VaLkA

mare / six / chestnut pangare / yakut / 13.0 hh

Moments of silence stretched between the pair, taut as the muscles concealed beneath the skjaldmær’s ember-colored coat. And in them, the flicker of anger that had all but been extinguished beneath ash flared into being again. For all that she had fought to survive after the end of her first life, she still felt weaker than the pathetic creature who lay crumpled in the snow. And for all that she had built here in the Bay, it was still no more than a dim echo of the life he would return to. Whether the Icelandic chose to accept her terms of reject them, Valka would still feel as if she had been defeated. Would still feel as if she amounted to less than the ormr whom she’d toppled so easily—and then spared for the simple error of letting compassion overcome reason. Because from the stallion’s silence, it was clear that he had no intention of returning the mercy she’d shown him.

She would die here, for no reason other than that she’d allowed emotion to soften the stone wall around her heart.

Your prattle is tiresome. The coarse voice came in the instant before the strings of Valka’s too-tight nerves might have snapped. Perhaps this was the reason she had to fight back a bark of laughter—or perhaps it was simply because she’d heard herself reflected in those scornful syllables. Either way, she could not help but to twist about to face her foe once again. Impassively the skjaldmær watched the white-laced stallion stir as if to stand, showing no inclination to either aid or deter him in these efforts. Only after he began to speak again did Valka react at all—and then, only to pin her ears and narrow her dark gaze in defiance of his judgment. It seemed laughable that he should manage to find cruelty in the chestnut’s single act of mercy. Or that he should crave the very thing she would have once given him gladly… once, but no longer.

Valka was spared the struggle of uncurling her tongue to deny his request formally. She was spared, too, the effort of needing to find the barbs that had fallen from her tongue—tumbling past her lips and into the chasm of hatred that separated their kind; that separated them. A gulf that had once felt endless, but had shrunk so much over the course of the past year—and over the course of this brief conversation—that it might be bridged by a single step. And Valka—trembling not from fear or cold or even anger—wavered on the edge of that figurative breach, fighting to keep her body motionless. She should not pity this creature, this ormr who had taken from her everything that she’d once lived for. She should not feel the impulse to drive the skulking wraith of Death from his side and protect him from a fate that might have just as easily been her own. She should not, but she did.

And in the end, it was his resigned accetance of that fate that undid her.

Her expression was dark enough to match the clouds overhead when Valka unwillingly relented; a scowl that twisted the momentary softness of her features back into sharpness. Her limbs moved woodenly, struggling as if the air had turned viscous around them. Yet they did move, carrying her towards the prone figure until she stood near enough that the golden-brown fur of his back tickled her legs. The coppery scent of blood filled her nostrils, but the skjaldmær was more concerned for the absence of the warmth that should have radiated from his body. Pinning her ears so tightly that they disappeared entirely into the shaggy tangles of her ivory mane, Valka bared her teeth in an unspoken threat to the pitiful Icelandic, folded her knees, and lay down in the shallow cradle formed bythe arch of his neck and the curve of his back.

It was not enough, she knew by the cold rigidity of the muscles that could be felt beneath his skin. Snarling softly and indignantly, the Yakutian mare shifted, hitching the upper half of her body so that the short curve of her neck draped over him. Her muzzle she tucked into the hollow of his throat, knowing that the vulnerable veins and arteries just beneath its surface would be warmed by each exhale of her breath and would deliver that warmth in turn to the rest of his body. This much was all that Valka had to offer—the rest was up to the nameless stallion and his gods.

Having come to believe that the gods were cruel, however, she could afford to hope that they too would see fit to deny this creature who served them the mercy of a peaceful death.