Andarin: The Mountains: it's also a good way to drive oneself insane; --

“Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.”
- Blade Runner

Fenrisulfr watched over the lands she understood as hers with a listless, almost thoughtful gaze.

Not very far – and her eyes, sharpened by constant challenge, could pick it up easily – there was a small gaggle of horses gathered around a new one. For a few moments she watched them with interest; the horses included her adopted sister (acknowledgeable by her piebald coloration) and that was enough to attract her attention. Oceantree was almost always shy (or antisocial, she wouldn’t know), and it stood to reason that Fenrisulfr would watch her.

It wasn’t Oceantree that made her move, however.

It was the birds.

Fenrisulfr was Air; she was born with it, from her mother’s blood as well as her father’s, but she’d never held any interest in birds other than when necessary. Even her illusions, growing spontaneously around her and falling apart in a mockery of creation, never featured birds unless she directed them to; she’d created hummingbirds for Skylar and hawks for her own amusement, but that was that. Her Air was winter, was cold, was voice and music and illusions, and shadows.

Especially shadows, as the ones she uses to move quickly – and soundlessly – the mare’s side as she finds her alone.

The birds...

Fei.

She’d not been there when Fei was – she’d been born in Solira, after all, and spirited away to the desert for most of her youth until Stelios.

(she wonders if she is the only one to measure her life in “before Stelios” and “after Stelios”, as if he was a peculiar kind of event - possibly a plague or unexpected, troublesome messiah.

Good thing she was named the Godslayer, eh?)

She’d never even seen the mare other than the day of Shark’s birth (and naturally, she liked Shark far more than this particular progenitor of his). That was the extent of Fenrisulfr’s interest in the mare.

Fenrisulfr was, however, a spy – a good one, even, if her title is anything to go by – and she knew a few things about the mare by sheer tradecraft: she was Rook’s lover (well… one of them, at least – they had a tendency to appear anew an alarming quickness) and Shark’s mother. She’d held the Oreallo crown and that was so absurd Fenrisulfr wouldn’t even dwell in it. She was this and she was that, a dozen unimportant things.

She’d met Severus and been hated by him; but then, he hated everyone (including – nay, especially – yours truly).

She’d been respected and cherished in the mountains far more than Fenrisulfr herself, as their queen, would ever be.

Just as well; she wasn’t there to be loved or respected, but obeyed.

Anyway.

Well, the voice rises from her winds, a thousand gleaming voices, stitched together from everywhere. I suppose birds do like their old nesting spots, aye?

A pause. Around her, winter made itself known, with a delicate disdain at the natural order of things.

What brings you here, Fei? Wanting to see the world end from a vantage point?

Never be it said that she doesn’t go straight to the point.

Or that she can weave alarmingly accurate guesses at times.

fenrisulfr
some there be that shadows kiss,
such have but a shadow’s bliss