The willow bark did its work, pulling Eirik down into a deep, dreamless sleep. He awoke to a croft filled with an unusual quality of light—a bright, diffused whiteness that seeped through every crack and crevice. The storm had fully relinquished its grip, and the sun, though weak, was shining on a world transformed into a blinding, pristine sculpture of snow and ice.
Bjorn was already up, his mood visibly lightened by the change in weather. "The path to the shore is clear enough," he announced, stamping his feet by the door. "We can start proper work on the *Sea-Wolf* today. Leif, with me. We'll need to check the hull for hidden damage."
Leif, eager for action after days of confinement, was on his feet in an instant. The two of them gathered their tools and weapons, their movements purposeful and loud in the small space. The energy was one of departure, of a mission resuming.
Eirik watched them go, the door swinging shut behind them, and the sudden quiet felt immense. He and Astrid were alone again. The fragile, insulated world of the first days had returned, but it was different now. It was no longer just a healer and her patient. It was a space inhabited by the ghost of the confession he had almost made in the dark, by the memory of her fingers closing his around the willow bark.
Astrid moved to the small, sealed window and pulled aside the stiff seal-skin covering. A slab of brilliant white light fell across the packed earth floor, illuminating dancing dust motes. She unlatched and pushed open the heavy wooden shutter, letting in a gust of air that was still bitingly cold, but carried the clean, sharp scent of snow and pine.
"The world is still there," she said, her back to him. "It did not forget us."
Eirik pushed himself up, wincing only slightly. The rest and her care were working. "It feels like it should have," he murmured. "It feels like a lifetime has passed in here."
She turned, leaning against the window frame, her face in profile against the bright outside. "For the world, it was only a storm. Storms come and go. Life continues."
"But we are not the same," he said, the words out before he could stop them. "Are we?"
Her gaze met his, and in the clear morning light, he could see the flecks of green in her blue eyes, like moss on stone. She didn't answer. She didn't need to.
The sound of an axe biting into wood echoed from the direction of the shore—a sharp, rhythmic *thwack… thwack… thwack*. Bjorn and Leif were already at work. It was a sound of normalcy, of his old life reasserting itself. But here, in the sun-washed quiet of the croft, it felt like an intrusion.
"Your world calls you back, Eirik Stórbrodir," Astrid said softly, as if reading his thoughts.
"It does," he acknowledged. The weight of duty settled back onto his shoulders, familiar and heavy. "And yours? Does it call you?"
A faint, sad smile touched her lips. "My world is this croft. It does not call. It simply is."
She moved away from the window and began her morning tasks, but the mood had shifted. The impending end of their strange seclusion hung between them, lending a new urgency to the silence. Eirik found his eyes following her, memorizing the way she swept the floor, the precise angle of her head as she listened to the sounds from outside, the quiet efficiency of her hands as she prepared a midday meal for the working men.
He needed to stand. He needed to prove, if only to himself, that he was healing, that he could re-enter that world of axes and long ships. When Astrid went outside briefly to fetch more peat from the stack, he gritted his teeth and, using the wall for support, pushed himself to his feet.
The pain was immediate, a hot protest in his shin, but it was a dull ache, not the sharp, blinding agony of the day before. He could bear it. He took a shuffling, clumsy step, his weight heavily on his good leg. Then another. He was standing on his own. He was moving.
Astrid returned, her arms full of peat. She stopped short in the doorway, her eyes widening slightly at the sight of him upright. She did not rush to help him or scold him. She simply watched, her expression unreadable.
"I am… walking," he said, a note of triumphant defiance in his voice, though he was clinging to a roof-support post like a drowning man to a spar.
"You are… upright," she corrected, a glimmer of amusement in her eyes. "It is a start." She dumped the peat by the fire and brushed off her hands. "But if you fall and reopen the wound, do not expect more of my poultice. I am running low on yarrow."
It was the closest she had come to teasing him. The sound of her voice, laced with that dry, understated humour, sent a shock of pure, undiluted warmth through him. He found himself smiling, a real, unguarded smile that felt strange on his face.
"I shall try to remain vertical, then. For the sake of your yarrow supply."
She almost smiled back. It was a fleeting thing, there and gone, but it transformed her face, lighting it from within. In that moment, she was not a chieftain's daughter or a healer or an enemy. She was just a young woman, beautiful and sharp-witted, standing in a sunlit doorway.
He managed a few more steps, a slow, agonizing circuit around the central hearth, before his leg began to tremble uncontrollably. He sank back onto his pallet, breathing heavily, but his spirit felt lighter than it had in days. He had done it.
Later, when Bjorn and Leif returned for the meal, their faces ruddy from the cold and exertion, Eirik announced his progress.
"I stood today. I walked."
Bjorn's face broke into a rare, broad grin. "Ha! I knew your blood was too stubborn for a little bruising to keep you down!" He clapped Eirik on the shoulder, a gesture of such familiar, masculine approval that it felt like a anchor dragging Eirik back to the sea-floor of his old life.
Leif beamed. "The *Sea-Wolf* will be ready to float on the next high tide, two days from now. The sail is mended, the hull is sound. We can go home, Eirik."
*Home.* The word should have been a balm. But Eirik's eyes flickered to Astrid, who was serving the stew, her face a carefully neutral mask. He saw the way her hands, usually so steady, trembled just slightly as she ladled the broth into Bjorn's bowl. He saw the way she did not meet his gaze.
The meal was a boisterous affair compared to their previous ones. Bjorn and Leif, energized by their work and the promise of departure, talked of the repairs, of the weather, of the feasts they would have upon their return. They were rebuilding the world Eirik belonged to, brick by brick, with their words and their laughter.
And Eirik laughed with them. He laughed at Bjorn's story of Leif slipping on an icy rock and landing in a snowdrift. The sound of his own laughter echoed in the croft, a foreign, jarring noise in this place of quiet industry. He saw Astrid flinch, almost imperceptibly, at the volume of it.
In that moment, he understood the chasm. His world was one of loud boasts, of clashing steel, of roaring fires and roaring laughter. Her world was one of whispered truths, of the shuttle's soft clack, of the subtle scent of herbs and the silent fall of snow. They were not just from different clans; they were from different realities.
The echo of his own laugh seemed to hang in the air long after the sound had faded, a reminder of everything that lay waiting for him beyond this cove. And as he looked at Astrid, now sitting silently by her loom, her back to the merriment, he felt a loss so profound it stole his breath. He was healing. He was walking. He was going home.
And it felt, inexplicably, like a defeat. The truce was nearing its end, and the war for his own soul was just beginning.