Seidr — was a form of magic concerned with discerning and altering the course of destiny by re-weaving part of destiny's web.

The mare stumbled over the shingles that were bestrewn across the shoreline, exhausted and heavy with foal. She nickered tiredly as the waves lapped at her tender hooves, but continued up the beach a ways longer till finally she collapsed.

She strained through her labor, her body bruised and ill used, snorting her agony where she lay sprawled — forsaken by her goddess and utterly alone, save the ravenous wolves circling nearby.

After the gradual passage of seasons the dam finally pushed her offspring onto that faraway soil: an eagle, covered in the sanguinary flocculence of afterbirth. Shortly thereafter it took to the air to spread its young wings, the plumage still crimson with its mother's essence, and at length the eagle settled in the immense boughs of the Great Ash, Yggdrasil, its yellow eyes watchful.

From the roots of the sacred tree, where the dragons and serpents gnawed relentlessly, one distinctive snake slid from below to coil about the trunk. The creature was impossibly large and powerful, nearly the size of Jormungand, the Midgard Serpent, and its scales were as black as midnight.

The eagle glared on as the snake's flesh instantly burst apart like the jagged fissures in the dusky mountains to the north that trembled when the earth yawned; and growled; and spat their fiery rage. The serpent's glossy hide rent ever wider, its mouth twisting in pain all the while till finally she saw the smokey fur of Fenrir emerge from within the shedding scale.

By and by there stood a massive wolf prowling at the base of the tree, its discarded ophidian skin withered and empty atop the earth like an old husk. Suddenly the eagle no longer had wings, but arms and hands that clawed at the foliage and nettles scratching at her face as she ran, following the raven overhead as it tried to guide her through the thickets.

The girl's feet pummeled desperately at the ground as she fled through the molting larches and crimson birches, their dying leaves like dried blood. The wolf bayed its eerie song, giving chase close behind her. Another beast soon joined its brother in the hunt, both their snouts pressed to the earth, questing the autumn rot for her panicked scent.

The black and the grey hurtled between the trees like Sköll and Hati after the sun and moon, drawing ever closer. She could feel their breathing at her back as they grunted and howled in fury, their maws snapping in anticipation.

On the horizon stood the mare, neighing in terror as the wolves lengthened their strides, their teeth inches from her daughter's heels. And at the horse's rear the sky was aflame with smoke and death.

Brenna cried out in horror as she rolled violently from her pallet, hitting the ground abruptly before struggling from her pelts. It had been no great height that she had fallen from, and though it had been her shoulder that had first contacted the hard-packed earth, it was her hand that smarted. It was always her left hand...

Epona, therewith wakened from her own slumber, hurried over to kneel at her side. "Daughter, I am here!" Her mother clutched at her and her breathing eventually calmed, the frightening images dimming from her mind's eye as loving fingers stroked her hair. "Was it the dream again?"

"The nightmares. Yes." Brenna wrapped her arms tightly about her mother's narrow waist. She was beset with the night terrors almost every time she closed her eyes of an evening, only this time, unlike other instances, the very last impression before she'd awakened had been by far the most disturbing to her.

The sight of all the blood spurting from the deep gouges in the horse's flanks, fatally dealt, had struck her with more dread than even the wolves had evoked. Brenna knew instinctively that the mare on the hillock, screaming for her daughter, was non other than Epona herself. Epona was, after all, named for the Great Mare Goddess who was worshipped by her mother's people.

It was clear that she was the eagle, yet that particular creature was a male symbol — the quintessence of both strength and death. Even Odin was known to take eagle form. The raven, conversely, was a female element and Brenna felt intuitively that Heida was her dream raven, a messenger guide from the otherworld. 

It made absolute sense now that she knew who Heida's mother had been. And Heida herself had confirmed what Epona had told her about Brynja. A jest came back to her suddenly: one that she had made when they were younger; and innocent of the ways of the world. 

"Are you even mortal, Heida!" she had said then, when the girl had fallen from a tree and broken not a single bone. It had been a harrowing plummet indeed; and even in jest she'd felt that her friend was different to other maids...

