Cross-posted from my AO3 and Livejournal accounts.
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In my headcanon, England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales would represent little more than small settlements at this point - anywhere where the sense of belonging and community extended beyond the immediate family - so they'd be unlikely to be called anything very specific, and they had many, many brothers and sisters as a consequence. These various siblings either faded away or coalesced with one another over time as the identity of the various groups of people they represented changed, until eventually only Scotland, Wales, Ireland and England remained, containing aspects of all of their siblings who went into the formation of them.
I decided to give them very vague names in Welsh, using it as a substitute for the (proto-)Brythonic they might have spoken at the time.
_
Notes on Names and Other Terms:
Scotland – Ucheldir (Highland)
Wales – Gorllewin (West)
England – Dwyrain (East)
Ireland – chwaer Ynys (sister Island)
(Somewhere on the English SE coast) – chwaer Sialc (sister chalk)
(Somewhere in Wales) – brawd Cwm (brother valley)
(Somewhere in Scotland) – brawd Mynydd (brother mountain)
(Somewhere around the Lake District) - chwaer Ilyn (sister lake)
(Somewhere in Wales) - brawd Coedlan (brother copse)
cwningen - rabbit
y bobl - the people (humans)
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Late Iron Age
On the first day Dwyrain cries, it does not concern Ucheldir overmuch.
Since Mama left, Dwyrain has been ever more quick to turn to tears. If he's not too cold, he's too hot, or thirsty, or tired, or simply frustrated by some other thwarted desire that he does not have the words to express. And there are many of those, as Dwyrain's words are so few: every animal they see is a 'cwningen', every one of their family is 'brawd' – never mind if they are a boy-child or no – and every pain he has is 'cythlwng', no matter how full his belly.
Mama always seemed to know what Dwyrain wanted when he started to wail, whether it was sleep, or a warmer cloak, or the breast, but to Ucheldir it is just noise. Shrill and ceaseless noise.
He has no breast to offer Dwyrain, but he gives him a small clay cup of warm sheep's milk. Dwyrain's nose wrinkles as though it smells foul, and then casts it away from him. Ucheldir and Gorllewin wrap their own cloaks tight around him until he's swaddled like a new-born babe, but he quickly struggles free from their confines, and casts them away, too. They take him to see things that he normally enjoys – a warren of rabbits, a group of y bobl children at play – bathe him in a sun-warmed stream, and try to feed him honey fresh from the comb, a treat he will usually devour until he's sickened by it.
But nothing pleases him, and even when it begins to drop dark and Ucheldir lays him down to sleep, he refuses to surrender to it; fighting it away with rough jerks of his chubby arms and legs, face purpling with the violence of his sobs.
"You should sing, Ucheldir," Gorllewin says. "Like Mama did."
But Ucheldir cannot remember the words of the lullaby Mama used to sing when they were restless and frightened of the night. They've faded, like so much of Mama has faded recently.
The rhythm of her voice does still remain for him, however, and along with it, a melody.
He begins to hum.
Gorllewin's voice is sweet and pure like birdsong, but even when he joins it with Ucheldir's, Dwyrain does not quieten.
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On the morning of the second day, Ucheldir is slow and head sore from lack of sleep, and he doesn't think he can bear to listen to another moment of Dwyrain's squalling.
In an act of desperation – fatigue-fuelled and unthinking – he slaps him open-handed across his face.
It shocks Dwyrain into silence, his eyes growing wide, damp and disbelieving, because Mama never laid a hand on them in anger; not once, even when they were at their most rambunctious and defiant and likely deserved it.
He soon starts crying again, though, and even louder than before.
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On the third day, Ucheldir takes refuge with a family of y bobl.
The mother of the family takes Dwyrain immediately from his arms and then dandles him on her knee, stroking his little legs and murmuring those soothing nonsense sounds that Ucheldir's throat seems unable to form. Dwyrain struggles against her for a time, but eventually his sobs turn to sniffles and he collapses against her chest, one hand clutching at the front of her léine, the other, a hank of her red-gold hair.
