Renic watched her with a trenchant gleam in his eyes, the blue so penetrating it stole her breath as easily as she had taken that kiss from him. Neither of them spoke, for she was too disconcerted and thoroughly undone by his stare to form a single word; and he, in turn, appeared too reticent to offer one.

What had awakened him? Her flesh heated instantly with the mortifying prospect of his having been roused by her kiss. Yet, secretly, she wanted him to know.

And what he thought of her, practically spread across his chest as she was, Brenna knew not, but he made no move to shove her away, thank the gods. She could not have borne the ill-treatment or the humiliation if he had. However, that was not his way. Renic was never unkind. Though she was no better than a bondswoman, and he a mighty chieftain's son, he never treated her any less than he did the other thanes.

"I..." She swallowed her nerves and tried again. "Forgive me!" With that she hastily pushed herself off him and moved an appropriate distance away. Still, he regarded her with a closemouthed acuity that increased her inner turmoil and added to the awkward silence. "Are you feeling better now?" Surely he could not disregard a direct query?

His furrow deepened. "Should I not be?"

"You do not remember," she murmured. The idea of his mind being struck by oblivion had not occurred to her till this very moment.

"How long have we been here?" He pushed himself up onto his elbows and searched the surrounding trees for some clue as to the passage of time.

"Nightfall lasted only a scant few hours," said she, "but I found you...crippled with pain and..." It seemed as though she had been by his side an age, but in sooth it had been no more than the length of the brief moonrise. The sun had only disappeared for two hours at most. "You were not yourself," she finished feebly.

His eyes widened with horror as they flew to the blood-flecked linen at her shoulder, the strap of her apron dress partially torn. "I hurt you!"

Before she could declaim what was so obviously writ athwart her shift in her own lifeblood, he converged on her and firmly pulled the layers aside to examine the wound, self-disgust prevalent in his gaze.

"It does not hurt, Renic." She pushed his hands away gently and replaced the fabric with diffident care, unused to his touch despite that there was nothing sordid in his manner. He had never intimated that his interest was more than chaste.

"I can see the untruth of that claim for myself, Brenna. There is no need to preserve my feelings." His face was shadowed with contrition and shame. "How you must hate me."

"Never!"

Brenna wished that they were as easy with one another as he was with Heida, but she did not feel as though she had the right to comfort him with aught but words. Touching was not something he seemed to welcome; at least not with anyone except perhaps his mother, Roth, and Heida. With them he was free with his affection and warmth, albeit even that was infrequently bestowed.

"But I was frightened for you. I thought you were dying..." Her voiced cracked, repudiating even the thought of such a cataclysm — and it would have been that to her: a life waned into ruin by result.

"Impossible. I am already bereft of life." His face became wooden as he withdrew; not in body, but in spirit.

"I know," she replied, drawing his eyes back to hers from the faraway point he had fixed them to. The Renic of yore had long since succumbed to cynicism and self-loathing.

"You do not know. You cannot possibly."

"But I have seen enough this night to know..."

"Yes?" He leaned in closer, his pose mirroring hers exactly: legs crossed and an elbow resting on each knee.

"I saw you become..." What could she say that would convey the horror. "Less than mortal."

He seemed to digest the imagery as she described each of the vagaries that had so terrified her: his eyes, his teeth, and the fur that had developed rapidly against his reddened flesh. Although she recalled the events as best she could, Brenna was certain she had not furbished his imagination adequately — there were no words vivid or substantial enough to do the job faithfully.

"Why did you not run?" His tone was accusatory, but she knew that any antipathy she detected was aimed solely inwards.

"Because...I..." I love you. "You were in pain and I could not leave you." Even when his body had been disfigured abominably, she had been loth to go. His aura had changed slightly, but it was still him and that was what made her stay.

"But I might have maimed you; or worse!"

"And I almost scattered your brain across the forest floor with that rock!" she said, pointing to the weapon she'd used in defense.

"I wish you had." His lips thinned with the grim thought, but he studied her with renewed interest. 

"You will never know how deeply I myself felt that blow; it was as if my own skull had sundered instead of yours," she said, quietly. Though he was ofttimes sullen and quiet he would always be the doughty love of her existence. 

Brenna scooted a little closer and, with trembling hands, lifted a lock of his raven hair away to inspect his wound. 'Twas only fair, for she had permitted him to see his own demented handiwork moments ago.

Still, Renic froze, his eyes narrowing at her touch. He nevertheless allowed her to probe at his pate gingerly. In any event, there was nothing there. Only a few drops of dried blood that cohered to his hair stood testament to the injury she had wrought.

