Crow

She was Crow.

The steward named her so that day she was found in the tundra outside the hall’s gates. She did not remember how she got there, but one day she was just there, fully formed. Blue-gray eyes, black feathers all over her slender body. Skin that shifted between woman and bird. Crow’s feet. Talons. She lay there naked, freezing on the snowy plain. Her body remembered pain before it knew breath. The forest nearby groaned under the weight of frost.

Where did she come from? She had no memory of when or how. Only a feeling of being pulled into existence. Her body ached as she pulled her knees to her breasts and her head to her knees.

This is how she lay when the steward found her.

The steward, Seidhra, cast a long shadow that engulfed her long before she towered over her. Beside her stood a being made of flesh and stone, and behind her trailed a serpent girl with an angular face and sharp ears, Eitria. Smoke damped from her skin and she coiled when she moved.

“Gromr,” the steward said.

He picked her up as if she was a leaf on the ground. His heat steadied her. He didn’t look at her, but she saw his face and smelled his breath. Dust, salt, copper, iron. The smells appeared one by one. And something else, a sudden pang of recognition. Of before. Shadows, fire, laughter, a world already burned. Creatures like this one, roaming around. Fighting, laughing. She snapped back, noticed the sway of his walk.

Gromr’s steps sank into the frost. The earth softened beneath him. When he breathed, a low hum followed, deeper than speech. The sound stayed in her bones.

The steward’s eyes were smoke, her white braids tied to form a crown on her head. Her tongue rested heavy on her lip. It moved slowly, slithered, dripped. She gazed over the girl’s body with a stillness that felt like judgment. She smacked her lips, seemingly without even noticing. The girl’s gaze met the steward’s. She had never seen anyone shaped this way. Hips, waist, curves — dimensions the body should not hold. The girl remembered lust. The shape of her stirred something older than thought, a heat her new body still knew how to feel.

The serpent coiled closer, eyes narrowed to slits. She was shorter than Gromr and the steward. Much shorter, close to her own size, and unfeathered.

“Where did you come from, little one?”

“I don’t—,” the girl started.

“We saw the light from the hall,” the serpent said. She was slender too, her amber eyes almost hypnotizing. “Heard the bang. Big boom. First time I’ve heard it. But she knew. She always knows,” Her smile curled slow and sharp and her eyes darted to the steward.

“Where are you taking me?” the girl asked.

The serpent-girl’s eyes darted back. Bore into her.

“To the Wolves.”

Her feathers tightened.

They reached a heavy iron gate. On the left side of the gate stood a watch tower. Behind the gate stood more men like Gromr. Huge beings that looked like they had pale skin grafted on gravel, with blue veins that pulsed like frozen blood in the light.

The steward raised a hand. Gromr stopped. She jolted in his arms.

“Open the gate.”

The gate rose without sound, climbing into the dark until it tipped, falling with a roar that shook the towers.

“No one sneaks into the hall,” said the serpent, laughing.

The steward looked at the girl. “This is the back-gate,” she said, simply. She pointed to a large fortress farther away. “There is the hall. I am the steward. And you—”

The steward turned to the girl. The steward’s tongue slithered out, tasting the distance between them. It darted back in, but rested at her lips.

“—you are Crow.”

“Kraa, kraa,” hissed the serpent. “First crow in the pack.”

“What is the pack?”

“The Wolves. I told you.”

The steward leaned closer to Crow. Close enough so she could feel her breath, her body brushing up on Gromr. He grunted and she felt the stone in him shudder. Not with fear.

The steward leaned closer still, her breath, heat and smoke, against the girl’s ear.
“Eitria will wash you, clothe you. Then you will be tested.”

Her tongue traced the curve of the girl’s throat. Broad, wet, slow, not gentle. The pressure left a stripe of heat that turned cold where saliva dried. The girl’s pulse kicked beneath it. Her feathers stiffened, roots pulling tight in her skin.

The steward pulled back. Her lips glistened. The girl trembled from the weight of being tasted.

She was marked.

Gromr set her down. They departed.

The serpent took her hand.

“Come with me,” she said simply and led her down another path, to a side entrance of the hall.

“Where am I?” asked the Crow.

“The only place that’s safe.”

They entered through a narrow passage of stone and smoke. Torches were set against the wall. The corridor breathed faintly of warmth from below. The girl’s feet scraped against the stone floor.

Eitria’s hand stayed on her wrist. The serpent’s skin felt faintly sticky, slick with resin, heavy with a scent of pine and salt.

The corridor opened into a chamber hung with steam. Stones hissed where water struck them.

She raised a hand toward the basin.

“Wash,” she said.

Eitria poured oil over her hands. The scent rose of pine sap, amber and salt. She knelt closer, her breath warming the space between them.

The water bit cold. Eitria’s palms pressed heat into Crow’s shoulders, sliding down over collarbones slick with oil. Her thumbs traced the ridge where feathers met skin, testing the seam, learning where softness turned to quill.

Dirt and frost streaked away. Crow’s breath caught when Eitria’s hands moved lower: over her breasts, down to her belly, lower. Oil pooled in the dip of her navel before sliding down.

“You were shaped well,” Eitria whispered. Her voice softened, almost reverent. “What kind of fire made you?”

Crow didn’t answer. Couldn’t remember.

Her fingers lingered at Crow’s hips, thumbs pressing the soft flesh there. Deliberate, but gentle. She leaned in, her cheek brushing Crow’s temple as she reached for the basin again.

