Role

Chapter 7

Snowflakes, floating down from the sky. Autumn had passed, and now it
was winter. Her thirtieth winter; as the customs of her people said,
now she was truly an adult, no longer a mere youngling. Yet she was
not with her people, nor did she particularly care to except for one
reason... her true name, one which only adults would have, which she
would have received now. She felt... incomplete without it. Nreisshe,
"nrei aisshe", snow flower in her tribe's tongue. It needed to bloom.

She would not need her people to find it out. She would do it herself,
follow her instincts... and listen to the whispers of the Ancients,
as she had learned to do. Her name wouldn't simply be a word given by
an elder, she would hunt it down, piece by piece.

And so she did. She travelled from one snowy mountain to another,
listening, watching. Only the urge to hunt something more substantial
distracted her now and then. And just then, when she was sating her
hunger, the realization came with the killing blow. The blood of the
Udgaardian patroller flowed down the cold blade of her axe, quickly
freezing in the chill winds. The scent on the thin air... red wind.

There it was. Red wind, "ralsh mtien"... it sounded so right.