"He misses his mother," she says quietly, brushing her lips across Dwyrain's brow as he settles into sleep.
Even though these soft words are kindly spoken, they still anger Ucheldir a little. Of course Dwyrain misses Mama; from chwaer Sialc in the far south all the way up to brawd Mynydd, they all miss Mama. Ucheldir misses Mama just as much as Dwyrain – perhaps more, because surely he remembers her better for being the elder – but he doesn't cry for her, because he knows tears will not bring her back. She would have returned a hundred times and more already if that were the truth of things. Gorllewin misses Mama, too, but he, at least, cries only when he thinks he's alone.
And it's a hurt that Ucheldir can't hope to heal. Even the woman's touch is only a temporary balm, because Mama always said…
The words are so faint now that Ucheldir struggles to recall them.
She always said…
She always said that though their kind belongs to y bobl, they cannot find a family amongst them. It's cruel, she'd said, because y bobl's lives are so short and ours are so long. You'll find nothing but sadness there.
Still, the family's roundhouse is snug and warm from their cookfire, the air redolent with the rich succulence of roasting meat, and Ucheldir is weary from too many nights spent finding only broken sleep on the cold, hard ground. He allows himself to doze for a while, Gorllewin curled tight against his side.
He rouses himself just before nightfall, and as soon as he lifts Dwyrain from the woman's embrace, his little brother starts to wail again; high and piercing like the distress call of some wounded animal.
"You should take that child to a healer," the woman says before pressing a kiss to the top of Ucheldir's head.
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When the dawning of the fourth day again brings no change in Dwyrain's mood, Ucheldir follows the woman's advice.
When Mama weakened like Dwyrain has now, she had confided in Ucheldir that she was nearing her end. Ucheldir thinks that Dwyrain must be too young to start dwindling like Mama did later – her breathing growing laboured, her skin turning ashen and then sloughing away like a snake's until she seemed to become as insubstantial as smoke – but he cannot be certain.
The nearest healer lives a fair distance away, though it would still be an easy enough walk if Ucheldir were alone. Dwyrain is so unsteady now from his endless crying, however, that he can barely stand.
So Ucheldir carries him – which, though he never raises his voice to share as much, Gorllewin must appreciate, as Ucheldir's stride perforce shortens to match his own – and Dwyrain thanks him for his efforts by kicking at his knees with every stride and bending his screaming mouth to Ucheldir's ear.
After they have stumbled along for a league or so, Gorllewin holds his hands up in a wordless offer to share Ucheldir's squirming burden.
As Gorllewin has nothing but a head of height on Dwyrain, and is rather portly besides, Ucheldir can't imagine that he would have strength enough to take more than a step or two Dwyrain in his arms. Then, no doubt, he would have to endure Gorllewin's whimpering, too, as he mourned a split lip or skinned knees.
Instead, he sends Gorllewin ahead to scout the path they need to take.
Even though the land is clear in every direction as far as the eye can see, Gorllewin takes to his appointed task with grave sincerity, as Ucheldir had hoped he would, his little dagger clutched tight in his hand and eyes narrowed with determination.
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The magic the healer uses is equally unlike Ucheldir's as it is familiar.
In the difference, there lies a throbbing pressure that presses hard against Ucheldir's temples and raises tears to his eyes, and a crackling heat that dances across his skin, making it itch.
The fae drawn to the power that swirls around the healer's roundhouse, as thick and acrid as the smoke from the herbs she burns, are ones he does not recognise, either. They cling with their clawed feet to the thatch of the roof above like a colony of bats, their empty onyx eyes glittering as they catch the light that springs forth from the healer's hands. Their mouths are all split wide, but they are not smiling like Ucheldir's fae do. They are simply baring their jagged teeth in a predator's warning. They do not want him here, because they belong to y bobl as surely as he does and they do not entirely trust him or his kin.
The healer calls on the power of Brìghde and the slain god, on all the knowledge of the Otherworld, but Dwyrain's thin wail rises above her melodic chanting all the while, never tiring.
