Hilde had always been a skeptic. She never believed in magic, in fate... nothing of the sort. At least, not in Kaldrvegr. Such voodoo-hoodoo had always earned nothing but a scoff from her, perhaps even a jeer if she was in a particularly nasty mood.

Things have changed; that much was obvious. Vidarr had never left. He'd been taken— and now, she was here, too. Since that day, she'd spent plenty of hours pacing these strange lands, constantly fighting to understand, to think of some reason why this happened, or, better yet, how. There was no single logical explanation that would ever soundly elucidate how on god's green earth she ended up here. How Vidarr ended up here.

It was all bad enough as it was, yet now Vidarr and his packmates had begun to speak of strange runes. A rock had an interesting pattern on it—so what? The woman avidly refused to ever heed anyone's attempts to explain that this phenomenon was important. It was a 'heap of caribou shit' as she worded it.

The night was cold, despite the near arrival of summer. Hilde was cranky—even more so than usual. All she wanted was sleep.

But even that was interrupted.

The stranger spoke in a tongue she hadn't ever even fathomed existed, and yet, each word harbored as much meaning as a native language would. Hilde gasped awake with muscles tense, eyes wide with fear—no. Not fear, never fear. She was simply startled.

Hilde walked past Vidarr with silent paces, slipping out from their den with a drawn-out sigh. 'Investigate the broken edge.' Her teeth gritted in frustration as she recalled the words that odd voice had said. 'It is the hunger.' If this goddamn little dream-creature wanted her to investigate something, why did they have to be so goddamn... confusing about it? She stomped through the forest with a grumble rolling deep in her throat.

You want your damn runes, she growled. I'll find your damned runes. Hilde trekked up the ridges, her sights set towards the fields which stretched far beyond the Vale.