Atlas × Ursa

My binding loose?

Would you have flipped through my pages then shelved me to add to your collection?

Just another acquirement accomplished?

Would people note me in your presence,

then move on to your more impressive reads?

Or would you have dog eared my corners

so you could remember your favorite parts of me. Showed enthusiastically to your friends the words from my story you cherish to recite.

Hands holding me tight, knowing how best to utilize me as you carry me along,

"just in case" you have spare time to read me.

Would you tape me back together when your love for me shows signs of wear and tear on my edges?

When the truth that they will always be the "other" above all,

Crushes their spine, leaving them all alone to chant "I'm fine."

For asphalt beneath tears cracked from friction begins growing in attraction.

“All wait.”

“For the light.

“You fear.”

“Do not be afraid.”

“The sun shines out of my eyes.” 

“It will not go down tonight.” 

Hailing from Rockcliff the Rumnaheim family is known for providing the best Dwarven fighters, warriors, and sell swords in the Stormlands. Granted, they are provided by the children themselves. Far from Nobility, the Rumnaheims fought proudly for everything they have claim to. Orsik, their father, no longer fights but has made another name for himself in blacksmithing good enough to be considered art amongst Dwarves. Not that a name for himself needed to be made, his mother having carried him full term into battle and given birth to him in a thunderstorm above ground was enough to make the old Dwarf’s name procede him. 

When his eldest daughter, Torbera, named after his mother, came of age she quickly outgrew the training available to her and her family at Rockcliff.  She showed promise and character and with the connections her parents had with the higher clans and the weight of their family name, Torbera was sent to Domum to train under Lady Asella’s troops and grew into becoming not only a strong fighter, but a strong friend to Lady Asella. 

When she wasn’t training, competing, or pushing herself to the limit, Torbera spent her time with the members of house Tomu, successfully indeed gaining more honor for her family. 

Catching the eye of many of the Captains and Generals because of her family name, they continued to push her harder and she continued to proudly train and succeed under the most elite. But the only thing that caught her eye was the flash of steel and iron in the training arenas. All she knew was the fight, and it was all she wanted. That was until she saw Captain Kildrak Fireforge and his crew for the first time. She had heard the rumors before. The dwarf that dared to sail and tame the tempest seas of the Stormlands. They said he was struck by lightning so many times that his hair was forever ablaze with the fire that fueled his courage. The same courage that bolted him head first into winning so many battles and coating his ship with the blood of his enemies. The ocean was so scared of him that whenever he went into it, it spat him back out, not allowing him to drowned and that his hammer itself was forged in the his family’s fires that were a gift from the god’s themselves. One of the original forges from the original clans, (or so it is said).  His smile was wide and bright whether he was in mid fight, feasting, or laughing. Even in his fury, the Dwarf smiled like he knew something from the gods that no one else knew.  And his laugh! The thunder itself couldn’t compare to his laugh that seemed to emanate from his belly no matter the situation. But hearing the stories, and seeing the Dwarf himself in the flesh were two completely different things. 

Torbera fell hard, and she fell fast when she was sent with a team of trusted fighters to receive Fireforge and his crew from the shore and bring them safely to House Tomu. Immediately, the two sized each other up. The sea worn captain, soaked head to foot, grinning like a mad fool as he tried to decide if he was impressed or offended by the short Dwarven lady that was to lead his escort. And the Rumnaheim fighter unable to keep her own smile from spreading in return as she tried to decide if he was really a Dwarf, or a fish.  On the journey home, Torbera and Kildrak grew fond of eachother. He was everything rumored and so much more, and she was something he had never witnessed before.

By the time they returned to Domum, it was no secret that they belonged to each other. There was no wedding, no courtship braids or jewels of promise. When they were together, they didn’t need any of the ceremonies for they created a world for themselves.

He was her Seastorm and she, his Battleaxe. “Wouldn’t be trustin’ no other woman to keep me arse from gettin’ in trouble on solid land.” “No other woman would want to come near your ass. You smell like fish.” He would grab her and laugh, Torbera never able to keep her own laughter from joining him as they wrestled against each other in jest sparring. “Not without yer proper coin!.... Mind loanin’ me some?” His cheekiness only stoking her flames and making her fight harder. 

Torbera loved the salt stains on all of his leather and the tales of adventure he’d tell her to lull her to sleep when they were in bed together. The feeling of his heavy hands in her hair the only safe thing in this world she trusted more than her own weapons.

But Kildrak wasn’t ready to give up the sea, nor did Torbera want him to. And Torbera wasn’t ready to give up the fight, nor did Kildrak want her to. So for years, they went on with their lives, excelling in what they were destined for. And every year he would come ashore, Torbera would be the leader of the team that brought him home for as long as he could stay.

When horror struck and whispers of war entered the houses, it was a given that Torbera would be on the front lines, fighting for her country, her clan, her family, and her friend. As would all of the Rumnaheim’s. What she didn’t expect, was that her lover would be the captain of the first ship to carry the first siege across the coast and to Trinity. It made sense. He was a legend, and it would take only the best for the Dwarves to be successful. Among the first of the sieges, Torbera fought valiantly and without hesitation with Kildrak at her side as the Dwarves invaded Trinity and slaughtered the unprepared town. Revenge, anger, honor, duty, and so many more things coursed through her veins making her blind to the horrors of that night until it was far too late. 