"Remarkable." She bit her lip with the wonder of it. "It has already healed. Not even a scar remains!"

Renic only shook his head so that the curls flopped back into place. "Yes, tis not only illness to which I am immune." He was such a staid man by nature, which was a far cry from the beast he had lately been. That in and of itself would likely be what scared him most — his lack of control. "This perverse form will not even sustain a damage long enough to vouchsafe my death and deliver me to valhalla."

"Extraordinary!" How contrary their views were. Now that danger no longer threatened Brenna for the present, she was truly overawed by him. He, conversely, had become more desponding and scornful by the second.

"You are not...disgusted by me?" The inflection of poignancy in his voice tugged at Brenna's heart in a way that nearly banished his dark side from all remembrance — that hideous sight of his half-metamorphosed frame still emblazoned in her mind's eye. But in all likelihood she would never forget what she'd seen.

"No, but I want to understand what happened. Does it...occur often?"

"I do not know."

"But you escape into this forest each month..."

"Aye, but I have no memory of the time spent insensate beneath these trees. I merely suffer each powerful head ague ere wakefulness gives way to...nonbeing. After which, I come to and can explain none of the hours that have since elapsed." He held his arms out to encompass the private weald that girdled them. "It is by your account alone that I now know how truly monstrous I am."

"No!" She grabbed his face between her hands and he, wearied suddenly, made no objection. "You are Renic. Whatever beast emerged last night was only wakeful briefly before you-"

"Afore you stoned it back from whence it came," he scoffed derisively, his deprecation once again leveled at himself. "But what of winter?"

"What do you mean?"

"The sun will disappear all month, Brenna! What will befall us then?"

"Do you mean to tell me it is a nighttime affliction? A Nattmara?" A nightmare?

"Every month now since Autumn last," Renic opined grimly, "and each time worse than the last."

Of course! It was why they, he and Roth both, sought solitude. She understood now. "And your brother?" But she knew.

Renic inclined his head in the affirmative.

"The moon," she said, nodding thoughtfully. It had seemed to burn his eyes.

"Yes. Once it has waxed full, I feel as though my skin tightens throughout the day, and by nightfall, just before Máni crests the horizon, my skull begins to rend in twain." Renic dropped his head into his hands. "You now know as much as I." When he lifted his eyes to search hers, it was with resignation and...a transient flash of dread. "Will you speak of what you saw here tonight? To others, I mean."

"Who would I tell?"

"Your mother. Heida. My mother." The latter seemed to unsettle him most of all.

"That is for you to disclose when and if you choose to, Renic. I am only a friend that cares deeply for you. I would never do anything to cause you harm." It was best that the clans not know of this. Men were as cattle: frighten one and the entire herd would run amok. No, it was for the better that they concealed this from the fear-mongering hordes.

He, meanwhile, had by all appearances not expected these words or her avowed discretion, for his expression became at once disbelieving and hopeful.

"Tell me what I can do to help you?" She inched even closer, feeling suddenly necessary and a part of something greater than herself. Finally needed by someone other than her mother; and for something besides a mother's obsession.

"There is nothing you can do."

"There is always something I can do, even if tis just to listen and understand your woe."

This he had clearly not considered. "Perhaps."

"I am not without my own wights," she whispered. He cocked his head curiously, the air charged with tension as he listened. "I too am haunted. Mayhap not in the physical sense, as yours is, but it is no less disturbing." And it was for this reason that she could not judge him harshly for what she too could not control.

"Tell me." Odin knew he looked as though he needed the distraction. He had after all shared, however unwillingly, his monstrous secret with her. The least she could do was entrust hers to him in turn.

"My nattmara also comes by night, Renic. However, there are always three of them." The eldritch number three. And three times that would beget the sacred numeral of nine. It was a potent sign, but yet obscure to her. "And this I have not shared even with my mother, for I do not care to have them deciphered. I fear them all."

"Go on," he urged gently.

"They begin benignly enough: first I see the dark mare, her flank engorged, disembarking from the drakkar that carried her ashore. Yet once she plants a hoof on the foreign strand, she collapses dead away. Thereafter she gives birth to an eagle, its feathers congealed and coated with both the equine blood of its dam and the coarse sand of its new home."

"What does it mean?"

"That I do not know for certain. I mentioned it once to my mother, but it so upset her that I never more disclosed my visions; if indeed they are such. But I digress.

"The second dream becomes somewhat darker. I am in this very forest when I witness a snake writhing in the shadows, presumably to shed its skin. This it does at length, but instead of the gleaming verdigris I expect to see beneath the withered scale, my eyes are met with fur.

