This story is the re-telling of ingame events concerning my character and her matriarch. It took place in the tavern yesterday, so a few people may have spoken about it but please keep it within reason.
'Julla, give me strength.'
Her icy gaze continued to flick over her shoulder, staring at the back of the platinum blonde's head. Her stomach was filled with dread, causing her intestines to feel as if they were being twisted in knots. Have I displeased the gods? She wondered. I- I must have. To have been given this fate. To of had to sacrifice so much. She abruptly stood from her seat, hands clenching onto the bar with determination, closing her hands for but a second.
'Pust, ikke gråt. Vær sterk, Britta.' The voice of her brother danced through her mind as if he was standing behind her, each syllable clearer than the light of day. A slow, tentative breath slipping between her barely parted lips. She could do it - mustering up what little courage she had left, she spun around from her standing position, taking a few determined steps before faltering. She's disappointed in me. I- I can't. She whispered to herself, her palms becoming damp with sweat from the nerves causing her body to twitch. She raised a hand, grasping at the pendant that would usually rest upon her breast, raising the wooden stag to her lips as she pressed a kiss against it.
She revelled in the comfort for a few seconds, before taking two large strides so she was now directly behind the matriarch of her family.
"A-Ania." She stuttered the words, her voice barely above a whisper; strained and cracked. The seconds felt like minutes, the minutes felt like hours as she awaited a response. And a response, she would receive.
The fellow blonde strained her jaw, the muscles in her face protruding slightly, she was clearly holding herself back.
"What." Was all she uttered in return, her voice laced with a number of emotions. Anger, guilt, sorrow.
Silence.
Her breath hitched in her throat, stumbling over the words she wanted to say, her mind overrun with the possibilities. She couldn't destroy years of kinship with a single misstep. "..Can we speak?" was all she dared to let leave her lips.
"Then speak, cousin." Her answer was curt and short, just like her previous one. Her brows were creased into a frown, the lines of age showing on her forehead.
She composed herself, clenching her hands into fists and then releasing them. Clench, release. Clench, release. She had planned what to say for days, now. Her time being locked up in Rothburg she would often have a conversation with herself, practicing what she would do and respond with in this situation. The tears threatened to flow, the emotion she had been hiding inside her small body needing to be released.
"I-I. I'm sorry, Ania. I just wanted to help, I wanted to be strong like you. I wanted to prove to you that I could do something. It just - it all started to go wrong, horribly wrong. I was so scared. I just - I'm sorry." She wailed, her bottom lip quivering as she let the spew of apologies and explanations leave the tip of her tongue. The fear took hold of her body, causing her to stand upright and stiff, her eyes wide and filled with desperation as she stared into those icy caves of anger.
"..You risked our family. You risked my children." The matriarch growled, her tone rising.
"I'm sorry, I just. I spoke to Christopher Black - He said I should do it!" Britta responded, her voice raspy and high pitched as she attempted to raise her own voice to match her cousins.
"Is Christopher Black your f***ing patriarch?! My daughter gave her entire right side for you! For you!" She yelled into the face of her kin, eyes blazing in disappointment and pure rage.
It was too much, too much for her fragile mind to comprehend. She crumbled to her knees, the tears rolling down her cheeks like raindrops on a window. She leaned her face into her knees, muttering out apologies between the desperate gasps of air and coughs. She couldn't lose her, she couldn't lose her family. All she wanted to do - was protect them. But she failed. She failed at keeping Kaja safe, she failed at making Ania proud of her. She was still the weak, useless little girl her father had painted her to be.
"A-Ania. Please.. I beg of you." She sniffled, looking up from her position on the floor to the face of her role model. Her face was streamed with tears, eyes red and her nose running. The pendant swung from her neck, the wooden stag swinging and scuffing against the tavern floor.
Seemingly out of nowhere, a Norvakkt man named Baird attempted to land the weeping Santorski a hand, only to have Ania give him a rough shove in the shoulder.
"Do not touch my kin, you traitorous scum." She hissed from behind a menacing snarl. She soon put him into the background, her gaze slowly pandering over to Britta. "Stand." She commanded, her chin jutted into the air with pride. Ania was a victim to her own emotions, and at the moment they were overflowing. Sadness, Anger, Guilt.
Being spoken to as kin gave her some hope, hope that she would be accepted back into the only place she had truly felt at home, the only place she knew as home. She placed her palms upon the splintered floor, stumbling up from her kneeled position, wiping her sleeve across her face in an attempt to make herself look decent before the one she looked up to. Ania wasted no time in wrapping an arm around Britta's shoulders, pulling her close for a rough but warm kinly hug. She placed a hand behind her head, holding Britta's face into her shoulder as she comforted her frail kin. Britta only sobbed, grabbing onto Ania's pelts with such a fierce need - as if she was afraid the two would be forcefully torn apart once more. They stood there for a few moments, Ania's pelts soon becoming soggy and matted from the small blonde's tears. From the silence, Ania began to speak softly into Britta's ear, their native tongue being a comfort to hear.
'I do not know why we were spared, Britta. But we were. We're blood, we stick by each other. We help our kin in times of need. And now -." She paused, choking up a slight. "..Kaja needs me. She needs us."
Britta rubbed her face against the pelts, pausing for a single second to utter the following words.
"I won't let the fires of the North be extinguished."
End. Chapter two of Britta and Kaja coming soon.
@MantaRey @Film_Noir @WrongChat @Miss_Confined @Muffins_
@MantaRey @Film_Noir @WrongChat @Miss_Confined @Muffins_
