Skill: Seer 1/5

The taste of the water won't leave her mouth.

She's never touched it. Maja knows better. The plague on this land stays firm. And among it, now, it's believed. Should she have said something? If it didn't matter at all?

Astrid is right. And that's the worst part of it.

She wonders if it's worth it. Has she done any good? Tasting death like this? No one had ever believed her before Tyr, but even if he believed her, it hadn't been enough.

What is the use of prophecy?

Maja surfaces from the ocean, shaking her fur off, and staring off towards the mountains. She's told Ragnhildr she's leaving. Not forever, but just enough to clear her head for a few days before her ritual commences. She can't handle it right now. Too many echoes, too much guilt.

And right now, the worms are devouring Tove.

She stares off into the distance, feeling numb. She should be colder. Warmer? She can't tell how hot or cold it is.

He should leave the shores he washed up upon. There's a whole new world for him to venture across—memories to try to reclaim, questions to try and find the answers to. And yet...the ocean calls to him. Something old, something primal. It wants him to stay, if only for the time being.

It called to him in his sleep. A whisper, a vision of a wolf crawling from the belly of the depths. He doesn't know who, he doesn't know why. What he does know, that if it's a vision from the gods, he shouldn't turn a blind eye.

Even if it's from a god he doesn't claim, a god whose name he does not know.

And so he waited. Sat upon the rocky crags that overlooked the sea. Watched those dark, icy waves move and crash against the shore and rock. Eyes constantly searching for a beast he doesn't not know.

Until finally, the winds and the waves bring a wolf to the shore he himself had awoken on. It's...a girl. Young and with eyes so dull, he wondered if she was a dead woman walking, if only she hadn't crawled onto the shore to stand.

Cautiously, he makes his way from the sea-side crags to step atop shifting sands. His fur bellows in the breeze, the fur of his mane shrouding his vision for a moment, and yet his eyes never leave her.

Are you alright? Comes his first question. She looks as if she'd just seen a ghost. His brows crease with worry as he awaits, not daring to press forward, but not willing to turn back.

There is no surprise in the way she turns her head to him, slow and distant. His voice echoes in her head. She thinks, perhaps, he's not real. She's not real. She can't feel her toes. But she drinks him in, the size of him, the way he moves. A checklist, in comparison to the way she sees her body down below, smaller than him by far.

He could destroy her. She wouldn't stop him. Couldn't, even.

Strangers, she knows, she should trust less. But she cannot think of danger right now, and she's sure if she were to die here, she would see it. She's seen it every time, hasn't she?

"I am." She's not. "I can swim."

She lies, but it does not anger him. Her hollow eyes are all telling, as if her monotone voice. Grief sits beside her—he'd recognize the old friend anywhere. She is a girl hurting, and while he is a stranger, he is not heartless.

You are hurting, he reasons. Cautiously, and he does not press closer, as he does not want her to get swallowed back into the sea or for her to be afraid. You've lost someone, haven't you? He does not pry; it's a quiet, fragile invitation for her to bare her grief upon a shoulder that could handle it.

Alas, he's only a stranger to her. With a small, earnest smile, he brings himself to sit upon his perch. His eyes are inviting, just as they are filled with sympathy. I am Rhadamanthus. May I ask your name?

Perhaps with his name, she'd feel more comfortable. And perhaps he could help, if only a little.

Does she know how to be friendly? She swears she knew once, and she tries to call upon it now. The smile she gives doesn't touch her eyes. She's too tired, too distant.

"I'm used to it." That, at least, is not a lie. Living with death is now a daily reality for her, glimpses into the ends of lives that pass by her like water. And it's not as terrible as the realization that none of it can be stopped. She used to see herself as a stone in the river, but now she knows she's more a leaf, to be blown down its course until the water tires of her.

She hesitates for a moment, uncertain of closing the distance. He seems warm and kind, and she is a cold creature by nature. "I'm Maja. Are you... Are you looking for someone?" She's not sure why he's here. Hunting, probably, actually, she realizes; most wolves do that.