All the patience that I've got

@Felmont

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Åshe had ventured to the outskirts of the territory today. She had been keen to get her jaws on a piece of prey.

But she could not secure it alone.

She would search the borders for anyone. Anyone. She let out a series of soft barks here and there, calling for anyone.
 

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The lumbering brute traveled through the heavy thickets of the mountain’s forests, silent in his wake through the woodland. Beneath his paws, he listened to the crunch of snow. Felmont was a dark form beneath the snow trodden canopies of trees, and once he stepped out into one of many clearings atop the snow laden slopes of Morðfjall, he was a stark figure against the pale backdrop. His nose wet with health, the wolf’s nares flared every few steps, inhaling deeply to catch any sign of prey--be it large or miniscule, he would find it. 

Hunger gnawed at his stomach, which rolled miserably within his gut. 

But it was not prey he scented, but the smell of another wolf. A wolfess, bearing the sweetness of cinnamon and the hardiness of pine. And yet, beneath it all, there was something else. Such a scent that caused his golden eyes to widen as he recognized the hardy scent of his brother, one that he could not possibly mistake for another. Through the fog that descended upon the mountainside, the brute moved forwards, nose pressed close to the thick snow beneath him. His ears twisted, suddenly attune to the distant barks, which grew louder the closer he drew. Like a specter through the fog, the large brute appeared, eyes dragging over the wolfess. Her smell, intermixed with Bartel’s, haunted him -- he looked upon her through eyes that betrayed his shock. He practically gawked. “You,” Felmont spoke abruptly. 

"Þú lyktar eins og bróðir minn. Geturđu fariđ međ mig til hans?”” — You smell like my brother. Can you take me to him?

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Åshe jumped, startled at the voice who called out to her. It was an accusatory tone. 'You'. How could she not freeze where she stood? It was a voice that she didn't know, a scent that was foreign, but he bore witness to the traditional perfume of Hrafnsvaktin. Puzzled, she looked around to see who dared show their face here, wondering who had the gall.

It was a man. Bathed in mahogany robes, dawning and undercoat of charcoal, standing tall on muscular legs. Åshe couldn't help but stare. While his scent was foreign, it rang similar to something. Something. Something that was familiar to her. She feigned a lack of recognition.

When he looked at her, eyes raking over her body, but she did not waver. Despite feeling the need to grow small beneath his piercing eyes, she did not. She looked at him with the same apathy that he blessed her with— how lucky she is. A new man of Hrafnsvaktin, it seemed. A man that hadn't earned his rightful name yet.

She couldn't help but be surprised about the familial words that dripped from his tongue. He spoke plainly. Words that she could understand. Nords, she felt herself about to drop to her elbows then and there. "Bróðir þinn?" — Your brother?

Åshe looked at him, her mind racing with thoughts of who he spoke of. It clicked for her slowly— the dark coat, the same smoldering stare...Bartel. Bartel had a brother? "Eltu mig." — Follow me. She urged, not bothering to wait for him as she began to make aim for the tree line. She knew where he was. There was barely any moment these days that they weren't together. It was rather shameless at this point.

"Segðu mér þá hvað þú heitir, ókunnugur." — Tell me your name then, stranger.
 

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Felmont was not oblivious to the shock that fell in over her, yet at the same time, he paid no mind to it. Only one thing occupied his mind now, and it was him. Bartel, his brother. He had not seen the bastard in so long, and now, he was here. Upon the very mountains Felmont had awoken upon. The wolf heard the words of the Jarl echo back to him, haunting in all that they were: The Gods placed you here. 

Felmont was cynical, he was fickle. He was not quick to believe the madness that was hanging onto the figment of Godhood, singing them praises and worship. It was foolish, they were idiots. And yet, it was the second time he felt doubt stir in his chest. 

His head lowered, neck descended towards the ground as he chuffed in response to her question. He had no time for idle conversation, and he hoped that this woman realized that. He knew not who she was or how she knew his brother, but it was all the same and they were in mutual standing when it came to Bartel. She would be blind to not notice their resemblances; the same dark fur, the same golden stare, the same broad shoulders. One could argue that Felmont was the mirror image of his older brother, aside from what differences the two brutes shared. 

