Her dear mother would have had a conniption if she could see how the little red mare was behaving now.

Her father, though distant, still would have laughed lightly at the childish antics of his offspring- offered her a little pinch on the butt and guided back in the direction she should have been going. Inge, delicate and womanly in all her rights, would have preferred that her sweet little red daughter was prim and proper, and preferred to dream of mothering children and being wooed by stallions.

Were they little human children, Sighurd would have been the first little girl to pick up a wooden sword and scream a great, childish cry into the sky and bolted head first into a play fight with her brothers.

So instead of doing the ladylike thing and keeping a respectful distance from the still-strange stallion, Sighurd happily leans into his skin and relishes the warmth of his flesh. “How are you now cold, na?” She asks him as they move forwards, their hooves slowly cutting through the frost and the dirt, tracking them through the inlet as he gives her a valiant speech about the land.

She can tell that he loves this place, perhaps because of his blood ties here, and there is a little smile that paints itself on her lips as she turns her head, watching him with the sort of awe worn by a child listening to a grand epic for the first time. She remembers well being a wee babe, curling up on the forest floor with her father and listening to the stories that he had to tell her, and she loves the way a sort of wonder and affection captivates the stallion’s voice. “Wait…” Interrupting him, she finally takes a sweeping look around the place.

Though happily distracted by the frigid waters and Ironclad’s valiant tour of the inlet, Sighurd is suddenly dropped back into reality as she scans the area around them, finding that their current perch was somewhat devoid of life, aside from a little red finch that preens itself in the trees overhead. “No Valka, na?” Bug-eyed, she turns towards him with a realization, remembering the way the icy waters had tugged at her flesh and threatened to swallow her whole, like a serpent set upon a snake. “Did the ocean eat her?”