Saturday, October 3, 2009

Valkyrie In The Making - Curfew

She walked for two days without incident, gathering wild fruits, vegetables and plants along the way. Her mother had taught her well; She learned by drawing pictures of the good things to eat and memorizing the horrific effects of the bad.

They had followed the stream and at the end of the second day she sighted smoke in the sky, smoke that was obviously coming from many homesteads, perhaps only a dozen acres away.

"Reare." Muninn exclaimed as he turned and flew back towards her. She had learned early on that he was leading this excursion, not her, and she noticed that his noises were becoming more varied the longer she stayed with him, as if he had created a secret language shared only by them. He landed on her shoulder.

"Reare." He said again, only in a softer, gentler way. He had learned that to speak loudly in her ear would get him expelled from her shoulder.

"Yes, I see." She said to him. "I wonder what village it is?"

In her 16 years she had never traveled more than a day away from home, and that was only on hunting expeditions with her father and for that they went south.

"I suppose we will find out tomorrow." She sighed, realizing it was too late to get close to the village before dark. Besides, she planned to have a good meal that evening as she had killed a hare earlier in the day and wanted to cook it before it went bad.

She found a small overhang of rocks a little ways away from the bank of the stream, "This will do just fine." She said, satisfied with her lodging for the evening.

"Kime Kime" Muninn agreed.

She built a fire, cleaned her hare and hung it over the fire to cook, she laid the fur out to dry, perhaps she could sell it in the village. As the hare baked she gathered twigs and leaves together to make into a bed later.

Only during this time of the day would Muninn leave her for a short period, she assumed he was finding food, as she never saw him eat. He would return after a short time with twigs, leaves and feathers to nestle down in for the evening.

The meal did her good, as did the last bit of bread from her sack, she laid back on her makeshift bed once she had her fill and gazed into the fire. She always loved watching the dancing flames, they had a hypnotic effect that would lull her to sleep, it's the only way she could catch a wink of sleep in the final days of her mother's life. As she stared at them they began to more in mysterious ways, different ways.

The shape of a young girl appeared, not much older than herself, she had a man with her, a large man, an imposing man. His large hand was grasping onto the girl's hand and he was pulling her along, as if they ran from something. The girl's face turned toward Briggita and she saw her own face looking back at hers, smiling a sly, satisfied smile.

Briggita sat up quickly, so quickly that she hit her head on one of the overhanging rocks.

"Did you see?" She asked Muninn, but he simply looked at her pointedly before setting himself down , curling up and going to sleep.

She shook her head to get the image out of it and laid down again. She didn't remember falling asleep.

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