At her sudden shift of demeanor, Felmont moved. He was spurred forwards by her urgency, matching the long strides that she took. He all but barreled forwards, breath hitching with anxiety. How would Bartel react? Would he remember him? Was Bartel the same Bartel that he remembered? Towards the tree line, the two wolves moved, and Felmont’s gait grew more passionate as the seconds ticked past. She asked for his name, and his eyes shifted to the side, making time to finally drink in the woman’s features. She was… pretty, he was quick to notice that. Normally, Felmont might adopt a cocky smile, try to engage in flirtatious banter, but if his brother’s scent was so deeply woven into her own, there could only be so many reasons why -- and Felmont was sure he knew which one it was. It did almost bring a smirk to his jaw, but he did well to hide it, to bite it back, opening his mouth to reply. 

"Felmont. Ætlarðu að segja mér að Bartel hafi ekki talað um mig?” — Felmont. You mean to tell me Bartel hasn’t spoken of me? He tsked, giving a falsely disappointed shake of his large head. "Skíturinn.” — The shit. He scoffed, tone playful, despite the soft rattle of nervousness that was present.

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The beast's name was Felmont. A hum of acknowledgment left Åshe as she continued uphill on the deadly slopes of the mountain. One could easily make the mistake of a misstep and go tumbling down to their death. She'd think about that often. A quick glance back at Felmont and she would introduce herself. "Åshe." — Åshe

Felmont sounded rather disappointed that Bartel hadn't mentioned him to her. She made no move to look back at him for the second time, dealing in focus with the path ahead. Bartel wasn't far— at least that's where she left him. She didn't expect him to leave.

The word 'bastard' touched Felmont's tongue. The fur on Åshe's back rose, tickling the part of her that grew defensive over Felmont's titan of a brother. She melted the aggression down. Felmont meant it with a playful tone. It reminded her too much of Bartel, his own teasings and playfulness etched into her memory, too. She supposed they weren't much different, huh?

"Hann talar ekki mikið um fjölskyldu sína." — He doesn't speak much of his family. Her words would be mysterious. Was that a bad thing? What happened in his past? Based on how Felmont took her comment, she had a feeling that she would know her answer.

Åshe spotted her jötunn when she jumped the last ridge. Bartel was standing, back turned. With an elevated gait, she closed the distance between them. Her head came to nuzzle against the underside of his chin, inhaling the deep scent of the fur of his neck. Her shoulder collided with his, too, maneuvering herself to fit against him. Her head retracted and she nudged his muzzle with her nose.

"Your brother." She looked from Bartel to the man behind her.
 

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He could not have been prepared.

So he was not. He had been prepared to check upon this cache and round off to another somewhere else. Inventory was not his ideal day, but it was vital. This way he could go off to the true tasks at hand. Hunting, guarding, gardening when the world silenced some...

He had not been blind to the soft swell of life within Hrafnsvaktin. As comforting as it was unnerving. Perhaps he should have been more on the unnerved side if he had known one of the newest faces among the mountain slopes. Yet they both had been near-blind to one another —

Åshe, warm and familiar, upon him. Her touch was a welcomed thing from the swirl of his thoughts and any worries about inventories of meat or herbs. It had not been his intention to forget his tasks so swiftly, but he would not shy away from her presence either. Nearly prepared to drape a leg over her back as he planted a touch along her cheek down her jaw — when it dawned on him. Like a rock to a skull.

Your brother.

Perhaps this was a cultural thing. Perhaps Stjörnuáti had come looking for him and the man was now called brother. It felt a far more realistic thought than his flesh and blood being upon these mountains. It was a slow, cautious lift of his head. Craned so that he might look around them only to see him. His eyes widened at once as his body turned too in order to follow where his gaze had went. Head high as he looked upon Felmont.

“In the flesh ahnd blood...”

His features softened the slightest bit. Confusion ebbed out and relief flowed into its place. Bartel had lost plenty when he had suddenly come upon these mountains. He had lost his family, his traditions and connections. Now one stood before him and he had not realized how horribly he had missed the scoundrel. Different fathers had not made them brothers any less.

“You are a bit old to follow me still, no?” Yet it was spoken with warmth, to poke and prod at a sibling once more was a joy unlike any other.

But he could not forget the mountainous matriarch in all of this excitement. Which was why he spoke to Åshe now — “Vhere did you find this one?” Felmont would surely have his own stories to tell, but both wolves here were important to him. Neither could be excluded in such a vital moment.

