Act II - Chapter 1 — Doubts
The pass had been clear for two days.
Zandor knew because he had gone to the threshold each morning and read the snow. He was indecisive — for the first time in decades, a clear path didn't mean a destination. He had nowhere to go, no home to return to. He turned back toward the interior of the cave and saw only Eitöskr, the one who had saved him, the one who had given him the best night he could remember.
He stepped outside. He wanted to feel cold snow under his feet, sun against his face. He let himself fall back into the soft snow, feeling it against his fur, though his ribs protested a little with the impact. He got up slowly, stretched his arms out, and started moving through a set of press-ups.
Eitöskr drifted out of the cave and settled beside him, hovering just above the ground.
He made it to five before his ribs burned. He went down, lying there with his cheek against the snow, breathing through his teeth. Then tried again.
"Six…", he murmured, forcing one more out of himself.
"That's not going to help the wounds".
"I know, rodent".
Eitöskr tilted its head. "What kind of rodent do you think I am?".
Still grinding through the seventh, he managed between breaths: a squirrel.
"Mmph… There may be some resemblance", it said.
Zandor pressed a hand to his side and sat down in the snow beside it, taking in the view the mountain offered at this height.
"Tell me, what does it feel like to see everything and be part of nothing?" he asked. "I don't think I could bear it".
Eitöskr looked at him for a few seconds. "I don't know".
The raccoon sat with that. How was it possible that a near-deity could not know something.
"It must be hard", Zandor continued. "Right now I'm in a similar situation, except without the magic".
"No. You're not tied to the mountain. You have a life; I only watch them".
The raccoon huffed.
"True. But you're living one right now, aren't you? I mean, you are here interacting with me".
Eitöskr was quiet. Not with a smile, but with a taut stillness, as if Zandor's logic were a crack in the rock that had no business being there. It looked down at its own hands; the markings weren't only pulsing, they were flickering in an erratic rhythm that seemed to be trying to match the raccoon's loud, unruly heartbeat.
"Living", Eitöskr repeated, testing the weight of the word. "It's a... noisy sensation. Everything in you beats, Zandor. Even your scars seem to have a voice".
Zandor let out a sound that was meant to be a laugh, though it turned into a wince when the cut in his ribs reminded him of his mortal limitations. He noticed how the spirit was watching him, not like a divine judge. Something else.
"That's what happens when you've got blood in your veins instead of blue light", he said, nodding at the markings.
The markings answered on their own, flaring brighter.
"I've noticed you glow more sometimes", Zandor said. "Why?".
Eitöskr looked at them. They had always brightened when it chose to reveal itself to mortals, or when it used its power. Since finding the raccoon it was different. They lit up without any decision from it, and it didn't know what to do with that.
"I don't know", Eitöskr said at last.
Zandor looked at it for a moment. That was the second time it had said that today, and coming from something that saw everything at once, it landed differently.
"Does it bother you, not knowing?".
Eitöskr took a moment.
"It didn't used to happen".
It said nothing more. But the markings kept brightening for some time after the conversation ended, out there in the snow, with the sun going slowly down over Stormfjell and the two of them sitting without any particular hurry to go back inside.
That same night, after they had eaten, Zandor stood and took the opportunity to pass close behind Eitöskr and try to touch its shoulder. It wasn't quite contact, it was like putting your hand into the air right where the temperature shifts.
The markings exploded. Blue, green, violet. Zandor felt it before he saw it: a wave that pushed the air outward from where Eitöskr was, warm and charged, like the instant before lightning strikes. It moved his fur. It filled his lungs with something that wasn't quite air but something denser. The same colours from that first night on the summit covered the cave walls, the ceiling, the white fur of the spirit standing before him.
Zandor didn't move, though the hair along his arms was still standing.
"Tell me… is that part of the 'not knowing' too?".
Eitöskr stepped back a few centimetres. Its eyes were fixed on its own markings, which were pulsing with a chromatic violence that seemed almost painful.
There was something it didn't recognise, something that pressed without apparent cause, that had been appearing for days every time Zandor was near, and every time he moved away.
"I don't know what this is", it said at last. "The markings have never done this".
Without warning, Zandor reached over again and passed his hand along Eitöskr's shoulder. The same warm wave, the same air expanding, the markings erupting again in the same colours.
This time neither of them moved.
Eitöskr looked at him. Zandor held its gaze without pulling his hand away, without pretending it had been an accident, and something in that small, deliberate gesture made the markings pulse in a way that was unlike all the others before it.
It was the spirit that looked away first — down at its own hands, which were still trembling.
"This has never happened to me before", it admitted, and its voice gave away that it wasn't talking only about the light. "Do you know what it means?".
Zandor didn't answer right away. He started playing with his hand, moving it toward Eitöskr's shoulder and then away, watching with something close to scientific fascination how the brightness surged and retreated in time with his fingers.
"Maybe it's just that you're glad", he said. His tone was flat, almost dry, as if he needed to simplify something that was getting the better of him. "Like when a dog wags its tail at food. A reaction".
Eitöskr stayed fixed on the trail of light his movement left in the air.
"I don't know if glad is the right word", the spirit admitted, lowering its gaze to its own chest. "But yes. It could be something like that".
Zandor let his hand fall. The markings pulsed for a moment longer before going slowly dark, leaving the cave in an intimacy that hadn't been there before. The silence that remained was different from all the previous ones, no longer the silence of the mountain, but the silence of two people sharing a shelter.
Zandor stood without saying anything more, went to his spot against the wall, lay down with one arm across his ribs, and within minutes his breathing slowed and evened out.
Eitöskr didn't move from its place for a while.
It thought about what it had felt when Zandor's hand passed near. The wave of air. The markings answering on their own. That word he had used, glad, which wasn't right but was the closest anyone had ever come to naming something like it. It thought about the Elders and their laws and what it meant to be what it was: bound to a summit, watching everything without touching anything, for centuries, for however long it had left.
And it thought, for the first time, about what it would cost to stop being that.
It wasn't a decision. It was just a thought, quiet and new, that it let sit without pushing it or turning it away — the way it had let so many things sit that night.
When it was sure Zandor was asleep, it climbed down from its rock.
It moved toward him slowly, without a sound, and stood beside him. It watched for a moment, the chest rising and falling with that steady mortal rhythm, the dark grey fur, the old scars it had traced with its fingers that first night without quite touching them.
It reached out one hand and held it close, not making contact, feeling the warmth radiating from Zandor's body like something that existed in another language — one Eitöskr had been hearing from a distance for centuries without ever fully understanding.
Then it began to hum.
No words at first, only the melody, soft and unhurried. But then, very quietly, almost without meaning to, some words came in the old language of the mountain — the one that existed before the clan put names to things:
You're here, and I remain in eternity. I'll keep you safe inside your dreams. I'll ride the northern wind to be with you, so the cold may never find the light I've sworn to guard. Your embers will not fade tonight, nor any night my soul can reach you.
The markings pulsed gently as it sang. And without any decision behind it, without planning it, it let something of that light flow from its hands toward Zandor, soft and ancient, unlike the magic the clan had stripped from him in that ritual of humiliation. This one arrived the way warmth does when someone sits near a fire: without being asked, without any visible cost, simply because it was there and there was room for it.
Eitöskr went back to its rock. The markings faded slowly in the dark as the cave went quiet and the storm outside, for the first time in days, began to ease.
