Caerus (almost)

[Thalia]

“Yes, that's right. There are so many names. It's hard to remember.” The words issued blandly, her expression captivated by concentration while the thoughts still hovered by the surface. “She answered all the same.”

The kin shifted, moving the patterns of his skin from view. Nim's gaze rose to the watching wolf revealed beyond his shoulder. The weight of her emotions dropped like a pebble into the depths, and Nim dropped with it. She sat on the rocks below. Her legs outstretched, watching the ice creep stiffly into the fabric across her thighs. Peeked from the ends, blood streaked her ankles where the rocks tore her feet as she'd scrambled from the water.

She hated the reminder of old things, a past that rushed in waves. Apologies barely rippled the surface no matter how honestly she offered them. How could she feel guilt for things she could not remember? How could she atone when these hands were not the bloody ones? “I know. Sin weights my shoulders. It stains me from another time, before you or I. Your friend remembers. I do not.”

The name suited the old one. She was not afraid of the bite, and perhaps one day the softness of her nature would welcome it, if she thought it would salve ancient wounds. Her gaze tugged up with the lowness of a growl. He towered like the highest cliff, but it was hurt rather than fear that pinched her brow. “The answer is here. I cannot leave even if you wish it.”

[Tristan]

Villainy transferred; a poisonous gas choking out life wherever it went. The scent hovered the girl, but it did not originate from her. Something else swirled beneath, a current so swift it might chase the mind into oblivion. He dared not touch its depths, but neither could he ignore the former either.

She was bleeding.

He knelt at her feet. Water cupped by his palms he upturned over the wound, washing away the blood and pressing a thumb to the cut, stemming the flow of more. No more innocent blood to be shed. “And what is the question?” he asked, heart beating monstrous strength in his chest, urging her toward plainness.

[Thalia]

Waters swirled and eddied, churned with mud. Thorns and blood and a tune that haunted, puppet strings lost in darkness. A father’s love. Nimeda itched to flee, like she had when the wolf chased her away, until the storm passed and her identity settled. She pressed the heels of her hands over her stinging eyes and yearned for kinder times. Warm waters soothed a soul meant for the sun. But how often she found the cool hallows of the dark places instead.

Pain nailed her back with a sudden start. “My name is Nimeda.” The gasp of a declaration centred her as surely as the throb up her ankle. She blinked like the time had passed unnoticed, to discover the rough pad of his thumb pressed against the wound on her foot. She wasn’t sure of when he had knelt, or why he felt the necessity to tend to such a paltry injury, not least when moments before his lip curled as vicious a greeting as his wolf.

The question lingered. For a moment she watched the pink blush of her blood draining into the trickling waters. “One of Need,” she said finally. The deflation of her mood treaded upon calmer waters, the joyous rush of her epiphany long since faded. Her chin sank on her knees, arms wrapped around. Ice curled her hair unnoticed. “It wasn’t always so quiet here. Old things wake and new things stir, but it’s slow. I like to keep the friends I find. They number few.” Brief consideration furrowed her brow into pained honesty. She had tried her best to help Calvin, and he had helped her in kind. But perhaps it was only a debt owed. She watched him from time to time, but he did not seek her in return. And Jon? He had been gone a long time, even in the inbetween place. “Well, one. They number one.”

Mara’s tower loomed, the story blended with the memory of her confession. One paint flecked finger rose as Nim tried to squeeze her thoughts into a more linear fashion. The kin had his own resonance if she let herself focus the wrong direction. She closed her eyes. “She is held against her will, in the waking world. But I am stuck here. The grimnir visits me from time to time, but I know his help will have a price. I asked for a secret, and the grey lady answered. She brought me here.” A gentle shrug followed, like the effort of plucking even that much toiled.

[Tristan]

So many words.

Nimeda spoke in riddles, and anxiety twitched his ears impatient. It was not her words that held him enthralled, however. It was her scent. Whimsy trickled away and in its place seeped a stern focus and joy stolen.

With her feet tended, the scent of blood faded. He knelt alongside Nimeda, nose coming nearer as though the proximity would translate his confusion. Instead, his eyes brandished the sunlight so rarely bright along the northern arc of the world. Nostrils flared. The enormity of her friend’s confinement constricted chains digging into his ribs.

