Fever Dreaming

As the fury of adrenaline in her coursing, boiling bloodstream began to subside, ebbing from existence like manic from a shrivelling tornado—which is exactly what she was—Valkyrie was able to view the stranger before her with improved clarity and considerably less vehemence; the dissipation of the shadows helped too, without question. Ridiculously tall, even perched there across bent hocks like a stuck duck, she found that she could not capture the bulky-looking mare’s entirety without first lifting her chin, sliding one length backwards, and gawking—bearing her sensitive eyes to the full brunt of icy rain. A brisk wind hustled the soggy drape of long, milk-white hair hanging around her own broadened features and the like-coloured canvas pulled firm around her torso, shivered wildly against it’s penetrating touch. Valkyrie was hardly deterred by the strange manner of his greeting—more so retort—and grinned smoothly, suavely, before responding unhelpfully (though solidly), “Valkyrie, Shieldmaiden of Sunnmōre.” Even though she and K’yarie had discussed her birth-home in great detail through months past—the characters, hierarchy, irreligion and cold—it was yet to dawn on the Loorien-native that the Sisterhood was not nearly as renowned as she believed; that their reputation wasn’t as fierce or widely feared as presumed. Neither were the moralistic viewpoints she both stood for and imposed, felt by others: less so still, in the Rift… So when the thick female posed the question, innocently—expectantly—it was received with the very opposite intention, than intended. “Perhaps you would like to join the cause of the Sisterhood?…” she continued with unwavering casualness, surprising even herself with the proposal that she’d neither passed by the goddess’s shrewd mind or truly explored in any greater depth, herself. Perhaps it was the fact that the image of the mannish-looking other seemed in every respect, so intimidating—at least, there was potential (rivalling the massiveness of Roscorro)—or maybe it was simply that she’d been dormant, a grain of sand on the beach, for too long. “Yes,” she concluded firmly, confirming the concept’s viability for herself, aloud. The brazen Sister never doubted that K’yarie would join the movement; Valkyrie felt safe trusting that her beloved queen of the stars indeed hated the pointless existence of men enough to entertain a plan to eradicate them—so the more women of like-mind they could bring on board, the better.

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Notes for clarity:
- Valkyrie was cursed here. Physically she appears as a stallion, cannot remember why she hates men, and views others as the opposite gender.
- Vynter gave her a bead here that alters her body language to favour males.