Towards the end of that night’s battle, they were clearing the last of the small shoreline houses as the rest went inward. A human male came around the corner yelling, seizing Torbera’s attention as she brought him down before another cry startled her and her reflexes acted before she could stop herself, throwing her axe into a human child. And that was how Kildrak found her at the end of the siege. On her knees in tears, hammer on the floor, and staring at the dead child pinned to the wall by her axe, his axe, the one he had given her in love. 

“Comeon’. Get up.” 

“I didn’t… I didn’t see…. ”

“Ya...I know… but you gotta get up.” 

When she didn’t move, didn’t respond, Kildrak forcibly removed the axe from the human child’s chest, causing Torbera to flinch as she heard the thud rather than saw it. Kneeling in front of her, Kildrak put her weapons back in her hands. 

“No time fer this now mah gem.” 

Hauling Torbera to her feet, Kildrak took hold of her shoulders though her gaze stayed on the child’s dead body.

“You fear.” A few seconds passed and when she didn’t respond, he shook her violently and raised his voice. 

“Dammit Bera! YOU FEAR!” 

Snapping out of it, Torbera stumbled to find the words she knew by heart. 

“Do not.. Do not be afra… afraid.” “The sun, be shinin’ out of mah eyes mah battleaxe… you hear me?” 

Nodding, Torbera looked up at the already smiling Dwarf in front of her, the concern not hidden from his expression. “It will not go down tonight.” 

Kissing her forehead, Kildrak nodded in confirmation. 

“Nor the next, or the one after that ya hear meh? That’s a good lass. now let’s go.”

Days, weeks, then months passed. The war was still fresh in every dwarf’s mind, but Torbera struggled more than she was willing to admit or let on.  She had fought on, continued to strike down those who came in her path in the name of her family’s honor, never giving up the battle despite her nights were now plagued with nightmares and screams of children, their blood on her weapons. But Kildrak was always there to wake her, to help her calm down, even in the worst of it. When it was over, there were feasts in the stormlands to honor those that had fallen, their own family had another celebration festival in honor of their name at Rockcliff, and Kildrak didn’t go back to sea for a long time.  No one at home would think Torbera had changed. But it was in the small things. The way she didn’t smile at the retelling of war stories. The way she hesitated to give her last name lest she be celebrated and congratulated in the honor of the deeds she had done in war. Ashamed of her own family name. Ashamed at her inability to move on as everyone else did, she lived a fake life, of fake honor. Taking compliments on the outside, but dying each time on the inside.

Years passed, Kildrak finally set sail again. He never stayed away very long at first, but eventually, they found a sort of comfort in old habits and rhythms. 

And though she learned to cope, trying to remember that innocents always died in war, that it wasn’t her fault, Torbera was never truly at peace. 

It was of great help that Kildrak was there, to know what she experienced, but it was of great terror that in her worst memories, it was also Kildrak who was there with her. She found comfort in Kildrak on the same nights she couldn’t even look at his face. “Marry meh.” Caught off guard and yanked harshly from a sleep by those words, Torbera looked to Kildrak in disbelief. 

“Ya heard meh. I’ll put yer hair in one of dem perty courtin’ braids and we’ll have the biggest feast anybody’s ever heard of. I’ll marry ya in front of everyone and make ya a true Fireforge.” 

Tobera’s heart pounded in fear, in love, in pure shock. 

“You leave tomorrow morning Drak. You know once I get started, I don’t stop. I’m not waiting a year to get back into your britches.” She tried to pass off her rejection as a joke. They both knew she loved him. But that was the problem. She really did love him. And she knew him. 

And her Seastorm would only offer such a thing because yes, he loved her, but because he was worried about her. Had she hidden her failure at keeping herself together so poorly from him? That he would offer something so drastic… something she knew was not who he was. 

He took her face in his calloused hands and forced her to look at him. But his expression wasn’t one of love-sick courtship or even fear of rejection. It was that of a concerned loved-one when they looked down at a sick family member. “Marry meh ‘Bera”

And that was it. The moment Torbera realized she would never belong in the Stormlands until she could find her own redemption. 

“Alright…. When you come back. You can braid my hair and we’ll stand before the gods, and you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.” 

Kissing her forehead again, they both chuckled, but neither of them said anything as Kildrak pulled an iron ring from his own tangled mess of curls and braided it into her hair. The heaviness betraying both of their true feelings as they faded into sleep. 

In the morning when he left, she had to wonder if he knew… if he realized that would be the last time she would see him. 

It took her a few weeks after his departure that she was able to ready herself, ‘Venturing forth to bring her family even more honor in the form of adventure and heroism.’ But leave, she did and when she did, there was a celebration, and festivities to be had as always with her clan. Even as she traveled out of the stormlands and towards the white light district, it took a while before she stopped hearing her own family name when she entered a tavern or an Inn. 

April, 2020

I dont know....

.... if its incredibly romantic, or absolutely terrifying....

To have identified that person that can turn your torrential hurricane into a soft drizzle, as well as turn your gentle waves into a tsunami.....

April, 2020

My fear lives in my house.

It's fingers reaching out towards my equilibrium. It's tongue twisting around the damn whispers in my head, constricting them, forcing them, until they are screams.

I once told it to hush.

My dreams plesant, my nights full of sleep, and how I'd give anything for a night of peace again. Instead I sail on a raft controlled by the sheets sewn by your anxiety.

But I think I'm going to use it.

Because, you see, fear and I shared coffee together yester morning. It told me of it's yearning. I shared my constant searching. And I think we're going to become fast friends fear and I.

March, 2020