She is his rock.
She does not bend to the wind or soften under the current of the stream. In the face of blood and gore and death, she emerges unbowed and unbroken. War takes so much from so many, and the Jungle is not spared its greedy hands. Vidar had remained within it throughout the battle at his mother’s silent behest; he could do the most good here on home soil. He had looked over the land as it burned, had watched as the animals retreated or were swallowed whole by the flames and destruction. He had helped where he could (had carried both smoky parrots too weak to fly and tiny capuchins frantic without their mothers) but he had wanted to be elsewhere. The blue man yearned to be on the battlefield, proudly displaying the badge of the jungle in the tangles of vine in his black hair.
But he is a good son, or tries to be, anyway.
When Lagertha comes home, he stays away at first. She is his rock, but he is not her’s. Vidar’s always known his place is right below Anguisette’s on the totem of their dam’s love. He neither resents his wandering sister for it nor thinks less of the iron lady who raised him for it – it is simply a fact he’s always accepted. But his sibling is lost to them. Lagertha has no choice, no one to turn to in the shadows away from her people.
He is all she has left, and it is time he left himself.
At the meeting, his eyes are inevitably drawn to her. The grown prince wonders if her shoulders will sag even more once he’s gone. He wonders, too, who she will talk to when times get tough. With Rhy and Sette gone, who will shoulder the burden with the khaleesi? Who will tell her chin up, be tough, look forward when he’s found a new home to defend? He feels as drained as the receding waters of Prague’s flood when he thinks too long on the matter. The jungle will always be the place of his birth. Lagertha will always be the mother he thinks of fondly and returns to from time to time. But it will never be the same again.
All too quickly, the meeting draws to a close. Vidar swallows the growing lump in his throat when she calls for him before it can choke him. It wouldn’t do to have a wordless last venture with his mother. They meet at the head of the trail she suggests, and he manages a weak smile when his eyes meet her’s. He sees up close how tired she looks, how aged. And even though immortality keeps her bones strong and her body primed, it is clear that the war has overwritten some of the magic. Not that it matters; the Sisterhood has retained its leader, as Vidar was confidant they would. The iron lady’s reign is far from ending with the Chamber’s war.
They walk side by side down the root-jutted path still littered with evidence of destruction. Bright green shoots off-set the otherwise grim reminders of the waste laid to the Amazons, a promise that there is life stirring in the midst of so much death. The blue roan thrills at the sight because soon the capuchins and macaws and taipers will come back too, as abundant and vibrant as they were before. It will not be bleak forever; he hopes Lagertha will recover much the same. She talks, then, once they are far enough away from the women. Right away, she mentions his sire and he is caught off-guard. “My father?” His brow furrows. She’s never mentioned the man (possibly because he’s never asked) and it stirs previously undisturbed waters within Vidar. He grew up with everything he needed – why would he miss something that was never there to begin with? But losing Sette had been hard on all of them, had pulled at a part of his heart that had never known loss. Hearing about his father feels much the same.
He shifts his gaze away from his dam to look for answers in the darkness of the forest. “I want to help the Jungle, Mother.” It is easy enough to say, but there is a deepness to his words that she may not realize. “I can’t stay here, but I am an ambassador as much as I am your son.” The beginnings of a smile flickers on his face when he looks back to Lagertha. They both know it to be true. He is stubborn and unwieldy. His body has filled out from his extensive, self-disciplined training. There is no room for him in the army of the Sisters, but there is a place for him in some army. “I’d like to hear about my father, he says, deciding in his mind. “But my mind is mostly made up. What do you know of the Deserts, other than the fact that it is suitably hot?” The young man can’t imagine living anywhere without a blazing sun warming its members to the breaking point. But her opinion on the matter is more important than anything else.
Vidar