Andarin: The Mountains: An Interlude; --

Somewhere miles from the place where Alkonost fled from a psychopathic pikachu wannabe, Fenrisulfr and Jörmungandr lay together in a bundle, oblivious to the danger their daughter/twin lived through.

It was a rare moment and one that wouldn’t repeat itself for months to come. The mare’s head rested idly against the curve of her daughter’s spine; Joh, for her time, let her eyes fall half-shut.

Fire, cold, lightning, air, winter, peace, chaos, shadows…

It was enough.

It was… strange. Unique. Because she’d never felt this need and the other – the child – hadn’t either. Because things changed and were changing slowly but surely, the inevitability of evolution and erosion and entropy. Jörmungandr knew this as, little by little, the pieces seemed to fit together.

That spiral of unease had been bothering her for months now – the little pressures and coils and clackclackclack.

Eyes more fit for Severus’ face than Jörmungandr’s stared at her, unblinking and dead like blindness. For some reason, the older mare shuddered.

“Mother,” she’d asked, her voice cool as the northern wind. So unlike her daughter – her gentler daughter, the one that often overlooked because of her peaceful ways. She didn’t shine as brightly as Alkonost; she never would. But she had other strengths, strengths not often perceived as strengths. Perhaps stronger still because of it.

“Mother, what is love?”

And what is love indeed?

Love is weakness, the wind answered in everyone’s voice. Around them the storm howled a bit higher, frenzied, out of control; it tasted like lightning. Stay as far away from it as possible.

She doesn’t say the truth. It was Andürien’s voice.

Neither do you, and she laughed, Jörmungandr.

Oh, she loved, yes. No question of it. She loved and loved fiercely, wildly, as lawlessly as the puny vipers would never be, though they claim otherwise. She loved and it was a God’s love: a love wreathed in wrath and jealousy.

But she wanted - needed - to understand.

Oh, she loved.

Her mother, oh yes, but not all that much; she knew the opposite was true as well. She’d mourn, of course she would, but the wounds would heal and fade away. Her mother was as her father: someone important, someone she could sympathize with and love in an abstract sense, but nowhere near that other, darker, visceral feeling.

Her sister…

Her twin…

Do not think of it.

Love, the storm continued as Fimbulvetr screamed; if the winds could sound pensive, they did now. Love is family. Everything else is folly in comparison. Love your sister and no other.

No other.

No other indeed.

fenrisulfr ; jörmungandr
a slayer and her reaver;