Standing here on this island, looking out at a sea of unfamiliar faces, Brynja wonders what invisible forces have deemed it acceptable to drop her here, alone and with no knowledge of how to get home. It seems like a cruel trick, and if she had any iota of her that believed in deities, she might shout at the sky and curse them for the fickle twist of fate. But she believes in no such things, and yelling at an empty sky will do nothing for her. Action will, and so she treks forward into the clearing with no real clue as to where she's going, or why.
It's unusual, she thinks, the timing of this whole thing. Not more than six months ago her grandmother had passed away, leaving Brynja well and truly by herself for the first time in her entire life. And it was around that time that she started to think maybe there was something beyond the horizon that she was meant to find, somewhere else she was meant to go. The previous couple of years, the safety and security of her childhood home didn't pull her back as powerfully as it once had when she waded into the crystalline depths of the ocean. And with Freya gone and no family left, Brynja knew there was finally nothing keeping her tethered there. And so she'd taken the plunge, gaze fixed on the broad horizon.
The rest was an unpleasant blur of inky water and aching lungs.
A heavy sigh blows past Brynja's lips, the memory too fresh for comfort. She takes a step forward, and then another, ambling her way through the clearing. She's following a particularly deep trail of hoofprints through the center of the meadow when she hears a whisper from nearby, the syllables of a familiar name inside another's mouth catching her attention. 'Bjorn?' it asks, and Brynja pauses, mind suddenly working at double speed. She knows that name, and well. Grandmama had mentioned it countless times, speaking with nothing but fondness for her firstborn child.
One of the numerous missing pieces in the jigsaw of her life, Bjorn was the uncle Brynja had never met, and had given up hope long ago of ever meeting. But now -- could it be possible? Could the gods have actually been pushing her towards something better, instead of away from something good? The thought makes her breath catch, the feeble spark of hope inside her chest kindling into something stronger and brighter.
Bright blue eyes snap in the direction from which the voice came, settling almost immediately on a small chestnut-colored mare. She's a tad shorter than Brynja, just short enough that she has to to cast her gaze downward to meet the woman's eyes. How does this lady know her uncle? Are they close, perhaps, or is he like a stranger to her too? There's something about the way the unknown female is looking at her, how the inky depths of her eyes glimmer with something she can't quite name, something that curls its way around her heart and makes the muscle clench tight within her chest.
Brynja cannot stop the tsunami of questions that crest over the dam of her lips, spilling out of her mouth unabashed, voice tight and an unsure edge to her words. "What? How do you know that name? Who are you?" She feels rooted to the spot, heart fluttering anxiously - wildly - against the cage of her ribs. "Are you... family?"
five. mixed breed. bay dun roan sabino.
homeless, loveless, childless. pippa.