She'd lost time. The realization was slow, but no less startling, as she watched blood well up from between the pads of her paws. The stone she'd stepped on had been hidden by the freshly fallen snow, an even thicker layer of it covering the rest of the ground. A layer that had not been there Before.

She blinked. Blinked again. Drew in a breath and looked around and tried to remember where she was. This landscape was... unfamiliar to her. It certainly wasn't near the den, the meadow it was nestled in the farthest she had ever dared herself to travel. And her paws... never mind that she was still getting used to the idea of paws, but they seemed. Bigger. She seemed bigger. Her legs longer, her fur denser, the chill less biting. She had lost time. She must've.

She'd lost time before, of course, when they were still denbound and the others were just learning how to move their limbs, but never this much. It was disorienting then and it was disorienting now. She had no idea how much time had passed. Couldn't look at her body and tell with any accuracy how old it was now, because, well, she was a dog. And she couldn't very well ask the others without sounding like she was completely out of her mind. Which, well. She supposed wasn't inaccurate. She was alone, anyhow. It was so rare for her to get a moment to herself.

She put her paw back down, the cold sharp and surprisingly grounding. She drew in another breath, trying to calm the frantic beat of her heart at having woken up suddenly, an indeterminate amount of time after falling asleep against her will, and finding herself hopelessly and completely lost in a world that was not her own. She drew in a breath. It wasn't working. She drew in another. It caught in her throat and she gasped, doubling over, mouth agape, trying to remember how to breathe.

---

six months

The world was changed.

He wished it felt like it. The earth kept spinning, the sun continued to rise and fall, the sea chewed at the shore and his stomach grumbled at him to eat even when Sverke was distracted with other duties.

He had not returned to the den, not within visible range of it, entirely incapable of facing the place he'd once been sheltered within by his mother's protective, warm embrace. Unable to face the reality of how many days or nights he'd attempted to wriggle free or chase a butterfly or mouse away from that same shelter, driven by some instinct that even now rooted itself deep within.

Another vision, recently - not as violent as the first, but with more detail. A voice, a moniker, one he didn't dare repeat all the same. His family needed no further turmoil now. Even Jaormir, the brother to find Sverke after his first 'vision' had been...taken. No one knew, none would ever suspect. It made Sverke feel terribly alone, even if he knew it was for the best.

His paws roamed without his input or effort, carrying a lanky teenaged form across snow-covered territory missing the honeyed scent of his Goddess. A few other scents were missing too, a brother, a sister, and a guardian.

It had put Sverke in an odd mood, melancholy or perhaps furious. He wasn't quite sure, even when an awful wheezing sound made his dark navy ears prick. It reminded him of the split-faced boy. He almost walked away, in no mood to deal with his father's potential for paternal protectiveness...But Sverke had by then already circled around a tree and spotted the shuddering form draped in shades uncannily like his own.

No other child looked so similar to him, in either litter.

Sverke frowned thoughtfully, approaching the collapsed half-sister with a dangerous nonchalance to his posture. He oozed confidence, all too secure in his place as Prince even now. She could raise fang against him like the other sibling in her litter of bastards, but he had his own teeth, malice, and a fiery twin who dogged his every step.

She didn't seem like a threat, though. She just wheezed and shook and wheezed some more. Sverke scowled, then - reminded uncomfortably of his first 'vision'. Perhaps this one, too, was plagued with a monstrous fate, with visions that felt as real as memory. Maybe more real.

The sun-chariot haunted him even months later. The midnight Prince knew he was destined to burn.

It was so rare for her to get a moment to herself. To be alone. She wondered, distantly, what else had changed that there wasn't a single energetic puppy underfoot or watchful father haunting the bushes nearby. But that thought was ushered out with a startling quickness, replaced by every question, every realization, and every existential crisis she'd been forced to weather in teeth grinding silence ever since she'd come to consciousness in this world where dogs could talk and the sky was alien and unrecognizable. Her body shuddered, not from the cold, as she choked back what could've been a devastated sob or raucous, insane laughter. Her head hurt. Her paw hurt, her teeth hurt. She watched a little drop of blood paint the snow at her feet, brought her wrist to her nose and watched it come away red.

She did laugh, then; a dry, derisive chuckle. What a cosmic fucking joke it was to not even be able to contemplate her own existence. After years of wishing to be in any body except her own, to live a life unlike anything she'd lived before. Maybe she'd prayed to the wrong pantheon. Maybe this was that divine punishment for her hubris or... something. It felt like someone was driving a metal spike into her brain and she didn't have to processing power to think about stories.

She sensed him before she heard him, the fur along the back of her spine raising at the sudden realization that she was no longer alone and probably looked fucking insane. Her head shot up, her eyes finding the big, blue wolf immediately. Her skin crawled, just watching him. She hadn't really interacted with anyone outside the five little puppies and their dad. Or if she had, she certainly hadn't been conscious for it. Uh. Did he recognize her? Was he waiting for her to speak? Was this some sort of weird... wolf... ritual? Hi?

