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approximately eight months | for Urðr

He'd been heading for the sea. North, he'd known that where the ocean had spat him out like a chunk of unpalatable gristle was north, but he was beginning to think he'd taken a wrong turn somewhere. He hadn't found any water, anyway; nothing salted, only freshwater springs and babbling brooks and scummy ponds.

So he'd kept walking. He had nothing better to do. There was no reason to stay in the grasslands. Cloud Lash was dead, and he didn't like thinking about Yakone - lest she have met the same fate. It had occurred to Trygve, for he had nothing to do while travelling but think, that maybe he was somehow the problem. A curse or an omen, perhaps. It was as if all the pain he couldn't feel befell those around him thricefold. And still, the things he didn't think about remained tacked onto his heels, inescapable as his own shadow. But in the dark, at least, Trygve didn't have to look at either of them.

Night had fallen, but he continued to wander. This place was not the fields of the south or the mountains of the north.

Yeah. He was lost.

The boy exhaled a melodramatic, teenaged sigh, before the cool fog and dense shadows seemed to part just enough to reveal oddly smooth, grey stone looming over the boy's lean, tall frame. Trygve's muzzle tilted up, and up, as he peered through the darkness at the faint top of the odd structure. He stepped around the stone, only to find that it wasn't alone. A huge, looming circle was formed with the stones; each one too perfectly arranged and too out of place in the surrounding verdant moors to be natural.

He bristled slightly, tucking his tail close to his flanks as he peered around himself suspiciously. The mist staunched his sense of smell, but the boy's mosaiced gaze flicked toward movement emerging from the fog - who was that?

Skill: Seer
Backdated as far as we can go :')

Something was shifting in the world that she'd found herself. The north was a wreck, the water on her way down tainted by... something she couldn't quite place her mind on. The ancient force that Tyr spoke of was at work, and white Urdr was curious; there was a mordidity to it that left a sour taste in her mouth.

She found herself near a structure surrounded by a cascading mist; a stone circle that resonated with her soul. The gods looked favourably on her today, their guidance bringing her a gift in the shape of small bones. They could answer many things for her, the past, the present, and the future that might become.

With her mind's eye open, she cast the rabbit bones to the dusty earth and peered down. Chaos, separation, and an energy that presented itself. Male. All close to her being.

It was only then that the woman of the world tree found his scent, one that reminded her much of yule. Was this the being that the bones spoke of? She might've smiled if she felt the need, but instead she cast a look over her shoulder, as cold and stoic as the rocks that surrounded her.

Step out of the fog, boy, she beckoned flatly, the ancient accent thick on her tongue.

---

The boy could not smell the woman. The mist turned to dew on his bisected nose, his whiskers, his brow.

A voice came from further ahead in the eerie fog, accented, stern, and commanding. His brow furrowed and an uneasy feeling prickled down his spine. He knew this stranger woman's tongue deep within himself. The lilts of her voice took no effort to decipher, unlike other wolves of other tongues.

He obeyed her command with stiff and reluctant strides, but soon lowered his guard to stare, awestruck, at the monolithic stone structures looking at the edges of what he could see.

What is this place?

Skill: Seer

His voice carried a familiar song, a melody so close to home. While she could not see the boy, she could tell he drew nearer despite the veil of fog that separated them.

Ancient magic, the woman breathed, casting her eyes up at the stone that stood nearest herself. She was a mere foot from its base, and even then, she still felt dwarfed.

Or perhaps, to those who do not wish to see, just a stone circle. her voice followed, her paws seizing the bones as if she still had hands and clumsily dropping them back to the ground. It was linear this time, a line that suggested progression, a storyline that was connected.

To whom though?

The woman muttered to herself incomprehensibly, and then she stopped; silence. Perhaps this stranger would be the key to unlock the source.

Come closer boy,

---

The woman's paw moved, faint through the mist, and something clattered together then fell silent. Trygve frowned, leaning forward slightly to see what she'd done.

