Andarin: The Mountains: and find out about your (extended) family tree; --

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

Hello, mother.

Mother. It felt so strange – mother rather than father or daughter – and for a moment, she wondered at it.

I see that my sister has an interesting sense of humor. Be welcome, however. You too, spawn.

Spies were indeed a deliciously clever lot, which is perhaps why Fenrisulfr took to them like a fat kid to cake; it was in her own genes, woven there by her parents and conditioned by Icarus’ careful words. To genes, intent is irrelevant: it was as good in her as it had been in her sister, though one had been made in love and angst (to Fenrisulfr’s unending amusement; apparently, angst was hereditary) and the other in triumph and drunkenness.

She wondered if that alone was enough to account for the vast gulf between them.

And, of course, she had no idea what to say to a mare whose only memories she held were woven in primal fear

(alone, the taste of blood in her lips)

pain

(the hounds and the wind’s mosaic voice, shimmering as if alive around her; the cold of Fimbulvetr, the cold of Hel)

or indifference

(days and nights, random meetings in a kingdom by the sea and somewhere else)

but she might as well try.

Another mare might be resentful.

She was not those mares.

Who knows? She might even meet her grandchildren, which, in a sense of poetical justice, were conceived the exact same way as Fenrisulfr was.

Or, almost the same.

But that didn’t matter right now.

So tell me, mother, the winds hum, brushing against her as familiarly as they’d always had. This was thanks to Enola Gay; she knew as much. Another mare might have felt grateful.

She was no such mare, either.

How did that little one happen? I never thought of you as one for sex.

Celebratory coitus and the consequences of it notwithstanding.

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