Send me “(˘_˘٥)” and my muse will react to finding your muse with them and then remembering that your muse died a long time ago.
Only through her had he learned to truly love the cold that permeated every aspect of life in the harsh land that made the Freljord and her people who and what they were. He could turn his mind back to the years that they had spent together and be grateful for the hand Fate had dealt him. Had it not been for that chance encounter so many years before, an argument over who had rightfully slain a tundra deer, then he would have lived out his life in the Kumungu in a manner almost akin to contentedness. It wouldn't have been the happiness he had gained by remaining in the frozen north with her but it wouldn't have been a bad life either. That had been what had stopped him from leaving for so many years but it was also part of why he had already packed up everything that he wanted to take with him on the long journey south.
There was no small amount of shame that came along with his decision to go back to his childhood jungles. His entire life he'd been a strong and able-bodied man and now that he was in his wintering years he was beginning to realize just how time and the weather were affecting him. What troubled him most about leaving the home they had built together was not only because of the memories that wouldn't fade or the way that her scent still clung to every part of the house almost a decade after her death, he was leaving because his age and all the aches he was feeling were overcoming even his immense mental fortitude for pain.
Oddleif would have given him a look that screamed about how stupid, how idiotic, how utterly trivial and ridiculous that line of thought was. She would have told him that his machismo was going to get him killed and that he needed to, "Cut the big, tough-guy crap." He was doing what was necessary to continue living and there was no stigma about that when it harmed no one and assured his survival. Well... many members of the Winter's Claw might see his leaving because of his age and the weather as weak but he'd stopped caring about what they thought of him almost thirty years ago. They certainly weren't stepping up to offer some kind of support or help for the sexagenarian in their midst even after what aide he'd given them during their lean years.
Their house was a small space with just enough room for them and their things and it looked as if the two of them had gone through and scrubbed it clean together. It had been him alone and his back was aching from it but he didn't regret it. Now it looked exactly as it should have continued to look until his dying days, had he been able to stand the weather any longer. It was a one-roomed home with everything in plain sight from the moment anyone walked through the door. Their bed, neatly made and ready to be slept in, was still against the wall nearest to the only fireplace. It still had hot embers burning in it and across from the bed was a kitchen area with a table that had been too big for her and almost too small for him dividing the room. A huge footlocker of their combined things, items he couldn't bring with him unless he wanted to be weighed down or hire a cart, still sat at the foot of the bed and a few feet away an armoire that held her armor and weapons was closed up tightly.
His own armoire mirrored its smaller mate by standing against the same wall as hers, separated by a set of shelves containing various knickknacks the two of them had collected through the years. He couldn't possibly wear the armor that he had been seen in on the Fields of Justice so many years before but he still had it. It was resting in his own armoire where it would stay. Right now he was wearing fairly new pieces of armor fitted to his smaller form. It was lightweight and wouldn't protect him against some of the Kumungu's larger predators or even the Freljord's but it would do in a pinch and Rengar was still capable enough to keep himself alive just by out-thinking his opponents.
'Oddleif I'm so sorry. I couldn't stay here any longer without you. If you were still here then I would be able to stay in this cold forever. I stayed longer than I should have but I couldn't just let you go. I couldn't just leave all that I had left of you for so long... I'm sorry I couldn't be stronger for you. I should have been the first to die. I should have forged that path for you, not the other way around you foolish, headstrong, willful creature. Please forgive me for leaving you when I promised that I wouldn't.'
Rengar took one last look around it to freeze into his mind all that it contained and then one last breath of the cabin's purposefully close air, the walls thick and wild sheep wool stuffed into every nook and cranny inside of them. He breathed in her scent one last time and then closed the door to begin a perilous trek to the south that he knew he would possibly kill him. The thought didn't bother him when he considered that he would finally see Oddleif again.
