Fated - [Bjorn Ironside]

~7~

"She must have had a terrible fall," it was a masculine voice, that while calm, teetered on the edge of singsong. The room was quiet, save for the familiar crackle of a distant fire, chirping like an old friend calling to another. She felt something brush across her forehead, a wet sensation matting into the hair near her temple.

Eldyn was afraid to move, afraid to speak. All she remembered was the exhaustion, the death, the fear, the fall, and the distant silhouette of a boy running towards her. Like a friendly shadow. Her head was pounding, and the muscles of her body burning with an ache that could only be described as exhausted.

"Can you help her, Floki?"

And there that boy was. So it was true; Bjorn was safe. Does that mean his family was as well? Athelstan? Ragnar?

"He is doing all he can, child, give him space."

It was soft—like the vellum that she learned to read. The soft roll of voice in the Northman tongue, his accent wrapping around the guttural tones and nuances of the language.

"Athelstan," it was almost automatic. Eldyn did not mean to speak—she did not mean to wake at this moment, but she was afraid.

For she was too scared to open her eyes and count how many were missing. She did not want to come to terms with what transpired over the past days. She wanted all of it to go away. She wanted to be a child that believed in the impossible and craved the fantastical—she no longer wanted to be responsible, knowing, or anything more than what others saw her as: a child to be protected like one would be, not like she had done for herself all her life since her clan's demise.

"I am here," his voice was instant, a whisper and coo in her ear. She felt a warm hand upon her crown, fingers stretching across her scalp ever-so gentle. A calm hand in the dark night amidst a horrid waking nightmare—the solace craved by the child-slave. "I am here, do not cry."

She only just now felt the tears crawling out from the corners of her eyes, warm trails in their wake.

"Why is she crying?" He sounded somber.

"I can only imagine what she went through while we escaped, Bjorn. Like you, she is just a child, and she can only handle so much," his voice was calm in his response in the foreign speech, free from chastisement and laced with empathy.

She remembered when he found her, sobbing before her father's body in the forest outside Lindisfarne. He used that same tone with her all those years ago when they were but strangers among different peoples.

"Who lives?" she quietly called. The fist around her throat tightened.

The hand atop her head never left, rather it only seemed to move gracefully, repeating over and over again as gentle strokes through her hair.

"Everyone," her eyes immediately opened, taking in the thatch ceiling bathed in soft, golden light that pulsed with every tumble and churn of that familiar crackle.