“The Hildufólk are wise.” He slipped hands into hers, lifting the twig of a girl to her wobbly feet. First, dry, solid land would serve them well. One step. Two. The next he was opening the door to the home beyond the Trollstone. It’s gleaming twists glared and glinted the thin light, as disapproving of the union between Tristan and Nimeda as Thorn Paw. Within, Tristan found towels to wrap her wounds. When he pulled them away, the skin was smooth beneath. He dabbed his own shoulders next. 

Thorn Paw watched from the door but did not enter the abode of two-legs.

“I am Tristan, Nimeda. The Otherworld is a strange place, and I have run from one shore to the other, leaping to new ones, but you are the first woman I have seen here. Tell me how to find your friend and I will break her chains.”

[Thalia]

The kin loomed close, and a memory trickled from somewhere deep, of the mastiffs that ran alongside the wagons -- though their curiosity had always been a thing of cold noses, slimy licks, and wagging tails. He just looked at her like she was something strange, alert and wary but unafraid. No smile punctured the sternness of his expression, and yet amusement sprung all the same to hers. She laughed, more welcoming of scrutiny than hostility. “I promise I won’t bite, either.”

Nim didn’t resist the pull and ripple of the world around them as he heaved her to her feet, though she did twist to glare at the tall stone as it blurred past. All those words wasted every time she visited, and not once did the dead creature within stir long enough to point her in the right direction. But the irritation pierced and faded, fast as a scything fin, as the home she had explored before came into focus. The wolf lingered in the entranceway behind. Her attention flooded to new things.

Such as the way he did some things the quick way, like pulling her from the water’s edge to the red-door, but others he did slow, like draping towels. There was something rhythmic in it, like the perfect pitch of a babbling brook in Springtime, and such small things always amused her to observe. The process of getting dry rather than willing it true -- or simply forgetting to feel the sodden weight of cloth and hair and the clammy chill of cold skin, as was her usual proclivity -- was a game of its own. She rarely bothered with such distractions when she was alone, but she was nearly always content to flow into the channel dug by another.

His attentions both bemused and mystified her, though she didn’t seem to notice the wounds had gone. Afterwards Nim blotted her hair, the crunch of ice from curls and braids sinking frozen trails down her back that made her shiver. She used the same towel to squeeze the worst from her dress, and laughed. “Tristan, if you ran through our world as you just passed the threshold, like your very heels are afire, then are you really surprised to have seen no one?”

Nimeda had been into the cottage before, though only once. Its shifting contents elucidated little at the time, but curiosity stirred anew given this time she was invited. She shook out a blanket and swaddled it over her shoulders, pooling ripples of warm wool over the tops of her feet. Beneath the covering she wriggled from the dress until it slapped to the floor, and set it to dry with the towels. Everything still shifted, but it did so differently with Tristan in the cottage. It was still rustic living, but it wasn’t that which struck her. Her hand peeked to run over a pile of books, head tilted to seek titles before they vanished under her touch. “Why do you live alone?”

She glanced back at the wolf and then up at the dark tomb beyond, her expression fluttering with something that seemed to disturb her. Thorn Paw’s ears flattened, which could mean everything or nothing as far as Nim knew, but the words she had been about to speak sank deep all the same. The frown softened, if not the furrow of consideration. She turned to the hearth instead, sat nestled in the folds of the blanket, and willed the twist and sizzle of flame into focus. An unnecessary but fitting indulgence. And cheating her own rules, though she found she didn’t mind, even when the sudden temperature change prompted a thousand needles to pierce her numb skin.

She hadn’t in fact asked Mara where she was held; too much information shared too quickly would likely only sink into oblivion. Her steps were slower by design. But she realised then that she did know, because there had been a reason she had called her friend the day she had discovered her prison. A reason she had quite forgotten about until now. Nim’s eyes widened with the epiphany, on the tip of fleeing to check that starry place where she watched the dreams of her Other’s sister, of late plagued by the nibbles of Mara’s pets, but the growl of Tristan’s promise stole the focus of her attention. It reverberated like the resonance that tickled her sense of him, as steady and true as a thousand lives blended to one.