Giving her mother one last squeeze she disconnected her arms and pulled herself from the grounded aerie she'd inadvertently made for herself when she'd fallen from the bench. It was early still, the sky still black and starless, but she knew she would get no more sleep and so began to dress for the day's activities.

In any event, she wanted to spend the majority of her day in the great hall, for on the morrow the men, Renic included, would be departing north for the annual hunt before the first snows fell. She could already feel the burn of ice in the air that warned of winter's approach, her skin puckering painfully now that the dew in her hair and shift, the result of her nightmares, was fast numbing her flesh.

She removed the dampened shift and replaced it with another after moving her bedding back to the bench. Over this underdress she wore a thicker brown woolen dress that was shorter than the shift beneath. Once her boots and fur-lined mantle were secured, she set the water to boiling over the fire. She would need the aid of a calmative tea to get through the morn.

The sight of her forlorn, wooden bird discarded on the floor, where it must have rolled when she'd fallen, brought a lump to her throat and she swiftly stood to retrieve it. Once she'd kissed the little figurine's carefully hewn beak, she restored it to its place of honor in her bedding.

"I do not feel easy about Renic leaving to hunt with his uncles and the other men," she told her mother. "He should not go." Nor should Roth, for that matter.

"That is not for you to say." Epona was puling her own boots on. "But I agree."

They would be gone for weeks and any delay might prove fatal to those that traveled alongside Roth and Renic ... when they changed. "I want to give him the wolfsbane." Could she risk telling him about it without implicating her mother in the process?

The wolfsbane would incapacitate him and his brother long enough that the moon would have no effect — or at least that was the theory that she and her mother had determined. The blueish plant, though beautiful, was deadly and so named, by her mother's people, for the hunters that imbrued their arrow tips in the poison from the root to slay the wolves that hunted their livestock.

Epona nodded. "Give him the bane then." However, Epona seemed uneasy. "But they are larger now, Brenna, and I cannot, with any certainty, say how much they will need to ingest without it being ineffective; yet too much will prove fatal."

"Then I shall err on the side of caution, Mother..." And the leaves were only slightly less potent than the roots — she would use them instead.

❅

Two servants were placing a haunch of pig, the animal having been slaughtered earlier, into a vat of sour milk as Brenna passed the store room, both women's aprons bespattered with blood and lard. Harvest time was also the slaughter season and a time of plenty. They would be feasting tonight in preparation of the men's departure tomorrow.

Although men practiced seidr too, it was generally thought to be an unmanly vocation. Seidr, the magical practice of divination, was therefore understood to be a woman's — a völva's — role. Her mother was that seeress: revered, feared, often sought after, and occasionally vilified for her gifts. And it was well known that she was a powerful prophetess.

But on the matter of hunting and raiding the men relied on their animal spirits to guide them with signs. To that end, Ragnar had dreamt that a falcon had left her nest and caught a boar in her mighty talons, and so it was agreed that that was ample enough encouragement to depart for the Great Hunt. Would that her dreams were so easily deciphered.

The aroma of baking bread and spit-roasted lamb reached her before she turned the corner to see the carcass broiling over the fire, for the mid-morning meal, and the flat breads rising on the coals.

Renic sat beside the fire whittling at a piece of elm, his dark, shoulder length hair falling over his face as he worked. He liked to carve, did Renic, and she found him peaceful to watch, his beautiful eyes absorbed in his craft. Had it really been above two months since she'd found him in the woods? Her wounds had healed, but the marks were there for good and always; and she was not sorry for it. To have been marked by him at all, if it meant that they were closer for it, was something she would gladly bear.

But Renic's own strange new scars she could not account for. They were almost imperceptible as they lay scattered about his arms and his neck — fine scratches and small puncture wounds. If he bore them any place else she could not tell; not even her goddess-given sight permitted her to see beneath a man's clothing. More's the pity, she thought.

She knew that he healed almost instantly, so it was impossible to know exactly when and how he'd earned them; and had she not been in possession of the gift of seeing colors, she might very well have missed their subtle presence altogether, for no one else seems to notice them. What she did know for sure was that they had not been there when she'd studied him as he lay unconscious in the forest two full moons since. Thankfully, there had been no other casualties since Gunnar's death.

Renic, ostensibly feeling her eyes upon him, looked up briefly and returned the smile she had offered in greeting, but thereafter bent his head to his task again, once more as reticent as ever.

