Death can have me when it earns me.

So this was what it was to be born again. She unfurled from the limbo of non-existence, dazed, maybe even a touch fatigued from... what?

If someone had been watching the exact spot she appeared, it  would have looked like she simply came unraveled right out of the cold thin air. It was disconcerting, disorienting, surely. Wonderous, and magical, too. Almost like the appearance of a fairy godmother in the Southern pup-tales.

She stood at the foot of the mountain where the gods had placed her, looking up at the exact moment an ink-black raven feather gently floated back and forth until it settled upon the snow at her paws.

Her eyes lifted to the mountain now, clear eyes curious and intelligent. There were wolves here, a clan claiming the mountain as feral as the cold and bitter northlands. Were they tame creatures? Or were they as savage as the mountain they called home?

Her voice lifted, calling one or some to come find her.

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His nostrils flared.

The mountains seemed to see much action once more. It pleased and pained him in equal turns. A reminder to seek out a way to further solidify his life here. He was no longer so fresh, so new. These were his borders as much as anyone else who lived here. While he did not walk with a gait more befitting Stjörnuáti or Rökkvi, he did not slink along.

He was proud of his home.

He stood with strength. Eye bright but with cautious judgement against the elder woman. She had come to Hrafnsvaktin? He could only assume she had somehow appeared like the other woman. Unless she was brazenly hardy enough to come to them in the winter from...elsewhere. Perhaps she had.

Bartel had misjudged before.

“Vhat makes you call us?”

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He walked not as a jarl (chief) but as a drengr (soldier). She watched him with quiet and yet curious intent all the while making little notes of the finer details. The way none of his ribs showed. the glossiness of his fur. The pride in his eyes and his stance. He befit his home, clearly.

“The gods above have placed me here upon the foot of your home.”

An obscure answer. Her eyes shifted from the man to the mountain. A statement no less obscure followed.

“They want me here and so I want to be here.”

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“You vill not be the first,”

And the unspoken that she would not be the last either. Gods seemed all too keen to spit up faces where they walked as if it did not disrupt lives, shatter dreams.

“But it is not me that says so.” He exhaled heavily before drawing a slow breath in. Was it polite and proper to bring her before leadership? She was old but she did not seem elderly. He did not note anything immediately wrong with her physical (or mental, truthfully) state.

“Vhat vill you bring to us, fremder — stranger? Vhat vill I tell my forystan vhen I announce you?”

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Not the first. This was commonplace here then? Saga found it strange, bewildering that it was common for someone to appear out of thin air. What were the gods above up to?

“I bring the knowledge I have earned and fought for. I am a skilled healer, both in the physical and spiritual. My clan before, I oversaw our rituals and our rites, led the young to their destinies, guided the old to their next life.”

There were many other things that she could do: hunt, read the stars, patrol. But what she brought to them was unique and important. It was her.

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His heart ached for a moment, it silenced him and dulled his gaze. He must move on through the haze of heartaches.

“Seiðr?” The word was clumsy across his own germanic tongue, occasionally heard and rarely spoken. Yet if this was what she knew and brought to them... It would be a disservice to not bring her to judgement.

“Valk vith me. I vill escort you.”

Perhaps @Stjörnuáti would not see much surprise in Bartel returning with another body. Perhaps he might please his leader, though, if this woman was true to her word.

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Ears pricked at the word, a chord struck deep within her. Was this place more like home than she thought? A mountain was a mountain was a mountain. It was the wolves that lived upon the mountain that made the difference. Judging by his single word question, perhaps this would not be quite so different as she had first expected.

“Seiðr, yes.”

Saga obeyed. At the man's behest, the seer would fall into step beside him, tail lazy against her hocks as they walked.

“Tell me of this place. Of you and those you guard.”

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He imagined the pale raven would be pleased then.

“They are of far northern blood. Far more north than me.” He snorted sharply, a jab of humor. He wondered how many might find home among them for shared ties and beliefs. Where he merely adopted them, was molded with rough hands into the image of Hrafnsvaktin.

It made it no less his home, he reminded himself. Especially as he guarded both her and home, their path one he had taken hundreds of times by now.

“It takes a certain kind to live among ice mountains and thrive.” The wolves here did not trudge along on morsels and beg for survival, that he was certain of. “You know such though, don't you?”

He pried into her own past now, intrigued by her presence.

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“The North recognizes strength.”

Her words were lain strong, the woman of coal so absolutely sure of herself. And why shouldn't she be? The North was her homeland. She had greeted many to its cold embrace, and guided many away from it. All of it took force and vigor of different sorts but to live and thrive in a place like this was true strength, a true tenacity binding the wolves of this place to their lives. The man was more Northern than he thought.

“I do. I come from many clans, where I have both learned and taught many things. Medicines. Stars. Seiðr. The gods have placed me here to continue the cycle.”

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His cheeks might have warmed if he had been a touch younger, a bit more boyish. Not so long ago he might have indulged in it even! Yet he was resigned to more courtly behavior now.

If not for the sake of himself, then the sake of Hrafnsvaktin.

“They have, haven't they?” He exhaled warmly as the scent of Stjörnuáti grew thick. “Ve might have a great need for you, but I do not promise a place. Come. Let my forystan look upon you.”

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Wrapping thread up here as discussed! Adding Saga to the ranks <3

---

As if on cue, the man of cream and gold met them along their path; Sýnin had guided him this way after spying the pair along the borders. In his time as a Jarl, the raven had proved himself to be indispensable, drawing the wolf's attention to where it needed to go. Not only that but there were many things that a creature of the land missed where one of the sky and air did not. The pale raven wheeled above him even now as he stood in their path and waited for them to reach him.

At Bartel's introduction, and the woman's conversation with him, the song and dance of her acceptance was completed, and Hrafnsvaktin found itself with a newly minted Seer. A Vala. With the disappearance of the two before her, Stjörnuáti was not so sure that she would not disappear as well. Such would remain to be seen, however.

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