Deep in the ocean

A raven's caw. A wolf's howl. A rolling mist, thick and seemingly impenetrable. A dawn that seemed to stretch forever. A circling of ravens. A mountain tall, splicing the horizon, a deep and intrinsic feeling of home.

The raven's caw again.

Again.

Again.

"Vakna. — Awaken"

Eyes opened, a low and rumbling groan leaving him as he pulled away from his slumber. He felt like he had been asleep for weeks, months, even, a pressure discomfiting his skull as it lifted from the ground --  ice? As surely as he was a wolf of the north, this was a shelter of ice and glass, the crystalline color bright and vibrant even though he could see no entrance from where he lay.

Nudging the dark form that lay next to him, pressing close to no doubt share warmth between them, Stjornuati sought to wake his brother. Perhaps he would know how they ended up here, in this frozen palace. “Bróðir. @Solpallur, vaknaðu. — Brother. Solpallur, wake up.”
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He too had slumbered in what felt like eternity. It may as well have been, for as his eyes opened Solpallur realized this was not the place where he had last been. No, the last thing he recalled was settling in to rest among sticks and stones, not at all far from the cairn of bones and earth he had begun to construct where the ravens gathered on high.

Through a bleary, glossy-eyed gaze, he took in the sharp pigment of color in the world before them, tracing the sloping, icy paths that encased them so. He did not know this place and yet there was something innately familiar about it that he could not place. It was deja vu, though he did not know the word for it his any tongue.

His lips stayed sealed—he had no comment for this, not yet.

Finally, he settled his emerald gaze on that of Stjornauti in question.
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Just by the look they shared, the golden crested man knew that his brother knew just as much as he did, which was nothing at all about how they had gotten here. It was odd; Stjornuati remembered traveling but the details were... sparse. Distant. They were there but at the same time, they danced out of his immediate reach. He knew they'd been with a handful of others... the young @Frost,  the quiet Meadow, and of course, their siblings @Valmúa and @Rökkvi. No one save he and Solpallur seemed to be in the cave.

Getting to his feet, Stjornuati stretched out the stiffness in his muscles before lifting his head to draw in the scents of their shelter. There was nothing out of the ordinary, and yet something itched at the back of his brain, bothering him. Rumbling in dissatisfaction, his head swung in the direction of the suneater, tail flicking once. “Ég man ekki eftir þessum stað. — I do not remember this place.” For a wolf whose mind was normally a stálgildra — steel trap, to not remember something this significant was worrisome.
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He held fast to his silence as Stjornuati grumbled on, his gaze seeking things past his brother. Once more his eyes traced the rounded edging of the grotto from where he lied. There was something about this place that he could not figure out and that did not include the circumstances of how they had come to be there.

Solpallur did not rise when his brother did.

“I have seen this place before, in a dream,” he murmured in their tongue. The words were quiet and slowly paced; he was gathering himself now, rising to his feet. He shook out his heavy coat, letting his gaze settle back on his paler sibling.

“Where are the others? I remember them traveling with us.” Even through the bitter winter and its heavy snows, he knew that they had not gone alone. There had been the ravens that had followed them, their loyalty earned, and of course a smattering of their own kin to come. Engi, Rokkvi—where had they gone?
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The words were significant, important. There was nothing simple about dreams, whether they were prophecy, repressed memory, or a glimpse into a possible future. They could have meant everything, while at the same time, they could have just as easily meant nothing. The movement of his darker counterpart drew the maroon gaze of the stareater, a frown drawing upon his countenance as he considered the question that was posed to him. 

Where were the others? It was a wonderment that Stjornuati could only grasp at, the seriousness of his countenance only becoming darker, more intent. Had they been lost in some storm? Had they left of their own accord? It bothered the golden-crested man that he could not __remember__, the memory of his dreams drawing no recollection of this place as it did for Solpallur.

“We must find them,” He spoke, low words reverberating off the walls of their shelter, wondering if there was an easy way out. First, however, his attention returned to his darker brother, eyes assessing silently. If Solpallur was injured, they would, of course, stay. If he was not, he would still wait for the shared wisdom of his brother, curious to see if there was anything else he remembered.
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“Yes,” he rejoined, rising then to his feet. Everything seemed to be in working order, thankfully, even if they didn’t really have too much of a clue of how, when, or why they had come to be in the place they were. Solpallur decided it didn’t matter much—he was certain he knew this place, even if he wasn’t entirely sure how.

