She Walks in Beauty

II. Wyrd

Rúna's fingers danced across the lute's neck, plucking and pressing in combination to produce beautiful notes. She had learned many instruments over the course of her training, but she enjoyed the delicate stringed instruments most of all. They were easy to sing with.

Currently she was the size of a human, just to enjoy the higher notes. Even singing from the depths of her chest, her voice at this shape was not as deep or resonant. It had a different quality, airy and breathy.

She let her voice lilt, moving effortlessly between notes, rising and falling smoothly. Her current retelling was a love song, two hearts entwined even as their selves were parted by thousands of miles. It was an aching promise to return, a yearning vow to wait.

"You sing very well," a soft, deep voice said from behind her. "As ever."

Rúna dropped the last note, almost jumping out of her skin. "Áleifr, don't do that!"

Áleifr took a seat beside Rúna. One of the giants who existed between male and female, they were companion to Rúna often, matched with her in tasks of healing and challenged by her in expressions of combat.

Even in smaller form, Áleifr was tall and lithe, well muscled from combat training. They wore their armor at the moment, offset by the way their hair was cut to their chin, some locks braided and tied with yellow ribbons. At the moment, dappling patterns of stars in gold marked their body, a stylized sun on their forehead sending down six golden rays across their face. "I apologize for the offense," Áleifr said with a smile that more teasing than apologetic.

Rúna set her lute aside. "What brings you my way?"

Áleifr's look grew more serious. "The Gatekeeper asked me to fetch you. I'll take your instrument to its home, as you are expected at the Pinnacle. I think she's going to cast the bones."

Rúna felt a tremor of nerves flash out through her limbs as she stood up. It was no small thing, seeking to gaze into the weave of Fate itself. Such was a task only accomplished by a Gatekeeper or the cleric of Mode who sat at their right hand. "I'd best not keep them waiting. Thanks, Áleifr."

"I don't know what's going on, but I hope it will end well," Áleifr said, carefully taking the lute before standing as well. "Take care, Rúna, whatever happens."

Rúna nodded. She'd fortunately grown more adroit at shapeshifting over the course of the past five years since learning the shape of the nightingale. She flowed from the size of a human to her true self with a minimum of effort, to cover the distance more quickly with long strides.

She loped along the path towards Stormhenge's center, a mammoth pillar like the hub of a great wheel with a path snaking up in a spiral around it. The murals that followed it were thousands of years of myth, or perhaps history, not that the giants drew a line separating the two. Things could be true even if they never happened, something Rúna felt deep in her bones as a storyteller.

Besides, to a giant, anything was possible through magic, though theirs was contained to shapeshifting and for a scarce few, the curse of prophecy. It was a great gift to be given glimpses into the future, but at a terrible cost: knowledge of the deaths of all one met, the self included, and how it could never truly be avoided. Rúna had always heard it was perhaps the heaviest of burdens to bear, but it brought great wisdom and perspective, which was why the Gatekeeper and Mode's chosen led.

She was almost out of breath by the time she made it to the top of the great pillar that dwarfed even giants. Admittedly, half of her exhaustion stemmed from the fact that she'd been almost at the bottom when she started instead of linking to the spiral from one of the great bridges.