our demons are all around us and they don't come from hell
every single one of them reminds us of ourselves

Her body aches for the Jungle.

She cannot escape it. She cannot escape the vague rootlessness that has taken over her life—the way that she wanders with no escape. The way that no place feels like home (not even resting against Rodrik’s side, his unnatural skeletal body warming her scarred flesh). She is a warrior without a sword, without a purpose, without a reason. For her entire life, she has pledged herself to the Amazons and to the jungle. She was raised there. She eventually served and lead and fought there. All of her memories were made in service to the jungle, to the land that had captured whatever pieces of her heart were made to be caught.

So in the afterglow of the Reckoning, she has wandered.

For a while, her wanderings were nearby, taking her simply around the borders of various lands, haunting the edges and the trails without thinking. Then, slowly, they began to take her further and further out. She began to lose track of time—to lose track of where she was. Then, suddenly, daytime wanderings began to not stop when the sun began to dip down in the sky. Instead, she simply kept walking, or she found a quiet place to nest for the night. Then, she gave up on trying to find her way back to the home that was not a home. Instead, she kept going, following whatever scent or breeze struck her fancy.

But even this has an end, and her wanderings have once again led her back into the heart of Beqanna.

To the heart of the only thing that has ever laid claim to hers.

He is not difficult to find, not difficult to track, and although her pulse doesn’t race at the sight of him, there is a familiar warmth that spreads throughout her at the sight of him, unique as it may be. She does not make a scene. She does not gush or make flowery declarations—but she also does not apologize. Not for her absence. Not for her return. After all, she is still a Queen to her bones. She does not bend to the expectation of anyone, even him. Instead she simply presses worn velvet lips to his cheek and breathes in the scent of him, something about it comforting. “Rodrik,” she greets, the only sound to fall.

our demons are all around us and they don't come from hell
every single one of them reminds us of ourselves

She is nothing light.

Such light had been snuffed out a long time ago.

But, for him, she will be an anchor. She will be a lighthouse. She will drag him back from the pits of hell with nothing but the gritting of teeth and sweat upon her brow. She was once dragged there herself on the haggard edge of a disease that had consumed her out of nowhere, and she had crawled back.

For the Amazons, yes, but also for him.

She would gladly return to that dark place if he needed her to.

Brunhild is glad that he does not require flowery declarations of love because she would not know how to give them to him. She can only give him her presence, her loyalty, the depth of her feeling displayed in the quiet way that her muzzle finds the curve of his jaw. She can only give him the stillness, the vulnerability that she surrenders to when she is pressed against him like this.

He says her name, and she closes her eyes for but a brief moment, relishing in the way it sounds on his tongue—as if it was something sweet instead of dark steel. “I have,” she confesses, but it is not followed by an apology. “I wandered for a long time,” her dark voice fills the space between them, and she looks ahead, studying this foreign land and wondering what had brought him here.

“Next time, I would like for you to be with me.”

It’s the closest she can get to unpacking her heart for him. It’s the closest she can get to laying it bare before him, the simple act of expressing her want, her need, nearly undoing her. She swallows against the resistance in her throat, the need to bottle it up and lock it away, but instead she leans her forehead against him, breathing him deep into her lungs and letting the warmth wash over her. “I missed you,” the words are low, breathed against him so softly that he might have missed them altogether were it not so quiet.

our demons are all around us and they don't come from hell
every single one of them reminds us of ourselves

She calms beneath his touch, the wild edges of her unrest settling, the tendrils of her unrooted soul finding root in the fabric of him. He has always done this. He is a steady presence—a calming force. Shadows had always chased him, had always spread far and wide in his wake, but she has never known anything but peace next to him. Even when they stood with sin on their shoulders and blood on their hands, she has found peace—resting with him first as peer and then friend and now, impossibly, as something more.

As everything.

Still, it teases out the barest hint of a smile on her forever stern face—something that softens the rough edges of her, making her plain face almost feminine, almost beautiful. “I’m not going anywhere,” she murmurs before a husky laugh follows with a shrug of her scarred shoulders. “At least not for now.”

Because she couldn’t promise that she wouldn’t slip away again.

She couldn’t promise that the call of the borders and what lay beyond wouldn’t tempt her again.

Without the Amazons to root her, she felt listless, unsettled, unsure. It was only in the here and now with her shoulder against him and his mouth on her neck that anything made sense—that she felt like she still belonged and like she wasn’t a relic of a land long ago swallowed by the heavens.

Still, her mind wanders and she glances up, searching his face.

“How is our son?” she asks, knowing that the graces of motherhood have mostly escaped her. She cares for her hellhound of a son; she cares about him as much as she possibly can, but she was never made for the soft, sweet moments of motherhood. She was not anchored by the idea of nurturing him, and she was grateful that her and Rodrik had not created a soul that needed to be coddled.

Still, whatever is maternal within her, longs to hear that he is safe—that he is well.

our demons are all around us and they don't come from hell
every single one of them reminds us of ourselves

She supposes that she is glad that what they have is easy—simple despite the fact that they are not simple in any way. But now, in the relative twilight of their life, the crowns and the titles and the responsibility behind them, the very lands that had once clung to their every fiber swallowed up by Beqanna herself, they are allowed to be simple. They are allowed to pretend that they are nothing but two souls who love another, as though they had not commanded armies and led raids and schemed destruction.

But she doesn’t breathe the sins against his flesh.

She just smiles into it, hooded eyes lowering as she makes a soft noise at the back of her throat.

“If I know anything about his parents,” she says quietly into the space between them, a rare twinge of humor to her throaty voice,  “then I think that he will do just fine.” She had not been wholly surprised that the two of them had given birth to a hellhound, that they had not brought forth something soft and sweet into this world, and part of her wishes she could love him more like a mother should.

She should have wanted to fret over him, to coddle him, to protect him.

Instead, she had been perfectly fine letting him loose on the world.

Simply stepping back and watching as he made his way out into it.

If that made her cold, then she is certain she can live with the consequences.

Because now, standing next to Rodrik, she doesn’t feel cold. She doesn’t feel alone. She simply feels like they are standing on the precipice of the great unknown, and she doesn’t feel scared at all. Instead she angles her heavy head toward him, the lines that draw her up more masculine than feminine. “So what should we do next, Rodrik?” Her voice is steady as she takes her gaze back to the horizon.

“There’s a lot out there for us to go explore.”