"A giant wolf emerges from the serpent's husk, its pelt a shaggy grey, and feasts its malefic eyes directly upon me."

"Fenrir," he breathed, utterly absorbed by her revelations.

"Perchance." She sighed deeply and resumed. "It is now that the third and final part of my nightmares take root, for, you see, that wolf I happened upon earlier is the same beast that I find myself running from in the final stages of my dreams.

"It chases me into a burning village every evening. And just before I feel it's jaws clamp down around my neck from aback, when I perceive its hot breath at my nape, I am delivered of the nightmare."

It was always the same and in the aftermath, once her head was lifted from her pallet, she derived no comfort nor garnered any rest thenceforward, but would shiver as the midnight air cooled her dewy skin — dampened by the terrors of the night.

Brenna held up her left hand, clenching her fist as though it ached. "And even when the dregs of my torments have left me, my hand still spasms with agony and I cannot think why."

"Does it ache now?" Renic asked, marking her fingers with solemn interest.

"No; only fleetingly as the visions leave me." Brenna then lay that same hand on his knee, over his hand, and said, "I know my lot is nothing to yours and Roth's, but..."

"Still, it is enough, Brenna. Certainly worriment enough to have worsted many a night...as I can well attest to. " His smile did not quite reach his eyes, but at least she had distracted him from his own plight for a short while. "And yet you are no danger to others; as I am."

"You will not be! I will not allow it."

"How can you say that when your dress bears the proof of my violence."

"We shall..." What shall we do? "Lock you away somehow! Chain you to the tree, mayhap?" Brenna's earnest suggestions affected his lip to quirk, the sight of her passion doubtless amusing to him. Oh! How that smile stirs me. She could feel her blood pool in her loins and, realizing it for what it was — desire — she hastened to think of something less...provoking.

"Those are fair suggestions, Brenna. And you are right; something must be done." He appeared to want to say more, but his ears seemed to perk and he turned to peer between the giant trunks and saplings behind him as if expecting to see something. 

"Is it Váli? I saw him yonder just before you awoke," Brenna said, pointing to the birch where she'd seen the wolf earlier.

"Váli?" He lifted his nose with a frown. "I would have caught his scent if he were in such close proximity. You must have mistaken him for another."

She could not think that there was more than one of Váli's ilk traipsing about. His size had always seemed an anomaly to her. Wait! "You can smell...y-your nose is that keen?!" Gods, what else could he smell? Fear? Desire?

"Brenna!"

Both she and Renic became instantly alert as Heida's voice obtruded from afar.

"Here!" Renic called to his sister, then stood and pulled Brenna up as soon as he had gained his footing.

"By Frigg!" Heida rushed through the thickets and abruptly threw her hands around Brenna. "I have so much to tell you!" She looked frantically between them and then, by degrees, her brow puckered askance. "Where have you been!? What have you two been doing all night? I have searched everywhere!" What would the household think of her disappearing throughout the brief night.

There was no recrimination in her tone, nor even a jot of suspicion, for the girl knew not even how to be suspicious of people, her past dealings with men notwithstanding. Heida's gaze was the epitome of childhood innocence, but how much longer could that continue — they were, none of them, children any longer and the world had just become an infinitely more frightening place. 

But a sense of doom was now pervading the air and sharp unease tightening Heida's large, grey eyes even as Brenna watched. Her friend appeared to be grappling with a thousand thoughts and knew not where to start.

"Your mother is frantic! Why did you run off?" She only then suddenly noticed Brenna's shoulder and lifted her silver eyebrows in alarm. "Ye gods! Did you sleep in the nettles?! How did that happen?"

Renic folded his arms, ostensibly having grown tired of Heida's relentless inquest. "The question is: what has you so fearful?"

His query, now that Brenna thought on it, was indeed valid, for it was not merely their absence that had so troubled her friend. Heida's face was blanched and her mouth drawn. She should be relieved by their discovery and yet, instead, she was palpably disturbed.

Brenna grew even more apprehensive. "Am I really in that much trouble, Heida?"

"What?" She seemed taken aback by the thought. "Nay, not unless you consider the wrath of Epona as out of the ordinary." She was talking distractedly as she searched for something. Or someone. "Where is Roth?"

Renic answered. "Not here. What is the matter, Heida? Speak! Is everyone out in force searching for us?" The idea seemed unlikely, or so the dubious twist of his mouth suggested.

"I doubt anyone cares what either of you were about last night. There are greater developments to occupy their minds." She swiftly took his hand and began tugging him homeward, leaving Brenna to follow. "Come, your people need you," she said gravely. "There has been an attack..."

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