H O S K U L D

meaning: 'battle debt / battle bound' in old norse

5th Living Albino in Wolvden
Born Nov 30, 2020 @ 12:18:35
Out of Ikaiq/Hanta Line - Fraternal Twin to Nimbus

biography

Found lost and in ill-condition in the northern tundra, how and why the young weanling was lost from her mother she can no longer remember - only that the first face she can recall is that of her savior, Skjold. He brought Hoskuld back here, aided the herbalist in seeing to her health and gave her the name she bears to this day. He named her as his own, and raised her alongside his children. A cantankerous young pup - she grew up wild-willed and quite content to boss her siblings around all she liked. Pushy, and often prone to arrogance - Skjold's rather distant parenting did little to curb the stronger aspects of Hoskuld's personality. Frequently, she clashed with the elder members of the pack and her peers alike - but couldn't be cowed. 

It was a young and still weedy Hoskuld who led the pack of her age-mates, regardless of their parentage - and when Skjold's sun began to set - old bones beginning to wither, it was his adopted daughter that he chose to replace him. She learned the way of the land from him - the right of passage that was the wandering warrior's way. She was no den mother like Yri, her predecessor and Skjold's first female. No, Hoskuld was the battle bloodied and ruthless young raider - who brought her spoils back to the family. She was the marauding ghost, the White Valkyrie.

Despite her bravado, she was and still remains ill suited for the mundanity of pack life. She is no collaborative, adaptive spirit - There is too much of the brutish, recalcitrant Skjold in her, coupled with too little wisdom and too much adrenaline. It is just before a winter that surly would have led her lean and weary family to extinction that Aestrid is ensnared by scouts. The wolf is old, clearly older than Skjold had been when his body failed him and yet - there is a sprightliness to him. He has seen much of the world and the passage of time - and it is Aestrid who mothers her pack while Hoskuld wanders and returns on bloodied pawprints.

She is a fierce Mother - the grizzly who mauls to protect her cubs - and she does not cower away from the title. She takes in strays and outcasts alike - those like her who have nowhere else to go or no place to accept them. Her kind - the pale and sickly - prone to night blindness and headaches, quick to fall ill find a rough and tumble acceptance here, for all her bolster and brusque bravado. After all, she was an orphan once.

There are few who know the softer edges of Hoskuld, though her pack certainly sees them from time to time. She has a soft spot for flowers - particularly yellows. If she finds a buttercup tucked into the soft moss of her nest she is careful not to crush it and will not part from it until long after it's petals have dried and curled. She leaves the strategy and diplomacy to wolves better than herself - but trains her scouts personally. There is one, who knows Hoskuld as powerless - a moth to flame, and that is Dufa.

Her battle-bloodied lifestyle may head her to an early grave - but her sheer stubbornness might win out. She will not marry, not for all the fame or money in the world - and her father is long gone to worry about the fate of the house. He might have willed her to find a match she could stomach long enough to produce a few viable heirs - knowing that she could never love a husband. Nyr is as close as she'll get - a dear friend and companion, but never the person she'd be keen to spend her life beside. Nyr serves his purpose in the house.

Dufa is the confidant and advisor that Hoskuld never knew she needed - she sometimes reminds Hoskuld so viscerally of her father it aches in a special way she never really understood. She had so little time with him, after all. She knows though, that it will be Dufa who goes first, whose bright light blinks out and leaves the world darker. Just like with her father, Hoskuld will be left alone again and she has no idea what will become of her, or Hildegarde house after that.

Dufa settles into her long sleep in the heavy heat of summer, when the fireflies blink and dance through the courtyard. There Hoskuld stands, as feeling as stone as her wife is lowered into the catacombs beneath the ancient house. Their children, adopted and blood both mourn the loss of their mother's warmth alongside the sunny disposition of Dufa. Hoskuld allows herself quiet moments of mourning, when the moon is high in the night, the world is quiet and her heart cold.

She does not see a companion on the horizon, not so long as she leads the house - not after the such a loss. Instead, she spends her days pouring heart into Snjor and Molothrus - those who will succeed her when she does finally join her lady beneath the stones of Hildeguarde house.

She does go in the winter - younger than she had hoped but so ready following the loss of her heart. She leaves the living, breathing world on soft pawsteps - wearing the cloak of a star-woven mantle and climbing into the sky to join the voices of her ancestors. She leaves behind a battle fostered close family of brothers and sisters, most of them related to her through nothing but time and companionship - and yet they are those she would protect with everything.

So visceral is this protective instinct - that she presides over the pack now as an eternal mother the true spirit of ɨռʟɛ who looks after, loves, and eventually shepherds her flock into the warm arms of death. Her name, Hoskuld may fade with him - but ɨռʟɛ is a permanent fixture within the collective, now and forever.