Her body hit the ground and sunlight erupted behind her eyelids. Stars, a city scape. Under a tree, on a hill, their initials carved into the trunk. Places she’d never been but that felt as familiar as breathing. A name. Her name. What was her name—?

She was down for less than a minute, coming to a hazy awareness as the last dissonant notes of a howl faded away. There was a single, blissful moment of numbness before her nerves alit with fresh pain and she groaned, squeezing her eyes shut against the too bright sun on too bright snow.

Ow, she murmured, low and husky and thick with blood. Ow. Ew. Ow.

The howl faded into the salty, frigid breeze.

No answer. Sverke knew the pack was busy with their other duties, but he still huffed out a vicious sigh with frustration. Energy tangled in his limbs, directionless but insistent. Sverke responded with pacing, tight circles not far from the girl's still form, his hackles stiff with alarm along his back as though this were a threat he could simply frighten off. He couldn't stop his mother's disappearance - he most certainly couldn't stop death.

He rather suspected he was the harbinger of it, in fact.

But the shuffle of paws on snow pulled Sverke from the path he was winding into the snow, deeper with each pass.

She was alive. Awake, even. The boy bounded to the younger pup's side in only a stride or two, reaching out with a paw to shake her shoulder firmly, insistent as an impatient toddler. I have called for the healers. Sverke muttered, haste ridding his tone of the usual derision and replacing it with something more openly worried.

His ears slicked back, annoyance contorting his features in an effort to hide childish fear. I am Sverke. If you will not tell me of your vision, Muttered in a near-growl, making it clear he still intended to know what she was keeping from him, you will tell me your name, sister.

She was still trying to regain her bearings when the earth started shaking. Or rather, she started shaking. She groaned again, longer and more plaintive this time, as her stomach did a sick kick flip and she reluctantly peeled her eyes open, squinting up at the wolf with his paw on her shoulder, shaking her like he was trying to wake the dead. That howl had been a summons for the healers, apparently. Oh, boy.

She inhaled deeply through her nose and closed her eyes again, slowly, painstakingly rolling herself up onto her stomach. The ground beneath her pitched and swayed dizzyingly even at that small motion, hanging her head as she shakily released the breath. The wolf seemed to be introducing himself, calling himself Sverke, and talking about visions and names and sisters. She was still trying to quell the pain in her head and the nausea in her gut and her mouth tasted like blood and she needed to not look like she was dying by the time one of the adults showed up.

I'm okay, she slurred, unconvincingly, forcing herself to look up, up, up at the wolf — at Sverke. It wasn't a vis... she faltered, swallowing hard. The metal spike was back, digging itself deeper into the space behind her eyes every time she tried to grasp at the wisps of memory dancing just out of reach. It wasn't a vision. I... don't know what it was, she admitted, an ear flicking back at his tone; deep and rumbling and making her skin crawl.

She remembered the suffocating weight of a heavy arm slung across her shoulder, the acrid stench of old beer and body odor. What she couldn't remember, however, was her fucking name. Her jaw worked as she searched for it, trying to ignore the pounding in her head and the pulsating ache in her teeth. She remembered that it meant a lot to her. She remembered that she had picked it herself. She remembered the joy she'd felt hearing someone say it aloud for the first time. She would've given anything to hear that person say it again.

Plip! went a drop of blood from her nose. She frowned, remembering instead what the little splotched puppy had called her, and gave a heavy sigh. Bragi...? I guess?

The disaster seemed to be passing. With each passing moment, the girl recovered her strength and wits, what few she had. With each passing moment, Sverke realized how embarrassing his reaction was going to seem when a healer arrived to tell him that she was fine and that he'd panicked for no reason.

How...awful. He scowled at the puppy, then the ground as the Prince tried to scheme his way into a good excuse for this mess. The sister would be no help, he was sure. She was still bleeding from her face and muttering confusing untruths.

If you don't know what it was, how do you know it wasn't a vision? He stuck his tongue out at her, childish and petty. Much of his previous effort to step up to the 'big brother' role in the moments past was dissipating as Sverke waited for an adult to show up and chide him, and it wasn't even his fault. How was he supposed to know the thrashing fit she'd had wasn't the goddess Hel herself dragging the bastard child to her cold, unpleasant realm?

He huffed out a sigh. Does that happen often? Your....fits.

She said her name was Bragi, although with little confidence in the statement. Sverke at least knew what to expect, by now, and only offered her a nonplussed stare and flick of his ear. Bragi. It's unfortunate blood is always shed when we half-siblings meet.