Maybe it was a memory, but honestly he had never put much stock into remembering finer details like that. He could remember who slightest him or his kind without fault, he could recall a good battle win or lose, and he could recall almost every single sign or gesture that seemed to be apart of their hringja — call.

“Let us find the entrance to this place. We need our bearings. Then we will look for the others.” He did not believe they could be far off by any means, but stranger things had happened. After all, both Rokkvi and Valmua had tracked them innately across hundreds of miles to finally catch up with them—clearly fate or the gods both had something in store for them. It had to be apart of a much grander scheme that neither of them could see.

There was simply no other explanation in his mind.
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A rumble of agreement was Stjornuati's only response, a shake of his fur jostling free not only dirt but the on-edge feeling he had woken up with. Nerves would do neither of them any good and so, the man folded them away, falling into similar step with his other half. They were together, and that was the first step. The next was as his brother said: sort themselves out and see where they were. It was easy enough, the glassy cavern doing little to hide anything from them, it's reflective surface almost luminous even this deep in its confines. 

Nose brushed the floor, parsing the few scents that linger there, though there was nothing of any consequence. Was he disappointed? No. But that confusion did linger, settling across his shoulders as the roamed, working their way through the Grotto; whether deeper or withdrawing from its confines, there was no way to know. Not yet.
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As they progressed, his hearing became attuned to what sounded like trickling waters somewhere beneath the ice.  He could hear the subtle dripping behind the equally icy walls of the grotto, but it was more than that.  The whistle of wind, the fragility of the cavern, perhaps.  But the grotto itself was not a fragile installation by any means. Solpallur could tell that it had existed long before them and would endure and persist long after.

It was an energy that he picked up from the tender shoots of nature that existed even in the tundra they were in; it existed in the unearthly depths of an unfathomably deep sea.  It was everywhere, this lifeblood of sorts that was both tangible and not, from sea to earth to sky and beyond.  It welled here like no other, he felt, though he could not explain where from the source lied.

“This way,” he rumbled in their tongue, turning sharply around a bend.

The entrance had to be near—the ice around them glowed, empowered by light.
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The ethereal, otherworldly glow of the ice seemed to guide them, leading the brothers to the glassy maze's entrance. It didn't take them terribly long, the pair finding their way easily enough and exploring while they were at it. Together, they exited the frozen labyrinth, out into the cold of winter, one deeper and more bitter than their last location but warmer still than their birthlands. What stood out to Stjornuati, however, was not the temperature so much as the smells of this land. None of it was familiar; not the smells, not the sights, nothing.

And still, he was mostly unconcerned. His gaze turned to Solpallur, curious and contemplative, wondering what he made of all this, of this place.
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They breached the line between frozen underground and frozen overworld without fanfare. Almost immediately he felt the familiar sting of winter reach his nose, but there was something more to it. Sea salt swirled up into the scent—that was new and yet not—and the sun blinded him briefly in its glint off still clinging snowfall.

Though from where they were, Solpallur could not see the ocean.

It was close, but not enough to reach his gaze nor his ears.

He tested that air all the same as his gaze swept across the tundra, seeking answers to questions that arose in its wake to march on, caught in a perpetual breeze. A rumbling growl was uttered, but not because he sensed danger; it was confusion. There were many things that were confusing about this new situation that even he didn’t know where to begin with it.

“This reminds me of home,” he said at last. “But it is not.”
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Home, but not. It was a fitting conclusion to draw, despite the frown that tugged at blackened lips. Nothing here was truly familiar and yet his mind told him it was. The fact of the matter was that he only recognized Solpallur; there was no trace of the others, no scents that told him Valmúa lingered near or that Rökkvi was shadowing them as always. Even Frost, Meadow, and... others. Their names escaped him, fleeing from the grasp of his memory, which only served to worsen his mood.

“Við skulum átta okkur á því hvar við erum og förum svo að finna hina. — Let's figure out where we are and then go find the others.” The suggestion was short, clipped; Stjörnuáti was not fond of this disorientation, nor of the holes that had seemed to appear in his memory. His soul-bonded brother was with him, though, and together, he knew they would sort this out.

Fade
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