruction. Alaric sees it and imagines a future stretching before his bear cub that is marked with ruin. Were she any other than Erna's daughter he would have worried for her -- as it is he feels only pride. Claws and teeth lay waste and he can easily picture her enemies falling before her; he knows, then, that she is capable of keeping herself safe. Alive. Saga is dead, Erna is dead, but @Yrsa will live. "Ja," he says again, in the tongue of their families. Starke and Rike brought together in beautiful chaos. "Ja, you will." You are he might have said, if he thought she would accept it. But no, there was growing yet to do and much yet to learn -- so all he can say, now, is: "so let us begin." Stage two of their training would begin now, if she accepted it. Alaric had much, much more to give..

code // art

Ja. Confidence, it doesn't leak into his voice as much as it fills it like a wineskin, full and brim and blushed with assurance. You will. She should be comforted by it like she is his warm embrace, soothed and given into the only softness she could never understand. She should be grateful for it, that undeserved surety that he gives her without question, judgment. He has seen her at her worst, but he may never see her at her best - and this is what she carries with her like the heaviest of stones.

Her face twitched still with the remnant cruelty of her ill confidence, wrath, uncontrollable eternal-pent rage. That engrained snarl festering at its sharp edges, the wild-eyed catch of her violet snagged on bloodshot restlessness.

So let us begin.

If anything, the pain that statement promised was ever more comforting. Knowing that she would have to pour her spirit into the labor of being ready, being lethal. She nodded to @Alaric, solemn and hopeful, bathed thick in mud and gore, swatted a piece of hide back into the cache, and readied herself for what was to come.

exit.

this world is dying in our arms

There was a sense of instability around his eldest daughter. A current in the air that made him believe she was capable of exploding at any given moment. Uncontrollable rage was not conducive to keeping the Mire in good standing, leading Alaric to regard her with a slight wariness. If she followed too intently along the path of her mother.... well, the training would simply have to ramp up. For now they would start at the beginning, and as swatted a piece of tattered hide back in to the cache his attention was settled there. "First you will repair what you have ruined." His voice leaves no room for argument, and without anything more said he rose and set off, making it clear that he intended for her to follow. -exit-.

code // art