He tilted his head, eyeing the girl like a raven memorizing the face of an enemy...or perhaps an ally. Some might say it was an omen, that there was always bloodshed upon their meetings. Of course, Sverke didn't know of the perfectly pleasant meetings of his other littermates with their half-siblings.

He stuck his tongue out at her. The gesture was so sudden, so out of place, and so downright comical considering the events of the last few minutes that she might've laughed if her head didn't hurt so much. Clearly no one had taught this kid any manners. I don't know, it just... Her frown deepened, trying her best to ignore the pulsating behind her eyes long enough to actually form a coherent thought. It felt more real than that. Like memories. Memories that were hazy and disorganized, the details slipping from her fingers the harder she tried to recall them.

Memories she should not have possessed.

Not a vision, she added, somewhat pointedly. Common sense would normally dictate that she really shouldn't be fighting with a child right now — because though he was bigger than her and also a dog, it was clear that he was still just a kid — but her head felt like it had been crammed inside a hydraulic press and her was nose was still bleeding and the questions she had long thought herself done with had just multiplied ad infinitum. Plus he'd started it.

He huffed and her ears went back, but he seemed to have become somewhat less prickly, now. No, she admitted, a little hesitantly. This is the first time. I think. Something pressed at the back of her mind. Something about the stars. It hurt to think about so she didn't. Instead she frowned anew, hearing him speak the name she had given him. Ugh, this felt familiar, too. But the ache it spawned cut deeper than just her head.

Half-siblings, huh? She really didn't have the spoons to unpack all that so soon after her itty bitty little crippling brain blast. She gave a soft grunt of acknowledgement, wiping at her nose with the back of her paw again. It seemed to finally be letting up. Good. She didn't know how much blood she could afford to lose when she was like this and she'd really rather not find out.

How'd you know about those? Visions? Her skin had begun to prickle with the way he was eyeing her and the silence was agonizing. She didn't know how many of her questions, if any, Sverke could answer, but it wouldn't hurt to try. It probably would, actually. Who knows, maybe he was just an imaginative teenager talking out of his ass.

Or maybe he was like her.

It felt more real that that, she said. Sverke scowled at her, resolute in the face of the half-sister's foolishness. Like memories.

His scowl deepened, in order to mask the surprise that threatened to dishevel his expression.

Did she truly have the same experiences as he did? What did she see? He was trying not to push too hard, sensing Bragi would only shut him out if he did. And Sverke would get in trouble if he made her have another fit trying to convince her to just tell him. In theory, he could empathize with not wanting another soul to know what was seen during those awful visions. But in reality, he was greedy and scared; terrified of still being alone in this, but afraid too of not being alone in what he was plagued by, this awful knowledge of either his fate or his past - he couldn't tell.

Bragi asked how he knew of visions, and the lie formed on Sverke's tongue with ease. My mother has told me - and my sister is a seer, like you. She had foresaw his own birth, and all he would be the advent of. He wondered if Skathi had seen the sun-chariot, if she'd watched him wrap his hungering maw around it and break that celestial mechanism like it was nothing.

The boy closed his eyes, turning his face from the star-studded sister to scrunch his face up in an effort to dispel the visions flickering in his mind. They played there whether his eyes were open or not.

The lie dissolved, sour on his tongue but laughably thin and inconsequential on the air.

I have them too. The visions, but the...memory-like ones, like yours.

The headache abated, the pain of catching his quarry, of sun-fire poured scalding down his throat and his greed and fervor demanding only more, tucked neatly out of sight once more. Sverke opened his eyes, cold ice with a thin ring of burning amber surrounding the eclipse of his pupils as he set his sights on the girl. He didn't need to posture or stiffen his hackles. His hoarse voice did the warning for him. If you breath a word, even a hint of that to anyone, little sister, I'll end you.

The boy seemed... unconvinced? Angry? It was hard to tell. His face was contorted in an expression that made her skin prickle with a juvenile kind of desperation; a fear that she'd revealed too much, let slip an awful secret that should've never come to light, and a desire — a longing — for answers, familiarity, anything that would indicate she wasn't alone, wasn't Other.

He said his mother had told him, and for a moment, fear won out. Her paws clenched, crunching against the snow beneath her pads, sending a wavering jolt of fresh pain from the cut on her palm up her leg. He knew from stories. Fairy tales, like you would tell any kid. He wasn't like her. No one was like her. She was just a—

—seer, like you.