“She’s in Moscow.” The declaration seemed of surprise to even her with its certainty. Such hard won treasures dredged from the depths of her memory were prized possessions, sparkling her eyes with pleasure, and yet delight was soon dampened with frustration when she realised she could not offer any more. “The rest I am still working on.” Details were such small, fiddly things, and sometimes fishing for them only made them more slippery. Bare white corridors haunted the dreams of her sister sometimes. Before the little shadows began their feasting, she had dreamed of work often enough. The thought drifted so close, until something else occurred. Nim rarely grew annoyed with her own limitations, but this time admitting it had shamed her.

She sighed, and watched Tristan instead of the inside of her own eyelids. Fascination poured unabashed on those she met in her wanderings, moreso when memory too distant to reach crashed against the base of her skull. But it was something he’d said that had disturbed the waters of her thoughts with a curious question of her own. "The Hildufólk are wise,” she repeated. “She told me a river knows no hurry, for it still reaches its destination. What did she tell you?"

---

Thorn Paw padded up the slope, blatantly ignoring the twisted one’s sneer into the sky. No interest stirred in Wyldfyre’s human den, but he placed himself quite purposefully between the doorway and the twisted one behind. The old wolf lowered himself slowly, resting his muzzle between his paws. Resignation puffed a sigh from his great chest, lest Wyldfyre forget his own feelings on this diversion, but he did not otherwise interfere, beyond to share the things he knew.

The wolf dream is home to many things, Wyldefyre. I am old. My soul awaits the time it will open new eyes to your world. When it does, I will be me, but cast anew, and only my memory will live on in my pups and my pack. She is a thing that exists here always, and she has no pack to carry the memories for her. She must carry them herself, whether she wills it or not. Perhaps that is why she forgets. I do not know.

It was a great irony that the forgotten one seemed to perceive that this was no home fit for a wolf, given how often the pup returned to this barren place to stare at the stone -- and he of the kin, not she. The twisted one had kept him too long from his birthright, Thorn Paw knew that. Chains as sure as the ones burning resolution in the pup’s chest now, but he was not sure his brother acknowledged them as such. His feelings on that were always a complicated scent, too human to unpick. Thorn Paw’s ears pinned back, irritated.

He watched them for a time, but soon grew bored enough to close his eyes. At least until Wyldfyre’s promise earned a low growl of disapproval.

You have a strong heart, brother. I am proud! But pack must come first. Two-legs take our dens, kill our pups, and string our brothers and sisters’ corpses about their shoulders. Madness steals our kin, or two-legs come with their steel claws and take them from us. Her toils are not ours. Let another break these chains. The Destroyer comes, and we will be the shield, brother. But we must be strong first!

[Tristan]

Her shifted scents were a relief. Nimeda’s emotions swayed from one extreme to another; neither did Tristan fare well on the heaving decks of arctic ships. Steady, the spirit pleaded with a voice only Thorn Paw would hear. Her question puzzled, and he contemplated an answer. “I have seen Thorn Paw,” he glanced over one shoulder. The wolf lounged, lifting its head now and then to study him discriminatively. Tristan dismissed his scrutiny with the wave of a hand. “Rather, Thorn Paw found me. Maybe because he was the only one swift enough to catch me on the run,” humor rumbled his chest, knocking loose the strain that bound him tense.

He thought back to the days – nights rather – running wild. Tundra to grass; glaciers to beach. Iceland was sparsely populated in the Solid World. Here in the Otherworld, it was abandoned. “The land we walk is called Ice Land,” he said, uncertain if she would recognize the name. To that humorous point, Nimeda’s hair melted of its shards. Tristan’s chest dripped fresh water as his beard did the same. “Few live here. Perhaps that is why the Huldufólk favor it so well. The Hidden ones are wise.”

There was another race that populated the land of ice: the giants of frosty myth that some called Trolls. The sun is their demise. What better a place to reside than a part of the earth where the sun is weakest. If Antarctica was even slightly habitable, Tristan would assume they conquered it also.