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All cunning had been wiped from the pirate’s face, replaced with a genuinity that had not graced his features in too long. The boyish smile that was worn only around his brother had crept upon a masculine head, canines that peeked beneath his lips only adding to the naivety that clung to his face like poison. It was a side of him Felmont would prefer others, strangers, did not meet -- but this woman, this Åshe, was favored by Felmont’s brother, and so she was family. 

Felmont, for all his cunning and his roguish charm, transformed into a younger brother once more within the moments that he had seen Bartel’s back, etched in the same colors as his own. His brother wore the scent of Felmont’s pup hood; a scent that told the stories of a young pup tottling after the disappearing form of his brother, of a defiant teenager opposing his older brother’s wisdom, and of two brothers finally standing side by side, the etchings of youth replaced with the strength of men. 

Felmont could not believe it was him until he spoke. As his jaws opened and his hearty voice spilled free, dripping thick with his accent, the wolf’s smoldering eyes brightened in response. Bartel was alive. He had thought his brother dead when he’d returned to their ancestral home to hear of his disappearance, to find nothing but emptiness in the form of where Bartel usually stood. It had been a grief like no other, one the fiend had swallowed bitterly and buried away to be ignored. It had stewed and stewed for what felt like forever, and in the months of Bartel’s absence, Felmont had been lost. Not the lost he knew of when the scent of the sea overwhelmed him and disoriented his senses, or the pale deserts he traveled brought him to the brink of heat exhaustion, no -- it was a lost true and real. 

A barrel of a laugh pulled from the wolf’s thick chest at Bartel’s comment, golden eyes creasing with amusement in response to the brute’s jest. Felmont’s paws lifted as he moved to close the distance between he and his brother, instinctively pulling the other into a hug. One hefty arm wrapped around the back of the brute and pressed warm to his neck fur, but he stepped back as quickly as he’d hugged him, bringing a paw to ruffle at the thick fur atop Bartel’s head, rough and loving all the same. “Still as ugly as I remember, hálfviti.” He teased, his gravelly voice light with humor. As Bartel turned his attention to his elska, a curious brow lifted upon the cunning rogue’s features, pinning a knowing look onto the two of them. 

After her response, the wolf would knock a hefty shoulder into his brother’s, cracking a wry smile that spoke of mischief. “You have caught yourself a pretty one, eh, big bróðir?” Felmont’s voice was wry and teasing as he sat back onto his haunches, watching Åshe closely. He spoke again, this time in his native language, meaning to hide his words from Bartel. "Hvenær get ég búist við að verða frændi? Ef ég þekki bróður minn mun það gerast fljótlega.” — When can I expect to be an Uncle? If I know my brother, it will be soon. He rasped, the smile of a delinquent gracing his handsome, haughty face and he stuck his elbow into Bartel’s side, chuckling voraciously.

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Åshe only watched the interaction of brothers before her. Still stunned by the familial tie that they both shared, she'd eye Bartel curiously. The thought plundered: What other secrets do you hold? Was there more to it than meets the eye? She supposed so. It was foolish to begin with that he would spill his entire life to her after they shared a night together.

They gestured gratuitously together. Brothers being brothers, she assumed. Felmont had approached them, causing Åshe to dig herself deeper into Bartel's side. Protectiveness maybe. She didn't exactly know. It was a movement that was purely out of her own control.

She gathered enough to know that Bartel had been the older one. That they had been separated for a long, long time. At least to her understanding. This meeting between kin must be revolutionary for them, for Bartel. Åshe would stay on the quiet side, afraid she may ruin the moment by having herself thrust so deeply against Bartel's side.

Her attention was pulled when Bartel looked to her, prodding her with a question.

"He found me." She said, looking briefly to Felmont. "I was going to hunt." Her gaze finally rested on Bartel— the sharp curve of his jaw, the rugged scar across his face. Things that she found utterly handsome.

Felmont jested with him more. Åshe understood most of what he had said— to a degree. Bashful, she'd look away briefly, soft tint of rose heating her cheeks. It only lasted a moment before Felmont's words caught the deep part of her ear. Words she understood clearly.

An uncle.

