closed | and the past is a bastard.

[brennvin]

WHO: Astrid Runasdotten & Gwenaëlle Baudin
WHAT: Sometimes you see Hakkon’s Wrath with your own eyes and just gotta follow up on that.
WHEN: Drakonis
WHERE: Training yard, the Gallows
NOTES: Foul mouths, probably. Memories of animal harm.

Astrid’s settling in. Scouting missions have been carrying her far afield — just the way she likes it — but all roads do eventually lead back to the Gallows, and her restless feet often carry her to the training yard.

Today, though, someone else has beaten her to the archery range. Astrid’s head pops up over one of the low walls like a curious groundhog, watching goggle-eyed as Gwenaëlle practices, squinting one-eyed and sending frosty arrows across the field. To get a better view, Astrid eventually winds up perched on the brick wall itself, one leg swinging beneath her as she stares at the other woman’s giant bow, the one of unmistakable Avvar make.

And in any other context her reaction would just be hey that’s sick as hell,

(except she remembers what it looked like during that first fight at the rift, ice crackling in the air. She had picked up one of the arrows out of sheer curiosity and the cold had practically bitten her, fingertips burning with the brief nip of frostbite. If Astrid had questions, they’d died on her tongue shortly after, vanished when she was scoured empty during the battle. That pile of bloody fur lying heavy across her, suffocating dead weight, the people from Riftwatch had had to haul her loose—)

But that was weeks ago. Blinking, Astrid watches Gwenaëlle’s scrutinising arc. She waits until the next shot goes clear, before deciding to approach. (Some of the first lessons drummed into her: don’t fucking surprise someone when their arm’s currently holding back all that tension and lethal weight, an arrow ready to leap for your throat if you jolt their aim.)

She finally slides off the wall, boots hitting the ground as she walks closer.

“Hi,” Astrid says, behind the other woman. Let’s just get this over with. “I’m sorry, I don’t really— remember your name? But meant to say thanks. For the other day.”

The other week. Month. Who’s counting.

Comments

[elegiaque]

“Well, and we didn't have griffons when I came here,” Gwenaëlle says, her smile lopsided and lovely, rolling with the lighter-hearted pivot smoothly— maybe not so gracefully as someone else might make it look as if a pivot hadn't even happened, but with enough ease that she'd probably been very purposefully leaving enough space for that heavy thing to be stepped around, if stepping around it suits better.

It warps the space around it, a thing like that. They both know it's there. Isn't this the point? It isn't everything.

“Keep moving and who knows what else we'll have.”

🎀

[brennvin]

Astrid flashes Gwenaëlle a fragile smile in return; not entirely firm around the edges, not as brilliant and beaming as she’d ordinarily be, but it’s an attempt and that’s what matters. There’s the sense of their mutually-accepting the shift, grasping for something a little easier and a little gentler.

And yet she feels lighter for having stepped closer to it, today.

She finally ruffles Hardie’s head and then unfolds her limbs in one go, smoothly swooping back to her feet. “More shooting, for one,” she declares, and that is what they’ll have, because she’s not gonna miss the chance to see more of that legendary bow in action — and to hone and practice and show off more of her own skills, as well.

Just keep moving.