She shook, and then sat up, staring at the boy with wide golden eyes. Her colors weren't so dark, tinted with a soft rosy hue surely acquired from the Courtesan. Her face, though, carried a distinct splash of stars across it.

Curious. He heavily considered calling her ugly, but then his two-toned eyes dropped to peer at the nosebleed drip-drip-dripping into the snow below.

Insults were boring. He was curious to know what she'd seen. What haunted her. Viciously, desperately, Sverke hoped it was worse than his own - that way he might have something to be thankful for. The fur along her spine was lifted, and Sverke's hackles had mirrored the posturing before he was even aware. He narrowed his gaze at her challengingly - a warning, however mild-mannered.

What did you see?

She said hi.

The boy flicked his ear firmly, dismissively. Did you have a vision? What was it?

She wasn’t familiar enough with wolf body language to recognize the challenge, the subtle threat, but something primal seemed to urge her to be wary. Of what, she wasn’t sure, but she knew well enough to trust her gut. This one wouldn’t like… bite her, right? Right??

Her brows furrowed, giving a little sniffle as another drop of blood plip’d to the ground. I don’t know what you mean? What did she see? Snow?? What—? But then he mentioned visions, and her blood ran cold as the air.

I don’t… A vision. How did he know about that? Why did he say that? Did he know why this was happening to her? Was he like—

The metal spike pierced her brain. She didn’t see anything, but she knew. She knew things, she— Pain. Again, and again. I remembered, she gasped, wild-eyed, going a little starry from the pain. She was having trouble focusing, her eyes starting to glaze over, and another drop of blood hit the snow. Then another, and another, the trickle from her nose becoming a steady flow.

The girl was still in the throes of confusion, but she was more lucid than he'd been when his first vision had come. Sverke's curiosity was piqued - the stink of blood on the air and the ragged breathing of his quarry, the hope that he wasn't alone in what plagued him, spurred him into an intense focus bordering on frenzy. He fidgeted, weight shifting between his paws with a faint urge to run, run until his mind cleared and heightened emotions settled themselves.

The Spear wouldn't dare, not now, not with the girl trapped amidst a hell of her own.

At first, the girl tried to deny it - confused, but then Sverke saw realization, understanding, cross her face even amidst the way it contorted in pain. It didn't cross his mind to fetch a healer, not at the moment. He was a hound on a scent, and he had thoughts for nothing else beyond satiating his own curiosity.

I remembered.

Sverke leaned in close. Blood streamed from the star-marked seer's nose. The snow was splashed with red - he was close enough the misted droplets dappled his paler blue toes. What? Tell me, sister. It is merely a vision - it cannot hurt you, not really. Tell me.

Perhaps she saw Ragnarok. Perhaps she saw him Could she tell him what he was to become? Could she tell him how to evade his fate? Could she tell him why he felt so old, sometimes, like the pull of gravity was still a foreign sensation to him? Perhaps she only saw her own tragedies.

For once, Sverke thought of another beyond his gilded other half - he thought he would not want to be alone during his own 'visions', frightening as they were, so he would not leave this girl to it either.

It's....it's alright. It will not hurt you with me here.

He was the son of gods and goddesses. What did the bastard have to see of her future or past that he could not take on?

The wolf got in closer, much closer. He was close enough that she could headbutt him if she wanted to. She didn’t want to. (Right?) No, she didn’t want to. That would definitely hurt. He had several inches on her and more bulk besides. Though, everything already hurt so much she figured the pain of her skull striking pavement would be pretty inconsequential in comparison.

He wanted to know what she saw. He told her it couldn’t hurt her, not really, said it like he knew what he was talking about. She tried to chuckle at that but found that her gut only twisted sickeningly, grimacing and going slack jawed, tasting iron. It was plenty hurting her, now. She almost didn’t even want to see what this “vision” had for her.

But she didn’t know how to stop the memories of a life she’d never lived.

Her head hurt. Her paw hurt, her teeth hurt, her nose hurt her eyes hurt her legs hurt her body hurt. She began to shake, still possessing just enough awareness and fine motor function to kick a leg out and widen her stance so she didn’t topple over. Her gut roiled like a snake and God, it hurt so much she felt like she’d just been sh—

It felt like she got…

Like she’d been…

Suddenly the shaking stopped, and she looked directly into the eyes of the boy in front of her. In a single, startling moment of clarify, she managed, I don’t belong here, and promptly turned to retch blood into the snow.

She had nothing to say.

Sverke scowled at the girl, finding her refusal to obey his clear and direct orders quickly thinning his patience.