Åshe chuckled. "Þegar hann verður fullur víkingur." — When he becomes a full viking. She would tease, "Kannski." — Maybe.

She didn't know if she should be startled by his comment. Knowing my brother. It didn't elicit something insecure from her. Rather...an enticement. She had known that Bartel knew what he was doing. He was experienced to a delirious degree, but knowing that...that maybe he'd want something more, too, dangled in the air like low-hanging fruit.

 

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this is LONG and all over, lmk if nothing makes sense

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A brother in a hug, a lover along his side. Everyone was close, a collection of warm bodies and familiar scents on both ends for him. It was easy to perhaps feel surrounded in love and adoration in that single moment.

Until —

His cheeks burned hot in a boyish manner.

It was harder to be pinned on the spot by his brother, to be called out upon the relationship — was that what they were going to call it? Bartel would not press — he had begun to dip his toes into. Perhaps it was also edges of jealousy and a softly wounded ego. He did not think his brother would do anything so melodramatic as to impact him, but there was the undercurrent of possesiveness.

One that he knew he had not earned the right to flaunt upon every man who walked the mountain.

Maybe the feelings of insecurity only deepened when his brother shared that language link with her. Åshe engaged in the exchange and it felt as though he had drifted away somehow. Pushed out, a door closed in his face in the form of a language barrier. The jab into his ribs was the only thing that grounded him once more.

“If you truly missed me, perhaps you vill not say things behind my back?” He somehow managed to force his voice to be humorous even if a near brooding look lingered upon his face still. He could not help that suddenly he felt bullheaded, a teenager once more that envied a boy for all the things they did not share.

If Bartel had that father, he would have been better fit for Hrafnsvaktin.

Felmont would do just fine here, he felt.

Perhaps that was the true point of jealousy. Not women or looks, but the capability to already have a head start among the mountain clan. To share words in a tongue he had not yet learned enough of to even say mild things in. It was not often that an older brother envied the younger but it seemed strong here. Misplaced and unjust, but that did not weaken it for that moment.

Even if he knew that his brother deserved this too. A home, people to live along. It was enough to soften him into true consideration and care. That he posed the most important question (or was it a request? A plea?) of the moment —

“Vill you stay, bruder — brother?”

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The woman's reply, it appeased the nord. As she pressed into his brother, a smile was warm to his maw. This. It was what Bartel, of any he knew, deserved. Though Felmont had yet to claim it for himself, and did not expect he ever would, it didn't mean he didn't dream of it. Didn't envy his brother for it. Perhaps if his own heart was not so wild, he could have it. To one day plant roots, it was a fickle desire. One that did not stay often. 

Felmont did not miss the frown that pulled upon Bartel's face, no matter how hard he attempted to hide it. His own brows screwed together tightly as he turned his smoldering gaze upon his sibling, and watched him closely, drinking in his thickly cut features. Felmont had not considered how the change in tongue might have made the brute feel, and his cheeks threatened to burn with shame. But they did not and Felmont simply tapped the floor beneath him with his tail, humming lightly within his throat. “Only good things were said, large one.” Felmont teased. 

The cunning one then faltered as Bartel turned the next question on him. It was one that had him stammering and struggling for words, eyes cutting nervously to the woman as he searched for the right answer. Finally, he settled on one:

“You know I do not stay in one place.” Felmont's ears twitched nervously as he spoke, the shame of disappointing his brother one that was all too real. It would be selfish of even he to leave so soon, to not relish in this reunion with his brother. So he leaned forwards, pressing a paw to Bartel's shoulder. His smile was genuine, something rare upon the mischievous pirate's lips. 

“But I shall stay for you, bróðir.” He said. He looked to the woman. “I will stay for family.” 

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Åshe looked to Bartel when he prodded with a lichen of insecurity. A smile bloomed on her face as she stuck by him once more, letting her face rub against the side of his neck.

"Good things." She would confirm from Felmont, looking up with a glimmer in her eye towards the darker male. It was music to her ears that Felmont was going to stay— maybe this would be good for Bartel. Good for him to be surrounded by family just as she was.

This could be an opportunity for them, too. More wolves, more security. The idea, the desire for a family still had been stuck at the forefront of her mind. Jarred with the passion and intrigue she felt whenever Bartel merely looked at her.

"Come, then," Åshe said, "We must show him around."
 

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