Legends of frosty giants wove like deadly fingers throughout the Nordic lands. Certainly their ancestors were enormous, a trait of necessity that bred strength throughout the Viking race. Trolls, however, were nearly immune to the cold; the heat of the sun entombing them into the famous ballast stones that stood sentry around the island. Tristan knew the blood coursed his veins, Úlfar was troll; but his father, Rurik, his father was wolf. An anomaly? Or was it fate? Were the races of troll and wolf entwined throughout his ancestry? Had some long ago forefather, born of the Land of Frosty Giants, sire sons of wolf and troll-blood as had Grímur sired Úlfar and Rurik? Questions Tristan would never reconcile, though he believed there was purpose to all these conditions. As Thorn Paw pressed, the breaker of chains he was, monstrous enemy to those that meant them harm. He should focus on his own kind.

The fire blazed with Nimeda’s glance. Tristan warmed his own fingers, wondering why he hadn’t thought to do that previously. Yet she huddled under a blanket for more warmth, and Tristan joined her. Well, he sat alongside her at least, shoulder to blanketed-shoulder. “I lived here alone in the Solid world,” he said thoughtfully, orange dancing in the gold of his unblinking gaze. His voice trailed a moment before glancing at Nimeda’s cheek and ruefully smiling at her, “mostly because no sane would want to live here with me. Especially a pretty girl.”

The humor was light-hearted, nary intense or suggestive. A chuckle followed, “you live here alone: completely alone. Girl who has one friend,” he said. Thorn Paw warned him against her oddities, but Tristan was himself a walking peculiarity – at least in the eyes of his neighbors. “My ancestors resided here. Our roots delve deep. The Trollstone beyond is my grandfa— uncle,” he said, correcting himself. “The hidden one told me something too,” he added, returning his line of sight to the dancing hearth.

He spoke her prophecy to none, not even the living statue of his uncle. It felt a betrayal to her confidence, but Nimeda’s innocent curiosity soothed the ache that silenced the tongue. He whispered as though hearing it for the first time. “She said, ‘Stop running in the dream and you will be found. Look to far shores and you will find your true family. Return to the beginning and the end will finally arrive.’””

He glanced at her to read her reaction. Thorn Paw long ago ceased listening. The wolf was asleep, as much as one slept in the Otherworld. “Who is the Grimnir?” he asked on the heels of Moscow.

A city.

An enormous city. Reykjavík pounded his heart, but Moscow was someplace he could not go.
“I don’t know if I can go to Moscow,” he said, throat tight. “There are so many people. How would we even begin to find your one friend in such a city?”

[Thalia]

It was strangely novel how the blood rushed to rediscover limbs. Heat prickled and swelled until a wiggle of toes confirmed they still took residence at the end of her feet. Contentedness drifted, lulled by fire and the words that curled in her ears. Tristan’s voice was deep as tumbling rocks. She smiled at his description of his first meeting with Thorn Paw, gratified to find humour sprouting new shoots through his serious manner. Nim was fond of stories, and her imagination painted rich pictures even from sparse details. The flames danced to the shapes, indistinct at first. She barely realised she was doing it.

“But you live by the water,” she said skeptically. The puzzlement was genuine. Maybe she had no true concept of what it might be like to live in this place in the Other world, but here she saw it only as a place swept by vast beauty. Nature’s hand carved roots far deeper than man’s cities, and perhaps it felt more real to her than the shifting nature of inside places such as the cottage. The majesty of the fjords were enough on their own. But then Nim had no need of a home. “I suspect you just never asked anyone.” Her eyes narrowed and she smiled with the tease, though she meant it solemnly. Her expression sobered a moment later.

“I am alone, yes,” she agreed, surprised. Pain flared, but the stone dropped deep into the murk. She never remembered much from the times between her rebirth into the waking world, for such eons stretched her adrift without an anchor, but when the gifts that brought people to this world slept quietly -- and they had, for a long time -- then, she had been truly alone. It stirred something in her she did not let fully rouse, aware the dissonance might fray her control. She had always been a social creature, a constant of her soul, and so the connections she made were always important things to her. Somewhere deep, she understood it was the very same quality that led her readily to the dark places if it meant the prize of acceptance when all else shunned. Knowing that flaw never changed the need, despite the consequences. “But I would not choose it.”