He wanted answers, and he wanted them now. He dug his claws into the snow beneath him, a chill crossing his expression as he considered more...forceful means to snap her out of it, or at least get her to start babbling her prophecies so he could knew, and could adapt for them. Everything had changed. Everything was changing, and Sverke needed to be ahead of it. He had to anticipate the problems and cut them off at the root, before they grew and bloomed into catastrophe.

I don't belong here.

Sverke shrugged. Obviously. He snapped flatly, finding the realization not nearly as earth-shattering as she seemed to find it. Perhaps she was a god in a mortal form, perhaps she was a prophetess, perhaps she was simply the accidental progeny of his father and his dove. Whatever the reason, he accepted the girl's claim at face value and with brusque, annoyed dismissal - until the star-studded sister turned and puked.

Scarlet coursed down her chin, splashed across the snow with force behind it that painted a lurid, disgusting piece of abstract art on the pristine powder.

Sverke stared at it, then at the trembling child before him, genuine shock erasing the usual disdain and arrogance scrawled across his expression. Was the girl dying?

Sverke visibly waffled for a few moments more, shuffling his paws and an expression of open disgust and hesitance contorting his face.

Father is going to kill me if you die. The Prince huffed finally, masking his panic beneath a vehement annoyance at the gall of his sister to try to ruin his day like this.

He was never going to hang out with Cupid's pups again. So far, they were all more trouble than they were worth.

Sverke bumped his shoulder into the girl, attempting to either herd her in the direction he wanted them to walk, or offer his sturdy frame as a crutch to lean on - it wasn't entirely clear. Come; Lilja or Cedar will know what to do with you.

The strain left her gasping, trembling again, the bite of iron on her tongue and in her nose and on her hands. They came in flashes, names, faces, slipping through her fingers like water the harder she tried to reach out and grasp them. I don’t belong here, she slurred again, wild-eyed and glassy, staring without seeing at the splatter of crimson against white, seemingly unaware of the presence of another.

The pain, though, she beheld in stark clarity. In her stomach, the crush of pavement against her back, the pressure of hands against her abdomen, trying to stop the blood that bubbled between her fingers. She couldn’t.

She remembered those hands. She used to kiss their knuckles and clutch them in her own only when no one was looking. They cradled her face, thumbs tracing softly over her cheek, ever graceful in their movements, the first time they’d said “I love you.”

I don’t belong here. This isn’t my home. Her eyes bulged, as if she could discern the face of whoever she’d left behind if only she looked hard enough. As if there were a veil covering everything that had been taken from her and she need only rip it away to know. To reminisce. To mourn.

The ground pitched dizzyingly beneath her. The sky was moving too fast around the earth. This isn’t my home, and this time it was a sob, a painful, keening sound as she turned her wavering, teary-eyed gaze to the wolf. He bumped her shoulder, disrupting the tenuous agreement she had with her legs. Her stomach lurched, she swayed. She managed one last, I miss— before her eyes rolled back into her head and she slumped gracelessly to the floor, out like a light.

His sister was dying, he was sure of it now. Nonsense spilled past her blood-stained jaws, filling the air between them with a rasping mantra of terror and grief that underlined her voice; heavy in a way he wouldn't have expected from one so young.

Sverke clacked his teeth together, finding the habit grounding as well as a very audible warning that he intended to be in control here - and efforts to usurp that would be met with the Spear's wrath. You already said that, but here is where you are. Remember who you are. Sverke spat, tail lashing by his flanks.

This isn't my home, and Sverke snorted, in an effort not to flinch under the piercing glare of the girl's grief-stricken, contorted expression - making her blood-smeared face even more of a frightening sight. Sverke left his shoulder where he'd placed it, hoping to feel the younger pup lean her weight against it, but recoiled with the entirety of his head - flinging his chin up with a sneer and wide two-toned eyes, edged in white. He didn't know what to do about the bleeding nor the fevered distraught fit the girl was grasped in. He certainly didn't know how to comfort her, and was considering very sincerely merely grasping her by the scruff and hauling her bodily to a healer when her eyes rolled back and she fell over, dead.

Or, wait - not dead. Fainted.

Sverke was not going to admit he was scared. Not in the face of danger, not in the face of his dying sister. He'd never seen a wolf die before. He wondered if he should run, hide, try to mask his involvement from his father's watchful eye. Tyr would not be pleased to know of Sverke's failure, and he would be upset that one of his children died, surely. Sverke was not going to admit he was scared. But he did give a quiet little whine, low in his throat as he stared at the pup, just to express the sickening flips his stomach was doing. Sister. Wake. Your fight does not end here. Sverke lifted his chin, forcing a commanding snarl into his otherwise wavering voice.

No response, of course. He prodded at her, wishing to the gods Asgeir were there, before snapping out an explosive sigh.

Howling it was, then. He hoped it wouldn't summon the wolves he didn't want seeing the girl in this state.