This is exactly how a dream begins: Astrid blinks and finds herself someplace mid-conversation, with no clear recollection of how they got there, or the individual steps that led to them in bed together.

She’s sitting on the mattress with her legs crossed under her, facing Cedric, their hands linked. Comfortable rumpled blankets around them, and the particular coziness of knowing the wind is howling against the door and it’s bitterly cold outside, but here the fire is crackling and there is a warm body beside you and all is well. (Are they here because they fucked? The specifics are unclear; here, in the hold, Astrid cuddles with casual hookups and friends alike.)

Raskmodig naps at the end of the bed, almost fully taking up the last third of it; the wolf occasionally cracks open a yellow eye to look at Rost, but he doesn’t snap his teeth and doesn’t lunge after the smaller creature. The dream is too pleasant — is trying far too hard to be pleasant — to experience a hare’s snapped neck, a hound bleeding out on the flagstones in front of the fire, a familiar’s sudden gruesome death.

And Astrid’s mind reaches uselessly to maintain this structure, trying to pin it in place even as the wind howls a little louder. Her fingers tighten around Cedric’s. There’s a runestone clenched within her other hand, rock smoothed by years of fidgeting touch.

“Sorry,” she says, perplexed by her own disorientation. “I forgot what we… uh. What were you talking about?”