She shrugged, though the emotions ran far deeper than such a casual gesture, and leaned to listen further with no more thought on it. Moments were lived one step at a time, and his company for now washed away consideration of the time to follow after he left, or the time that would also one day follow when none but wolves walked the dream again. “Your uncle is very rude, but there is a reason trolls are better suited to their own company. I’ve asked him many times for his help, but he never answered. And he could, if he wanted.” She didn’t turn to look at the pillar, instead captivated by something else.

”He's why you come back,” she observed. Nim understood well enough that even bad love was still love, and acceptance rather than accusation cradled the words. What Tristan's uncle had been in life made little difference to her, nor the disharmonious blend of wolf and troll that tangled his past. She doubted Thorn Paw felt the same way about the attachment, and yet the bonds between them still led the wolf here to watch and protect. Nim shifted enough to free one arm. She did not worry much about modesty, but the blanket was large, and the thick tangles of her hair drowned beyond her slim shoulders anyway. “Maybe you have different blood, but in here you are wolf,” she said, her warm palm splayed briefly across his chest. Whatever else Nim was or had ever been, her nature attuned quietly to conflict. It drew her like a siren's call to offer comfort. Tristan was not lost. But he was still learning. Words came without thought, simple and earnest.

He was sat close anyway, but she leaned rapt into the whisper. The cadence alone swept her along, like the rustle of leaves and ancient wind. She could almost feel the grey lady’s breath ushering power into the words. Nim’s head tilted, gaze wide with the enchantment of such secrecy as he peered down for her reaction. The depth of her curiosity was unfeigned and unhidden; her lips parted as though she would repeat the words to herself, but what whispered out was only, “Which beginning?” It wasn’t a question she expected him to answer. She saw things, sometimes; flutterings. “For an ending certainly comes.”

She blinked as another question pierced. Everything clouded.

“Oh,” she said. A frown pressed; the channel of her mind changed slowly. “Grim is a visitor from time to time. He does not share his own name, so I chose one for him, like Jon chose mine. I don’t think he likes me very much, but he enjoys the peace of the river. I know he travels. I know he could go to Moscow. But I don't know why he would help me.” Offending him had probably not helped, though she was not certain how she had done so, beyond his unfavourable reaction to her touch.

“I’m not fond of the city. Old memories swarm like ghosts there. Someone I loved very much, a long time ago. And feared in equal measure, I think.” An arch reared in the fire's heart. And other vague images she paid no mind to, for she was still watching the kin. The flames reflected the gold discs of his eyes. “I would not make you go, Tristan,” she said softly. The desperation of her cause did not urge her to reach for the gifts that might work the manipulation into him, until the idea was indistinguishable from his own. It sat in her chest like a second heartbeat, that light, but she rarely reached for it. She had offered to smooth the past's ills enough times to understand the recoil in others suggested what she offered so solemnly was considered more curse than boon.

She swallowed the disappointment. Her gaze finally broke to watch the fire, sure of something she had missed.

[Tristan]

Which beginning? “For an ending certainly comes…” he murmured. Nimeda’s motions were subtle, her modesty less so, but Tristan forced himself to stare into the fire, except for the fleeting moment when her palm pressed to his heart, and he was sure she would feel it pounding within.

“I don’t know, Nimeda,” he said just as reverently. He was slowly coming to accept the connection to wolf, but he was not sure if the Trolls were the ultimate, dire enemy that his nose told him they were. He thought back to the buzzing hive of noise in the Nordic forests in the Solid World, where something wandering the trees disturbed the wolves greatly.

Nimeda’s forlorn voice wrapped his chest like uncomfortable chains. “Nobody will help us except ourselves,” he said more certain than he was sure to sound. “Your friend Grimnir. My uncle. Thorn Paw is wolf, but he can only show me the trails, but I must trod the paths.” He shook his head.