When they had been younger, he'd carved a wolf for his brother and a bird each for Heida and Brenna. For himself he'd carved a bear. She still had her bird, a falcon, and would run her fingers across its body every night before bed, the wings spread out beneath her blankets like a guardian of dreams. She liked to think it was Renic's bird that safeguarded her through the night each time the wolves chased her.

Brenna wondered what it was that he was carving now and moved to sit by Frida, who was darning one of her dresses, so that she could watch him from the corner of her eye.

"Good morning, Frida," said she.

"Hello, Brenna," the girl replied shyly, her words no more than a soft murmur as if afeared that her voice should offend even the slaves.

She attempted to draw the girl out with a little conversation, but when nothing more than one word answers were forthcoming, Brenna gave up the effort and pulled two small leather pouches from her pocket. She had divided two equal doses of the wolfsbane into a separate little bag for each of the brothers.

Váli sat patiently at his master's feet awaiting the odd scrap of beef that one of the servants occasionally threw at him whenever he came out to test the stew simmering on the soapstone pot that had been placed in the fire pit. But when Brenna removed the pouches, his head turned to her and his nostrils flared cautiously.

After that he no longer watched the roasting lamb or the spoon that was lifted from the stew. His eyes stayed firmly fastened to her. Odd creature. Even Frida trained her eyes surreptitiously to Brenna's hands, but made no query further than a questioning gaze, her curiosity notwithstanding. She never questioned others and hardly spoke unless she was absolutely required to.

How ill suited she and Roth were, for dealing with that brother required a stronger constitution than she feared poor Frida possessed. Albeit, that was not her business, she reminded herself for the hundredth time.

Speaking of whom... Brenna turned around, her forehead creasing as she sought Roth out, but he was not within their immediate proximity that she could see.

Later that day, as the last rays of the harvest sun left the earth, the mead hall in the heart of the village was full to brimming with revelers, their drinking horns overflowing and the feasting underway. Roth had, meanwhile, finally joined his people, but his attention had been monopolized by Ragnar from the moment he'd entered the hall, which was lucky for Brenna since she had still not found a chance to pull Renic aside. But she did that now despite that he was not alone.

Wiping the dampness from her hands, she approached him where he stood speaking to Søren and Thora, Eydís watching them avidly from where she sat beside her husband. It was no secret that she coveted Renic for her daughter, Thora. However, as was the case with all the village women, and the men for that matter, he showed no more interest in her than he did any other clan member. It was merely his nature to be taciturn.

As she passed the group, she made certain to pass within his line of sight and shot him a meaningful glance before continuing towards the entrance door, his brows lowering curiously as he watched her. Yet it was not only he that had caught her gaze: Eydís had witnessed the inconspicuous interaction as well. Ragnar's wife instantly left her husband and waylaid her in the corridor before she ever reached the exit, clamping her fingers around Brenna's arm firmly.

"Be careful where you aim that look, girl. Renic is not for you, do you understand me!" Her whisper was low, but no less forceful. "He is to marry my daughter."

Brenna pulled her arm free of those sharp fingers. "I am not a slave, Eydís; you may command me as you like, but my will is still mine to defy you if and when I choose to."

"But you were born a slave! And he is a chieftain's son, so you are, therefore, of inferior stock-"

"Watch that lengthy nose, Eydís," Renic said with his usual stoicism, appearing suddenly from the smoky shadows of the corridor. He stepped between the two women and nudged Brenna gently with a hand to the small of her back, urging her on as he censured his aunt. "It is in my way ... again." Implying that her nose was, as per usual, pointed where it was not wanted, he left her gaping angrily in the doorway as he and Brenna emerged into the night.

The moment he had appeared just now, out of the smoke-fire gloom, had struck her as strangely familiar. She recalled a memory, a dream long forgot, of a bear walking towards her out of the mist, bearing its weight on two legs like a man. It was odd that she should suffer the dream to visit her tonight, in wakefulness. Curious too, for it was still so vivid after all this time.

When they were free of his aunt's prying glare and the serried warmth of the hall he removed his hand and continued walking till he was completely covered in shadows. She followed him thence. Neither of them spoke and she prompted herself to remember that it was she that had summoned him without, so, of course, the duty was hers to initiated the meeting.

