Warbird remembered the way the villages in her homeland changed in the winter. It was never truly warm in the land beneath the Valkyr’s wings, but when enough time would go by for her to get bored, great Skadi would spread her snowy blanket over the world so she may move freely on her great skis. This was the season to hunt great beasts with bow and arrow, as Skadi’s chosen weapon. The people would darn great, heavy and go up into the mountain-homes. And when night came and the cold was deadly they’d dance into their shelters for fire and drink and love, all warming things.
She was a creature of limitless challenges who always sought to reach that outer edge, the fine line between what was survivable and what, beyond it, would mean death. Nothing in this land could compare to the harshness of her homeland’s winters, so Warbird sought the worse extreme: Solterran summers were brutal and deadly, and so this was the land she associated herself with.
She spent the better part of the day buffering through chilly winds above the Solterran city proper. It was her version of light training, as well as a way to keep an eye on things beneath her; she’d only been in Solterra a short time, but like her mothers, Warbird was a protective spirit. That was part of the driving force of the Valkyr, to protect the noble dead and their promise of an afterlife-- and so, unconsciously, Warbird had gathered her adopted home beneath her great and powerful wings and had taken it upon herself to keep vigil over it. She’d not yet had the chance to approach Adonai and tell him of this (tell, not offer, but tell. A valkyrie did not ask, they told) but she felt the time was coming soon.
Coiled around her back like some horrible cloak, Stykkislange nestled deep in her mistress’ powerful shoulders. A serpent of the deep sea, she had more tolerance for the chill than your everyday garden variety snake-- but Stykki was a horrible, persnickety creature, always looking for a chance to vocalize her discomfort. And so it was with great pleasure that she squeezed the middle third of her body tighter around Warbird’s stomach and forced a false shiver.
Warbird rolled her eyes and couched her wings, falling into a shallow dive; she flared them and looped round a large, domed spire, before landing at a trot on the Solterran outskirts She kicked up a cloud of bone white dust in her wake. Nippy winter wind turned desert sand into a lash and bit at her skin, but she paid it no mind; weather conditions were negligible, and not snow nor rain nor horrific storms of dust brought her to heel. She was Valkyr. She had a job to do. Unbothered, Warbird set herself upon patrol.
She came a third of the way along her route when she espied a young creature clambering to the top of the wall; and she was just within earshot when Jane lamented her curse of sovereignty. It struck Bird as quite unconscionable; she pulled up alongside the earth-hued doe (a tall girl, a strong girl, but not as tall or as strong as Warbird) and fixed her in a curious, red-gloam look.
“You would prefer chains and orders, then?” she queried, unapologetically blunt. “Curfew and imprisonment?” It was an asinine thought, to blaspheme the concept of freedom.
Warbird thought of the eternal call of the people of her mothers in the far-away sky, the aurora map constantly dragging her onward, and how sweet the freedom from the perpetual ache in the deep of her bones would feel.
The serpent on her back lolled her head upside down, fangs flashing. Stykki knew firsthand what a Warbird lecture was like; she considered sliding away into the desert to look for something to eat.