Crow’s pulse drummed beneath her skin. She did not pull away.

Eitria watched her closely, eyes tracing every line of her body, noted every trembling breath.

She picked at the feathers, curious at how they stuck. She brushed one backward, then forward again, testing how it grew from flesh.

“Not sewn,” she murmured. “Not grown either.”

Her thumb found the seam where skin thickened into quill. She leaned closer, studying. The oil gleamed.

“It dries the water before it falls,” she whispered.

She forgot to move her hands. Her gaze softened.

Crow said nothing. The steam thickened until she could not tell where her body ended. Only that she felt the serpent’s hands on her from legs to thighs, from belly to breast and shoulder. The serpent cupped her hands and washed her head too.

When she finished, she lifted the white fur and draped it over Crow’s shoulders. The weight settled warm and heavy. Eitria’s fingers slid along Crow’s collarbones, adjusting the drape, her knuckles brushing bare skin as she fastened the clasp.

Her thumb pressed the hollow of Crow’s throat. She felt the pulse there, quick and fragile.

“Do not be afraid,” Eitria whispered. Her lips hovered close to Crow’s ear, breath warm and damp. Her hand slipped down, smoothing the fur over Crow’s chest, fingers splayed wide as if measuring the span of her ribs.

She stepped back. Her gaze lingered.

“Now you are ready,” she said and led her to a side door. She opened it.

This room was empty save for a circle traced with soot.

“Lay down in the circle,” Eitria said. “I will see you if you wake again.”

Crow stepped forward. Her feet left claw marks in the soot, three-toed and deep. The fur slipped from her shoulders and pooled at her feet. Cold air touched her skin. Back, ribs, the curve of her spine. Her feathers rose.

She lowered herself into the circle, knees pressing soot, palms flat against stone. The floor was warm. Not from the fire. From something beneath.

Eitria watched from the threshold, eyes half-lidded, lips parted.

The air trembled.

The circle flared.

Crow’s skin tightened. Heat crawled up her thighs, into her belly, curling around her ribs like hands. Her breath came short. The mountain pressed into her, through her, claiming her from the inside out.

Her feathers rose, every strand stiff with heat. She smelled iron and bone. The mountain spoke through the fire. It was hunger.

Then everything went white.

Crow dreamed. Of a fire that burned. Of ice that never melted. Of flying over the world, of landing on soft shoulders. Blinding light. Noise. Of a mountain that lived and was inside her. She could feel it being curious. She was new to this world, and the mountain trembled as it explored her. She felt touched.

When Crow woke, Eitria lay beside them in the circle, skin steaming in the cold. Naked too now.
Crow did not know when Eitria had come. Or when the shape of Crow’s own body had changed.

Crow’s chest rose and fell, ribs expanding in a rhythm they did not remember choosing. Their body knew breath differently now. Broader. Deeper. Not girl-breath, not boy-breath. Mountain-breath.

The word she no longer fit.
“You live,” Eitria whispered, and drew them close.
“The mountain keeps what it loves.”

Crow’s feathers had turned white at the tips, frost claiming each one.
Their veins ran with hunger, and with cold.
When they breathed, the stones listened. The air no longer pressed from outside; it moved through them. Every breath drew dust and smoke into their ribs, every exhale answered by a tremor in the walls.
The mountain murmured with their pulse.
Their feathers no longer bristled.
They listened.

The mountain had made its claim.
The stone knew their name.

Crow closed their arms around Eitria, hugged her back.

“What am I,” Crow whispered.

Eitria touched the frost along their feathers, traced the cold burning in their veins. She leaned closer. Her breath misted between them. Her eyes traced the line of Crow’s jaw, the width of their shoulders, the way their collarbones no longer curved the same.

Her palm pressed flat against Crow’s chest. The heartbeat beneath was slower.

Her thumb brushed the hollow of Crow’s throat.

Eitria’s lips parted. She leaned in and kissed them gently, neither claiming nor marking. Crow kissed back, and felt the smoke from Eitria’s skin linger over and tasted the soot in her mouth.

She pulled back slightly, her gaze soft but unwavering.

“The mountain reshaped you,” Eitria whispered.

“I feel different.”

“You are Ice-Born.”

“But what am I, truly?”

Eitria’a voice softened, not gentle, but honest.

“That is for you to decide.”

Walking back through the hall, everything sounded different. Crow’s feet scraped against the stone, each step ringing faintly.

Figures stopped to look. Pausing, but not in fear. Crow hunched their shoulders on instinct, eyes lifting toward the rafters—
Up.
Their body remembered flight.
But the ground held.

Eitria kept their hand wrapped in hers, steady and close, guiding them down the sloping passage.

The torches flickered, low flames bending, as if showing the way.

At the door, Eitria pushed. It opened into warmth.

Gromr was there, and other jotuns: broad-shouldered, narrow, sultry, bare-skinned. Each shaped by the mountain and the climate in their own way.
The Wolves.

They turned toward Crow, and something passed between them all, wordless and whole.

Gromr’s chest rose with a slow breath, the hum in him deep and grounded.

“Crow,” he said.

A place opened among them, without gesture or command.

Eitria let go.

Crow stepped forward.

The Wolves smiled, some softly, others with hunger. But their shoulders lowered, the air loosened, and they made room.

Crow stood among them.

And the mountain, far below, trembled with approval.