Chapter Text
“In all these years, I have never asked where these came from,” Randvi mused, propped over Eivor’s body on the bed. Eivor smiled up at her, softened by the sleep that still seemed to pull at her eyelids. “I assumed them to be from the blade of an axe.”
Eivor moved the pad of Randvi’s finger to the small depression that cut through her upper lip. “If someone tells you not to put your face in a bird’s nest, you should listen.”
“I couldn’t have known this without you,” Randvi said. “You were small?” Eivor nodded and moved Randvi’s finger to the long line on her cheek. “And this one?”
“It’s no scar for a song,” Eivor said. “A man I sparred with hit me with the wrong side of his axe,” she paused and half-smiled, “or the right side. This was not long before we met. Do you remember it healing?”
Randvi furrowed her brow in thought: Eivor felt a familiar fondness at the sullen look of concentration that crossed Randvi’s face. She shook her head.
“I still had the bandages wrapped about my face when we were introduced. You came to our clan a day early, and I met you with bloody rags around my head. I had a word for Sigurd after that. Your beauty did not help my shame.”
“Keeping your vanity restrained, I see.”
Eivor shook her head, amused. “That is what I have said.”
Randvi took a moment to lay herself more comfortably on Eivor; her smile was less than innocent. “You found me beautiful, even then?”
Eivor shook with soft laughter. “And who speaks of vanity?” She folded her arms around her and pressed a kiss below her ear. “Then,” she said lowly, “and till the dirt covers my eyes, Randvi.”