They should have taught me some manners. Posted on April 2, 2020 at 11:40:19 PM by SIGHURD
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Sometimes the insane talk to trees. They see faces in their wooden knots and knolls and they speak as though they were talking to old friends.
Sighurd has not reached that point, but as the bark of her great sturdy oak (she doesn’t know anything of trees, and suspects that something as large and as barren as this particular tree must be an oak) bites into her skin, she thinks that it must be a creature of sentient thought that is scratching her itch, and that it is a kind and giving soul that is helping her.
Closing her eyes and breathing in, she lets the cold winter air bite at her nostrils, almost ignoring the gentle crunch of snow under the feet of a stranger. Sighurd has no fear, for she had never been taught to feel fear, and only opens her eyes when he speaks to her in a strange tongue. She barely has time to think about what is proper and what isn’t- oh how her father would cringe at the thought of her behaviour- when she twists her body and pivots on spot, offering her shoulder to him and speaking briskly to him, her eyes still closed.
“Would you?” There is a twitch in her skin, where her shoulder meets her ribs, and she hopes that he will set his teeth there and satisfy her, hopefully unbothered by the matted red hair that has clumped there, pressing against her flesh and no doubt making the itch more unbearable as winter drags on. “Right there, dig in and don’t worry, na.” She mutters, shifting her weight to lean into his teeth.