She said the place was an ancient magic, and he was inclined to believe her. Her voice held gravitas, knowledge that he could not fathom at his fragile age, no matter how his experiences had weathered him.

She asked him nearer, and Trygve stepped forward with now-steady paws and his tail loose by his heels, ears pricked. He came close enough to see the bones cast by the stranger's paws, close enough for his curiosity to make him forget his caution. What's with the bones? He spoke not of her muttering to herself. She was a weird mist-woman, maybe real, maybe not.

Maybe...the word escaped him. He settled for the Common tongue's equivalent, clumsily. You're a uh...witch?

Skill: Seer

The fog moved aside to uncover a boy touched by the moon and sun, the puzzle pieces steadily coming together. While the mental arithmetic continued, her expression remained null and void. Only her head tilted as she regarded the youth. About the age of the one Tyr sacrificed a part of for a reading.

Of sorts, she mused, raising a brow.

They tell me of a storm, a departure, and a missing link. Urdr's voice was still, her dead eyes regarding him as she watched every little movement of his face. Like a bird, her eyes did not miss a thing. Was she right in her assumption of his heritage? There were too many similarities, although the white mask threw her off the scent ever so slightly.

---

The bones told her things. Secret things Trygve himself hardly knew. He squinted at her suspiciously, but found this only to make her ethereal form waver and bleed into the most further, so he shook his head slightly and turned his scowl onto the rattling bones.

A departure, a storm...it could mean so many things. Things that had nothing to do with what he'd had to leave behind. His stomach turned, but Trygve soldiered on. Perhaps it was her own path she was seeing, because what reason did the Oracle have to see his? Past, or future? He seated himself across from her - an attentive audience, now.

Skill: Seer

The child did not give off much, but he did not deny the spoken truth of the bones straight away. Instead, he sat receptively before them, curiosity lacing his words even if he did not wish for it to convey.

You forget the present, she corrected, raising a brow to the bicoloured wolf before her.

They do not always tell of all, the past, the present or the future, but the bones are affirming. Þeir sýna þér hvað þeir telja mikilvægt. (They show you what they believe is important) while the language was modern, the roots were ancient, her paws accompanying them with a scoop and a cast of the bones.

Was this stranger the missing link? A simple yes or no, and one that the cast could not ignore.

The bones fell into a vertical line pointing between the pair.

---

She claimed he forgot the present, but what was there to ask about it? He was living it - it was the nebulous future and mysterious past the boy wondered about.

But again, he thought, perhaps these bones did not speak to him, but to the ghostly Oracle.

There seemed too many coincidences for them not to speak to him, though. Trygve frowned thoughtfully, paws rooted where they were even as the woman cast the bones again. He understood the words she spoke, but would not answer in kind, his ears wilting slightly into his cowlicked, unkempt fur. They flattened further as the bones took shape through the mist, a chain that strung the silver she-wolf and the split-faced boy together. The...missing link, I guess?

If the bones did speak of him...then what did this missing link mean? Did she know the origin of his curse? What question is it answering? If the bones spoke in affirmation...then someone had to be asking, and all Trygve had asked was of the Oracle and not the bones.

He narrowed his gaze at her, searching to meet her pale gaze for the first time.

Skill: Seer

His deduction wasn't wrong but Urdr had a feeling he was being too direct with the bone's reading. The ghost of a smile pulled at one side of her maw, almost charmed by the youth. He was... Peculiar.

Yes, she breathed, But no, there was a small dance of humour on her tongue.

If a line points straight ahead of the caster, it is simply something favourable. In this case, a yes. This must have been the most words she'd exchanged with someone in a long time, but she could not stop herself from explaining her craft.

Her eyes lifted to the boy, discarding the hold the bones had on her mind, and truly looked at him. Instead of answering his question, as elusive as she was, she decided to be indirectly direct.

Death haunts the north, Tyrson.