TOSKA | Sihtric Kjartansson

𝐈𝐕.

Somewhere in the West Baltic Sea, 875

   IT DIDN'T TAKE LONG FOR JARL THORE AND HIS MEN to notice that there was something wrong. Wrong was ultimately the false word to describe the setting; nothing was wrong for them. They saw a weeping girl holding a dead one in her arms, listening to her begs and pleads she let out in the world.

Sometimes they understood the language she was speaking, sometimes they didn't.

Weeping always sounded the same.

Zvora didn't know for how long she had wept and rocketed back and forth with Buna laying on her lap, cradling her face and begging her to wake up but at some point she stopped doing it. Stopped rocketing, stopped pleading and begging. Stopped crying.

Now she just sat there, silently staring into the distance and holding Buna close as the world around her began to behave as it has always done.

The girls woke up one after another, glancing pitifully at Zvora and the long gone Buna before they were busy with their own task — shovelling or moving away the snow, stitching clothes of Jarl Thore's men, walking under deck to prepare their meals.

Someone had alerted the medicine girl, her heavy steps thudding over the deck as she made her way to the two girls that hadn't proceeded with their day.

"Stand up." The girl ordered, looking down at Zvora who hardly noticed that she had arrived. "The floor isn't cleaning itself."

She didn't care.

May the sign that Buna asked for was that thunder would strike them all down and take the ship to the bottom of the sea — Zvora didn't care.

She heard the medicine girl huff in anger, saw in the peripheral of her vision that she moved her sleeves up and scrunched her nose, as if she was disgusted by the corpse that lay in Zvora's lap while she moved closer.

Zvora's grip around Buna tightened.

When the medicine girl tried to lay her hands on her, Zvora felt something inside of her snap out of place.

Something feral clawed itself free, writhing and conquering her body until it had reached her mind.

"Don't touch her," Zvora seethed, baring her teeth as if she was a wild animal that had been cornered. "Don't you dare touch her."

"Quit this nonsense." The medicine girl wasn't impressed, her eyebrows narrowed and her fingers still grabbing for Buna. "You're embarrassing yourself. Now let go of her."

She tried again to take the girl away, but Zvora didn't let go.

The medicine girl that had prevented Buna from getting medicine.

Burning hot anger replaced the knot that had formed itself in Zvora's stomach as she felt herself lunge at the girl. Her hand and fingernails found their destination, the sound of her hand colliding with the medicine girl's face echoing over the ship.

Silence followed.

"I said," Zvora seethed, breathing heavily, "don't touch her."

The medicine girl shook her head — slightly, as if she needed a moment to process what had happened. When realisation finally came to her, her eyes narrowed themselves and she twisted her face into something that resembled the masks that Zvora saw in her dreams.

"That was a mistake," the medicine girl simply said, straightening her spine as she stood up.

There was a moment of utter silence.