Renic lent patiently against the post of the paddock fence, his face in shadows, as she stood before him. She removed the two pouches from where she'd concealed them all day and held them out to him which he took without hesitation. How trusting he was. Or was it merely that it was she he trusted? His warm fingers enclosed hers and incited her heart to quicken despite the innocuous contact.

"What is this?" His voice was as smokey and dark as the hall fires.

"A poison." She could not see his face, but had the strange sense that he could see hers clearly and so bit her lip, wholly self-aware. "For your brother; and for you."

"You wish to kill me?" There was a note of amusement in his tone.

Her lip quirked despite the serious nature of the exchange. "Far from it, Renic. But since you are determined to go on this hunt-"

"I have to, Brenna, it is expected of me." And he knew very well, she wagered, that he might not — nay, would not — be back before the next full moon.

"I am aware of that," she said with a weary sigh. But he was right. It was a rite of passage for all men, the perpetuation of which was also a timeless tradition and a source of pride. Only the weak, the old, and infirm stayed to tend the hearth fires. And in the spring it would be time at last for them to raid... 

Freya help them. Brenna pulled her hand from his and left it limply at her side. "There is a chance the wolfsbane might stunt the throes for a time and, Odin willing, prevent the change altogether." If it does not kill you. "But please do not ask how it is that I know of the effects of that poison. The fact remains, nevertheless, that I do know it is the only bane that seems to have any impact on you at all..."

"I have no need to ask either way." There was a threatening edge to his words. "I know you would never hurt me; but your mother is another matter entirely."

"Renic, please do not..." She wanted so to defend her mother, yet there was really nothing to say that would vindicate her in his eyes. Her words would not have had the time to convey her regret in any event, for she could see Renic's shadowy outline stilling cautiously, his body tensed.

"Roth," he whispered into the darkness, disgruntlement lacing his voice.

A large shadow thereat materialized in the gloom. "Who else could possibly sneak up on you, Brother?" came Roth's chuckled response. "Even as distracted as you were by a pretty face..."

The sky was devoid of all but a smattering of dim stars, the new moon gone from the world, and she was now aware of two invisible sets of penetrating eyes scrutinizing her. It was certainly an unsettling sensation and she was eager to leave them now that she had seen to delivering the deleterious antidote.

"Well, this is quite the intimate little gathering," said Roth with a snort.

The sound of a clout against solid flesh, and another of Roth's dark chuckles rending the hush, lead Brenna to believe that Renic had not found amusement in his brother's jesting and had therefore evinced as much in a physical act of displeasure. Strange that even their voices were so distinctive to her.

"Brenna, love..." Roth's whisper was close to her ear this time. "I need the loan of my brother; but only for a few hours, mind, and then I shall return him to you."

She then heard Renic's sigh emitted almost like as an impatient growl.

Roth continued unrepentantly. "Thereupon you may both continue ... whatever it was that I interrupted just now." Another thwack was heard. "Renic," he muttered, sourly, "cease stroking the side of my head like an old woman." With that Brenna heard his footsteps retreating away from them and the lively noise of the hall nearby. "But, believe me, you will want to see what I have to show you, Brother." And then she heard him no more.

Before Brenna knew what was happening, it being as dark as Niflheim tonight, Renic unexpectedly leaned in to plant a chaste kiss on her right cheek before instantly removing his lips. "Thank you, Brenna." She could almost hear his smile. "For the poison, I mean." 

His shrill whistle then followed, startling her, and alerting her befuddled mind to Váli's presence. She had not been aware of the wolf until just now when his master had summoned him to heel, a flash of a shadow bolting past her into the night whence the brothers had gone.

Howbeit, she did not care a whit for that confounded wolf! Not at present. Her mind was still favorably muddled and her cheek still tingling in the exact spot that Renic had placed his hot mouth, the memory of the kiss seeming to linger like a beatific impression.

Gods help her, but she was so utterly in love with him, and knew, with every ounce of her wasted heart, that she would die for wanting him.

🌟⭐️Ooo la la ❣️ l'amour! I vonder vere zee twins are going?🌟⭐️