Solitude. The ache for it fills her very bones, a leaden longing hard to carry, and harder yet to sate. Fingers weary, yet nimble still, she pitches her tent as her battered comrades rest by the fire. She unrolls the furs and blankets from her saddlebags, little comforts, hard-won along the road. The murmur of the camp surrounds her, dried blood still caked beneath her fingernails as she shelters in the dark.
She exhales, the winter chill slowly seeping in, turning her breath to fog. The pungent odor of seared flesh lingers in her nostrils still, hours past her closing of Alweard’s wounds. The ghost of a smell, lingering on her clothes, slowly growing stronger the longer she is alone.
Not seared, scorched.
Osythe forces the thought from her mind as she sheds her Eorling armor, pushing it away as though expecting it to bite her hand as it leaves her body. Plain woolen robe, layered furs. No longer does her hauberk serve as second-skin. Neutrality is a stranger, and yet familiar as a forgotten dream. Perhaps she wore it once, long ago, before she learned better.
The smell of burning flesh grows steadily. She wonders whether it has seeped into her clothes—she sets her cloak outside, and returns to the safety of her nest. The cold wind slips through canvas seams, through the edge of tent door flaps.
Not scorched, rotting.
It is too much to bear. “Leave me in peace!” She exclaims, curling under her furs. She pulls them up over her head, but a child in the dark. The murmur of armored men outside fades into nothing, until there is only wind.
Whispering wind.
Blaidd bach, the wind calls, but she will not heed it. Blaidd bach.
She shuts her eyes tight, but to no avail. She reaches for her seax and holds it tightly to her breast, imagines his body flush against her, calls his warmth to memory.
But Ósmund was not there that night. Already, he lay slain in the light of day. Blood and water mixing, as if they had any right to without hers. He cannot bring her comfort now, not this time. Osythe shudders in her solitude that isn’t. Dark air takes the shape of music, soft lullaby in the dark; sung in the depths of winter, while the hearth burned bright as her father’s laughter; as golden as her mother’s hair. It makes her stomach twist, and tears well up in her eyes until she can stifle sobs no longer.
"I am sorry!” she cries out hoarsely, until her voice cracks and tears run dry. "I’m sorry...” A chorus of pleas, falling only on the ears of the dead. Restless, ravenous as the bone-white Cwn Annwn. Her chest heaves as she lays curled around herself, a ball of skin and claws; of bone and sinew. And teeth.
“Fy blaidd bach” the wind murmurs fondly. Light rustle of the furs, gentle tousle of her curls. “Croeso adref, fy merch.”
