VaLkA

mare / eight / chestnut pangare / yakut / 13.0 hh

Even in the midst of Tinuvel’s brief bright summer, silence hung over the Bay like a dark shroud, as it had since Solomon’s departure. Only the birth of her child and the return of an old friend marked the passage of seasons; beyond those significant events, there was nothing but peace. And peace, the thick-furred skjaldmær found, suited her as well as Atlantis’s blistering heat. With a wistful yearning bordering on madness, Valka wished for anything to break up the tedium of her days. A battle-challenge, a desperate predator, a violent storm. A visit from their island’s monarch, even if that visit served no purpose other than to twist the dagger he’d already planted in her heart. Anything was better than this— this nothing that left the chestnut mare feeling as if she were suspended on the brink of some endless ravine.

Particularly to the sort of individual that Valka had always been; one who would sooner leap than linger in uncertainty.

But the fates offered no mercy to the Bay’s protector, and she remained poised on her figurative ledge as the cold winds swept back in from the north. And she couldn’t leap; she couldn’t. With the survival of Bacardi’s daughter still dependent on her own, devotion formed a set of shackles that held the red warrioress firmly within the boundaries of her home. Shackles that had never held her martial tendencies in check with Solvarr or Kesja— but that were no less powerful for this perplexing truth. Was it only that she could no longer rely on intervention from Tinuvel’s King on behalf of this child, or something more? This thought was only one of many that occupied Valka’s idle mind, and she would have gladly banished them all in the red haze of bloodshed. Matters of the heart, after all, were another sort of battle entirely— and one that the Yakut had proven herself ill-equipped to face.

For that reason above any other, the skjaldmær also held herself more distant from the Bay’s huskarl than was her custom. Things had changed between them since Falda’s birth, becoming complicated in ways that transcended words. Becoming complicated in ways that were dangerous. So while her dark gaze still followed the tobiano stallion’s every movement, it was with an affected detachment now; a sort of bland curiosity. As if she only cared for the sake of his— and thus, the herd’s— welfare, and no more. As if she didn’t feel the twinging ache in her chest when she saw him race to another woman’s side, their matching coats melding together in seamless harmony. Averting her gaze, Valka watched a pale figure pulling itself from the waves, watched the buckskin pony approach him. And twitched her flattened ears forward to catch the sharp call that followed soon after.

There was no real urgency in that call, no allusion to danger— but the shaggy chestnut raced to answer it anyway, her stout limbs skimming lightly over the cold-hardened ground. By the time that she reached the pebbled shore they were gone, but the ghostly flash of the visitor’s coat was visible between the trees nearby. At his side, the Bay’s newest resident was like a small dark shadow, and Valka warred briefly with the urge to fly between them. In the past, her act-first, think-later approach had only bought trouble and begged for enemies. Time and experience had taught her a more diplomatic approach, if not the patience that tended to favor it. Smoothing the furrows of wariness and worry into a more neutral expression, the Yakutian mare announced her approach with a soft nicker, offering her muzzle in greeting to the woman first, and then (hesitantly, carefully) to the stranger.

“Bay has not seen many visitors recently. Why do you come?” Despite her attempt at diplomacy, Valka was still blunt and plain-spoken. Time and experience, as it turned out, could only accomplish so much... and not the miracle that it would take to refine her courtesies and temper the fire that flowed through her veins.

As it turned out, you could force a crown on a shieldmaiden’s head— but that didn't turn her into a queen.