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Gjalla · 8 hours ago

[Image: de30rbh-3b0683a6-441b-43e3-821f-97de2c91...kDaKDynxTk]

Hrefna, Valkyrie and Vi! dated to the 13th

stormrift came down from the mountain in four shadows. scents reached them before the heart of the celebration did—strangers layered upon strangers, food, flowers bruised beneath paws, the bright nervousness of gathering families and the warmer thread of those who had come simply because something joyful had been promised.

behind her came her daughters; valkyrie kept to one shoulder, hrefna at the other—the daughters of stormrift beneath a foreign sky, carrying pieces of their mother between them in ways both obvious and terribly subtle. one need only watch gjalla glance back once to understand that whatever iron lived in her posture did not extend untouched toward them.

vi came among them. new blood, perhaps, but gjalla had not brought her as an afterthought; she walked beneath the same invisible shelter as the others, permitted within the small formation the northerners naturally made as they crossed unfamiliar ground.

but weddings were peculiar things. tianlong's ways were largely unknown to her—foreign enough that even rumor felt unreliable—and so she could not decide whether what she was walking toward was romance at all, or something far more practical dressed in celebration. the emperors she had known did not often concern themselves with singular devotion; she knew not the circumstances that had made this union come to pass, only that in courts such as these, love was sometimes simply another word for arrangement.

stay near until we have greeted our hosts, she murmured, though her daughters were hardly children requiring shepherding. her muzzle tilted briefly toward vi so the instruction encompassed her without distinction. afterward, you may wander as you please within reason.

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Greetings Stranger!

Verdant's Grace

Loner