Dark clouds lingered overhead, threatening snow or rain. Winter was slowly rolling in, and if she knew anything it was that she faced a risk trying to survive on her own, but she would have rather died than depend entirely on someone else. She was no subordinate - she never had been. The life of power was something she had held for too long. Having it stripped away from her changed nothing. She would either rule the world of her own free will, or damn well die trying.

So much travelling - or was it mindless wandering? South. North. South again. She was gradually familiarising with the lands, and though at times she questioned her memory, she managed to recall the location of the marsh. It was far from the most ideal place to stop and settle for a drink, but if she was going to be trekking back to the north for another shot at finding Kjors, she'd have to go for some time without stopping.

For the longest time her head was down, eyes closed as her tongue lapped at the questionable waters of the marsh. There was definitely something interested about the taste, and she almost hoped it might intoxicate her just enough that she would close her eyes and magically wake up wherever she wanted to be, but at her age and experience, she wagered she'd have to drink the entire marsh to get even close...

The power and the fame were secondary to her pride and her joy, personified by the son whose blood had soaked Kjors' pelt that same day the sickly boy had forced her to flee. Kjell - the one overlooked by Søren as the favoured heir. The smarter, stronger, more capable king that never was, and never had his chance to be. The ghost of her dreams and the victim of her nightmares, whose face had kept her awake and helped her sleep. The slain dragon prince whose voice was slick and-- and suddenly singing in her ears.

Her neck almost snapped as it whipped from the marsh, head turning with wide eyes before her ears had a chance, and in one split-second it felt like someone had reached into her throat and pulled all the air from her lungs. Every muscle tightened with a burning ferocity, and she found she was frozen. Stuck in the mud. Unable to move. Like she'd just seen a ghost.

Hitching a breath, pulling in just enough breath to be able to push forward one solitary whispered word. "Kjell..." This was a dream - it had to be, only she couldn't remember falling asleep. She had to be drunk, but her head wasn't spinning. Perhaps, and it was by far the most likely, she had died in her sleep and was yet to realise that she had regained consciousness in hell.

"This... this cannot be..." Breathless through each syllable as she urged herself to inch forward only to fail on quivering legs. Eyes narrowed, sceptical and blurred by the onset of tears that brimmed in the corners of her eyes. A dream, a nightmare, or some kind of a prank. One way or another, it was cruelty. This man that stood before her, this boy, had long been dead.

"My son..." and still in her eyes, dead or alive or stuck somewhere in between, he was still the only true son she had ever birthed "...you're... you're dead."

It was all too real. The sight, the scent, the clarity of everything that surrounded and overwhelmed her. The longer she should, the more that he talked, the more she was forced to face the facts. The son she had lost - who she had seen dead on the ground at mercy of Kjors just seconds before she made her own escape, had dug out of his grave. He was alive. Somehow. It was almost sickening.

"You were... I was..." so rare it was for her to be tripped up by her tongue. "I saw you. Dead." Clearly she had been mistaken at the time. "Kjors was... and the blood... you weren't breathing... he..." She had to relive the moment, to be sure that what she could recall was the truth being spoken now, and it was not an easy thing to look back at.

"Kjell... son... I swear... if I had known..." usually sturdy legs were on the verge of buckling, quaking as a usually concrete woman started to crumble at the edges, tears of disbelief and pain as she was apparently blinded to the displeasure of the boy - the man who was understandably upset given his take on what had happened in the past. All this time and her pain was without purpose. The realisation was shocking.

Instead it was a dream come true, his coming into her space with a physical touch that put the final stitches in the seam of her confirming he was real, and her breath hitched as the butterflies in her stomach morphed into hummingbirds, skin feeling progressively warmer beneath a thickening coat as she returned the gesture, and nothing more. Pushing her luck was not in her best interests. Clearly, despite his change in attitude, he was still harbouring frustrations, and while they caused her heart to burn she could not find it in her to dare hold it against him. She would not have been her son if he'd reacted any other way.

Full of questions, it seemed that the conversation was already moving on. The reunion a short one, straight to business, the way she had always been clearly not lost in her genetics. "Mmm." She hummed in that thoughtful way that only a mother could. "Living, but not settled." All manner of directions, all looking for Kjors, but she kept that under wraps for the time being. She wished not to have her moment spoiled by uttering the name of that pathetic runt of a child. That was far better left for a less emotional moment.

"The winter will be cruel. It's not worth the risk to walk alone." Yet that was exactly what she had been doing for some months and years, bouncing between worlds in search of peace. Instead she had found something closer to war, but it was not in her to talk such macabre things with her favoured child. There were other matters, other scents to press upon in a subtle yet overt way all the same. "I don't imagine you would be here alone..." not her son. Not her wonderful, handsome Kjell.