songs of ancient wit & wisdom hasten from me not unwilling,

[narrow width=800]she'd tumbled through the dark  ( oh, his gods and hers it had been so, so dark – )  of a dread-dream and had awoken with a lurch; hitched, harsh breathfuls of air that is not channel dust and centuries-old bone but the cold clutch of autumn as healthy as any tragedy. her nostrils clench tightly, stout ears slicking back against the crest of her skull. terror is a tremor that runs deep through her moonshed figure and she shakes, each and every restive part of her. phantom things draw down her throat and for a moment she wonders who, what had made it feel kissed open; made it and her feel so raw inside, so worn, so aching and brimming over with ravenous, reverential need and she shudders, myriad madonna.

she still hadn't heard his name, the name in the stagnant dark — so perhaps it is another godsthing, and perhaps it is good, and ignorance is truly bliss.

anguish.

the nightingale reaches, blindly, bleary-eyed with ruined sleep for the nearest thing with what she thinks is a heartbeat, sucking in breaths with a slight, worried wheeze for anything that is ran through with blood to remind her that she is here and not in the after of her after once more; and that she is not about to face those hallowed thrones but is in fact lain with her children yet recovered and those who've chosen to follow her as sotaherra.

...for whatever reason she cannot discern anymore through the haze of sleep and hot film of held-back tears. unspent, untethered; pawing around for what grounds her here. what should. voice thin, warbly in wakefulness, hymnal:

"—a- ...@Valtyr?"[/narrow]

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though asriel, himself knows nothing else, no other life than this in truth... he dreams fantastical and unreal things; much like those brief glimpses of a once life that feels so old that his body is not strong enough to hold it. of naked bipedal beasts dressed in furs that did not belong to them, draped in metals stolen from the earth and forged in fires. he dreams of a shimmering glimpse of a one-eyed face looking back at him ...wizened but ageless. he dreams of a yapping head that he thinks call itself mímir speaking in fjordic and in other tongues that azriel cannot hope to understand.

he awakens at his mother's warbled cry of his name; and though he blearily peers around, mouth still cottony with sleep and glacial gaze blurred. “jeg er her, mor... — i am here, mama” he assures her in fjordic, those visions teasing him like the flutter of a valkyrja's wings as she pirouettes out of both his grasp and his view; present in a way that he can feel in the marrow of his bones but never explain. asriel shifts and yawns, stretching against the cave ground.

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[narrow width=800]she takes in the balsam of him in with great lungfuls and is reaching for him across their moss-smattered stonebed to draw herself closer and closer until she's able to enfold him in her moon arms; even with him being halfway grown with the season the nightingale fits her chin against his temple. pushes her nose through the plush pale and blue of his fur, making sure he has a heart that beats, eyes that see and a tongue that works his voice out of him. fjordic is something she knows little of ...but she knows that he is here, as real as she is  ( and still coming to terms with, herself. )

"sydämeni,"  — my heartshe rasps in a weak rumble, careful to not jostle him too much as unfurls her neck to finally look upon him,  "there are many things in this life that i must teach to your sisters and to you. things that i do not think can be taught in dreams. as it is ...the three of you might learn differently from another, and since sleep eludes me so, i ..."  a hazy shake of her head, a furrow creasing between her brows, mind cobwebbed over what she meant to say.  "will you follow me?"

what visits him in repose, kuunhekku does not know. but at the very least, she hopes that what lessons she has in mind for him are not entirely in vain.[/narrow]

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it takes asriel a bleary-eyed moment to come to the slow stuttering realization that his aïtï might not speak fjordic. she rasps at him in tundrian initially, before switching to common. which brings to the forefront of his mind the spinning and unanswerable question of where that tongue and inherent knowledge had come from ...if not from her and, presumably, not from his sire.

asriel is quiet and contemplative as his mother lists her ...concerns, perhaps? of things that need to be taught to him that ends with a request for him to follow. he stretches again and gives a heavy headed nod before he pushes himself to his paws; gives his pelage a shake and motions for her to lead the way with a soft gesture of his muzzle and a soft murmured, “of course.”

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