The wartorn stallion drinks in the sight of her and it renews his strength as well as any fresh mountain spring ever could. Lagertha closes her eyes for a moment, but Ragnarr cannot look away from her. He stands, transfixed, head tilted just so, preventing him from missing even the smallest of movements she makes – the widening of her eyes, the delicate flare of her nostrils, the steady rise and fall of her chest. Ragnarr watches the smile unfurl across her lips in all its glory, and it is as beautiful to him as a thousand different sunsets.
“You are as wise as my Dreymandi,” Ragnarr says quietly, as softly as he is capable of speaking, a sudden, irrational fear jabbing at his heart; this was naught but a dream, and illusion. But everything was so vivid, and even Lagertha’s presence had a weight to it, commanding attention and deserving respect. Surely no illusion could manage such a feat. Still, he’d tread softly, speak gently, just in case. “If I listened more intently to sál mín, perhaps I would not have strayed so far from you.” And he chuckles at her next words, the deep sound filling his chest. “Já, I would be far from this place, finding myself in all sorts of trouble, just as it was when we were young.”
His own words mingle with hers in the air between them, that seems to have gone still. Verndari minn. That is what Ragnarr had been to her. And Lagertha? To him she had been like the sun itself, illuminating his world and banishing the darkness from him. He was Shadow, and she was Light. They had bound themselves to one another in a way that was unspoken, and no other living soul would ever comprehend the nature of this bond. Forged in blood, sweat and tears, it would never be broken, no matter how far apart they were, no matter for how long.
Those times he’d come between Lagertha and Ivar had been the only times he’d ever stood against his brother. In all other things he had been loyal, even choosing to roam far and wide with Ivar leaving Lagertha behind, in order to spare her from their brother's teeth and temper. Ivar had a darkness within him that Ragnarr knew all too well – in the life before this one, his father had tormented him as Ivar tormented Lagertha. Where Ivar’s torture had been born out of a twisted desire to make Lagertha strong and a display of dominance, the injury inflicted upon Ragnarr by his father was nothing more than cruel punishment, born out of the misguided belief that Ragnarr was weak, an aberration born half-blind.
Lagertha moves closer now, within inches of him, and Ragnarr is overwhelmed. Their muzzles brush and the sensation jolts down his spine like lightning, and he hears the roar of Thor’s thunder in his ears – they tremble where they stand tangled in his shaggy mane. “I know this,” he replies, his breath catching in his throat, his words rough and charged with emotion. “My hjarta knows this.” Ragnarr closes his eyes, and bows before her, so that he feels her gentle touch upon his forehead, upon the smudge of white hidden beneath his dense forelock, pure as the snow of their homeland. “It is my sannleikann, my greatest certainty, the one thing in my whole life that I know will never change.”
Ragnarr slowly draws back and raises his gaze to her, clear and clouded eyes both seeking her own. Lagertha’s eyes remind him of glowing embers, hinting at the fire that has always burned within her. “I promised you once that I would follow wherever you would go, Lagertha.” his words are gravelly, as bold as the oath he speaks of. “Here we are, at the very edge of everything atop this pillar of earth, and yet...” Ragnarr inhales a deep, full breath, exhales slowly, his seeing eye wide and gleaming as he holds the warrior-mare’s electric gaze. Beneath them, Ragnarr believes he feels the mountain itself tremble, and this pleases him. Lagertha has always been magnificent in his eyes, and she always would be. “Even into Staðurinn Handan I will follow you, my Geislandi Drottning.”
|