Huh?

She lifted her head, eyes wide and growing wider as his closed, his face turned away. I have them too.

Her heart beat might've quickened or stopped entirely, she wasn't sure. There was a buzzing in her mind and body that was decidedly different from the hazy, trembling fit that had overtaken her. I have them too. He was like her. He was like her.

Her jaw worked, opening and closely soundlessly as she searched for the words, any at all, to express in the moment. Elation? Relief? Fear? But then he opened his eyes, leveling her with his gaze as her mouth clicked shut, and threatened to kill her.

The fur along her spine bristled, but not in fear. In defiance. It was a feeling as wholly unfamiliar to her as her "visions" had been, as she mirrored his scowl with such an uncontrolled ease that it was as if something else entirely was piloting her body. It was thrilling, frightening, and she'd managed to bite her tongue mere milliseconds before whatever preternatural force was compelling her could spit I'd like to see you try.

I won't tell if you won't, she said instead, her scowl softening, though she kept the defiant furrow of her brow. They might've been going through similar shit but she wasn't going to let herself get pushed around by a kid who had never even paid taxes before. Maybe his mother should've told him that.

She stood, finally, picking herself up only a little shakily from the blood-splattered snow. She wrinkled her nose at it. The adults had yet to show. Maybe she could... clean up a little bit? Make it look just a little less like a crime scene and pretend she was perfectly fine. It had just been a false alarm, she'd only felt a little faint, is all. She kicked a fresh hunk of snow over the crimson mess and glanced a little tentatively back toward Sverke. What... do you see?

The girl's hackles lifted, defiance carving canyons into her once-fear-stricken features.

Sverke had little mercy, and he'd already spent his scant share today. He peeled a lip up to flash a fang at her, a pretty clear and direct threat he was half-convinced to follow through on without further prompting. Cupid's bastards sure knew how to test his patience...but their thick skulls could prove useful, he decided.

I won't tell if you don't, she claimed. Sverke snorted, obviously displeased at the idea of being told what to do. Especially when it came to such juicy details as the seer-hood of this sister.

Sure, she claimed they weren't visions. He believed her. He just didn't understand why she had to be so scared of lying about it.

Whatever. Sverke sneered. Bragi peeled herself off the snow, staring at it in disgust. He couldn't help but feel the same. Thank the gods - thank his mother - she hadn't died and made a worse mess. She tried to cover the blood-splattered snow with more snow, before turning the question onto him.

Sverke shuffled his paws, fighting the urge to start pacing. A...chariot, fiery and bright as the sun. Brighter, maybe. It burns everything, including me, but I....It...the monster in the visions... He did start pacing, looping across the snow in tight, controlled figure eights. He has to capture the chariot, so he does. And he tears it apart.

And the world follows suit. Sverke thought, but did not say.

He flashed his teeth at her and she frowned, half tempted to roll her eyes but the... feeling (force?) was already fading, nearly as quick as it had reared it's savage head in the first place, and she managed to keep her composure. Whatever. ...Yeah, okay. She could work with that. Probably.

At least he didn't seem so inclined to pitch a fit or put up a fight when she asked about himself. She watched him fidget and pace as he described his visions — memories, or delusions, maybe — her brow furrowing in thought as he went on. It didn't sound like some kid just parroting a story, though admittedly she didn't have much experience on that front. Maybe he really was like her. Was that okay? To believe that? To hope?

And his words... They tickled at something deep in the recesses of her mind that had her stomach churning with the threat of another fit. A chariot, bright like the sun. A beast that chases and consumes it. It was familiar. Not as intensely had her own visions had been, but more like... the memory of a memory.

Then it clicked, and her eyes widened, her mouth forming an enlightened O. Like Hati and Skӧll.

Like Hati and Skoll, she offered, expression stunned.

Sverke wrinkled his nose at her. Like the wolf-gods of the other realm, the heralds of Ragnarok - oh.

Oh.

Hati. The word was familiar, warm with nostalgia and a sense of safety that settled Sverke's restless edges. The same way he never slept better than when he was coiled in a pile of fangs and elbows and fur with Asgeir.

Skoll, which fit over his shoulders like shrugging on an old jacket. It was definitely his, but it didn't quite fit - two sizes too big, but clinging to him despite his internal efforts to shake free of it.

His mother had borne the previous world's harbingers of doom into this one. Sverke's heart pounded in his ears. No. Sverke whispered, voice hoarse despite its quietness.

He turned, and stalked off.