He wasn’t barbaric despite his appearance. He watched the internet, he knew what Moscow was. He knew who Ascendancy was, and supposedly the Icelandic flag remained autonomous from the Custody, which was why it was so difficult for him to gain entrance to the eastern continent. The sprawl, the congestion, the exhaust and claustrophobia made his skin crawl, but could he really deny a plea for help for such feeble reasons as fear?

A low growl rumbled his throat, one of irritation at his own decisiveness and one that knew the future would be painful, yet he would walk those paths anyway. “Can you show me? I don't know how I can help. In the Solid World, I am far away from Moscow, but I will try. I swear I will try.” He stood, offering a hand to help her rise, and trying not to look at the creamy skin hidden beneath the blanket as he did. “Love and fear are tied together. I understand your hesitation. I will stay with you, but you must stay with me too.”

[Thalia]

“Cities might stand for a thousand years, but nature still reclaims her loan in the end. In every end. Though sometimes she needs a little help.” The disappointment was short lived. Little dampened Nimeda for long, and while patience might not be a virtue she would crown herself with, she was nonetheless accustomed to the winding paths of her own nature. New company contented her in the meantime. Eventually something would surface. “Things shift in here because they are ephemera. The cities are like that too.”

She watched the fire and let herself drift, curiously examining his words. The truth he spoke was accepted easily enough, though it seemed strange advice from one of the kin. “If someone could show me the paths I would follow them. Until then, the grimnir can go where I cannot.” Though it was more than that, for she knew he was not bound by the shackles of morality that might fetter another. Nimeda was not oblivious to Mara’s proclivities, nor to the ravening of her pets on those restless innocents who wandered the dream unknowing. Nature was nature, though, and Nim would not see her suffer.

She glanced blankly at the flesh inside her arm, anchored for a moment by a memory that grit her teeth.

Until her attention was pulled by the growl. “Knowing isn’t everything.” She laughed, sure how Jon would tell her otherwise. That one always had questions she could not answer, seeking to quantify things Nim was happy to let slip through her fingers. “I can show you the place she is held in the Other world.” It would actually be far easier to pull them there than to gather the fraying threads of her mind into enough coherence to explain it in words. Asking Mara might be just as simple a solution, but her gaze twisted to find the wolf then. He looked asleep, though it was not as though she could tell. Nim was unsure what he would make of Mara and her pets. Nor Tristan, for that matter.

By now he stood and offered a hand, though his gaze skated high. Enough for understanding to belatedly pierce and amusement to blossom like sunrise, though not unkindly. “Oh, wolf. It's only skin.” But she shifted the blanket higher upon her shoulder anyway, cognizant of his discomfort, and rose nimble enough to her own feet. His earnestness charmed her, or maybe the small current of need ribboning about the words. “I will stay with you.” Her hand peeked from the blanket’s folds to clasp into his like it was the easiest promise in the world, and squeezed. “You have a nice smile, when you find a reason for it. Afterwards I will show you all the places here I love.”

She grinned, and everything shimmered like light reflecting water, and shifted.

Little materialised at first. Habitual white clad Nim once more, the same dress she had set to dry in Tristan’s home, though no evidence of that cold swim remained. She made no effort to blend with their new surroundings, her bare toes scrunching over the cold tile floor. Something electric buzzed and clicked mournfully; above their heads a panel of light flickered and struggled and died. A shiver tickled the back of her neck with wrongness as her gaze roamed the shadows. She had seen the corridors of this hospital a thousand times in her sister’s dreams, and they were clinical and bright.

Her brows narrowed. “This isn't how it should be.”

[Daiyu]

Darkness crept along the passageways like a foul smell that lingered but none could truly see. Any hope of light was chased away by the creatures that crawled the baseboards. They skittered, rolled, played and tumbled. One nibbled on the ears of another, only to flash teeth and scamper away with a fright after one of its mates. Dozens, hundreds of pets poured from the hospital walls, gnawing on doors and scratching at corners. In the middle of it all sat a girl, her hair a sheet of black pouring over her shoulders. She sat cross-legged on a bed when one curled into her lap. Her hand disappeared into the depths of its black fur as Mara lulled it to peaceful purring.