𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐦𝐧𝐞𝐝 | 𝐯𝐢𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬

ꜰɪᴍᴍ.

a/n: sorry for how long it has taken me to update. This chapter was a difficult one for me to navigate and took me a terribly long time to write especially after how Varsha's last chapter ended! But anyhow I hope you enjoy and again all comments and feedback are appreciated :))

She dreams again of her faceless mother. Of blood and flesh and pelts of lightning. The gentle touch and warmth of another body sinking and tenderly moulding into her own. There's a song echoing throughout the dark expanse of her mind, its origin unbeknownst to her until she dares to look up into the bleary features of the woman holding her. The little of her mother she remembers disappears the more she envisions her; Varsha's dreams hold limited affinity to her deepest desires. Instead, they purge the very heart out of them, reducing her memories to ash and her mother to nothing more than a husk of what she was when she was alive.

Her mother's song continues despite Varsha crying out for her to stop, her voice mingling with a baby's squall. The woman hushes her, brings her closer to her bosom and strokes her fingers through her tufts of hair. This is the closest thing she'll ever get to love, she thinks. This is all that's left of it.

There is a lulling hiss amongst the shade; she feels it glide against the very darkness she cannot tread, coil at her limbs until she can no longer scream. Though it is not she that the serpent comes for. The mother holding her, she realises, is not hers—not anymore—and against the snake and the woman's hold, she struggles, clambering for a chance at life. As always she is ripped from comfort before she even has the prospect of clawing it; it is God's punishment, it is her fate for being so lowly as to be baptised 'bastard', a nameless runt unfit to serve anyone.

The serpent bears its fangs and from its mouth erupts a venom of blood. It seeps into her pores, into her own blood and marrow and she screams a scream that comes with no sound. Instead, she is to bear witness to the woman's screech. In horror, all she can do is watch as her skin falls like sweet syrup into the blackness, exposing her innards to Varsha's unsettled state. Flesh and bones crumble and splatter before her, her weak body unable to move until the woman dissolves and she too is unwillingly falling with the remains into the dark. It is her sinful mind that has conjured these wicked deeds, she believes, but it does little to comfort her. Nothing here brings solace.

The nightmare lasts but a moment.

Varsha wakes to the sound of footsteps, their harsh clomps reverberating like the cry of war drums. Their hammering causes a sharp pain to rip through her skull but she dares not flinch nor show any sign of discomfort, especially in front of the Bearman.

"The gulnebbgjøk no longer sings," Jarl Raudsson quips as he seats himself next to her. "Does she have no more songs left?"

Varsha doesn't reply. She blinks away the final fragments of her slumber and grounds herself back in her reality. There is no reason for her to sing anymore. She has lost reason to. Even after three days, she is still holding onto Rousse's dead body, her hands numb from the cold and their lack of use.