When the sun has dipped below the horizon, she tells Ucheldir that she can do no more for them.
"Your kind is not our kind," she says, "and our magic cannot help him."
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On the fifth day, Ucheldir runs.
He has no destination in mind, no purpose beyond leaving Dwyrain's fathomless misery far behind him. Gorllewin sits up in his nest of furs as he passes it by, watching him with eyes rapidly filling with tears of his own. The sight simply makes Ucheldir want to run faster.
He runs across streams and scrambles over boulders, and when he can run no more, he walks, and soon there is nothing in his mind but the exhaustion burning hot in his chest and the careful watch he keeps on the ground underfoot.
When hunger starts seeping in at the edges of his thoughts too, he pauses for a while to gather berries. Without the constant demands of movement, he cannot stop the encroachment of even more unwelcome ideas.
What would happen, they whisper, if he were just to keep going? Gorllewin would be able to care for Dwyrain, surely? He knows how to make a fire – if not feed one well – and has enough sense, at least, to take shelter when the weather turns foul. He might baulk at killing game on occasion, but he knows which plants are good to eat and which ones taste bitter and rank. And, besides, Mama never ate the food of y bobl and didn't seem to suffer for the lack of it.
The whispers follow him back to one of the streams he had crossed earlier; one that he had noticed was teeming with the little silver fish whose flesh Ucheldir thinks tastes far too sweet, but which Dwyrain loves to eat almost as much as he loves honey.
Ucheldir finds himself selecting a stick with which to catch them, despite the nagging little voice, because, mere days before she disappeared entirely, Mama had said….
She'd said…
She'd said that Ucheldir had to take care of Dwyrain and Gorllewin, because he was one of the eldest of those that would remain after her, and she knew he would grow up good and strong.
She'd trusted Ucheldir with that, not brawd Cwm, chwaer llyn, or even brawd Coedlan, and that must have meant something. She must have held him in some higher esteem than all of his many brothers and sisters, to believe that he would not falter in this great duty she bestowed upon him.
(She had trusted chwaer Ynys with it, too, though Ucheldir has not yet been able to puzzle out why. Chwaer Ynys never heeded Mama even when she was alive, not if it meant she would have to stay somewhere she had no care to. Ucheldir has not seen her for many months.)
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Gorllewin starts to weep when Ucheldir crouches down beside the small fire his brother has set at their campsite – though, thankfully, almost silently, and he hides his wet face quickly behind the long drape of his brat – but, for the first time since he slept in the arms of the woman of y bobl, Dwyrain's tears finally stop.
His fat cheeks dimple as his mouth curves up into a smile, and he points one stubby finger at Ucheldir as he happily announces, "Del!"
It's not the six fat silver fishes speared on the stick Ucheldir's carrying slung over his shoulder that seems to have attracted Dwyrain's notice, but the small rock in Ucheldir's other hand; the one that had stood out amongst all the other stones that littered the stream's bed because it shone like gold.
Gorllewin is grinning and dry-eyed again when he pokes his head up from behind his curtain of cloth, clearly glad to share in their little brother's glee. "It is pretty, isn't it?" he says, reaching out to clumsily pat Dwyrain's shoulder.
Ucheldir thinks the rock's beautiful, but he's more than happy to part with it if it means an end to the damnable crying. When he tries to give it to Dwyrain, however, his little brother pouts and shakes his head, refusing to take it.
He seems content to just watch the little sparkles of light it throws out as it reflects the fire from a distance.
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When the fire dies, Dwyrain begins to mewl once more.
"Ucheldir," Gorllewin whines, sounding fretful.
"Give me a moment," Ucheldir snaps back at him. "I'll think of something."
They've stripped the ground for a good half-league around them of anything that might be fit to rekindle the fire, and Ucheldir is afeared that if he were to roam further than that, it would take him long enough to return that Dwyrain's sadness might have time to bed itself deeply within him again.
He could easily use magic to restart the fire – it was one of the first spells he ever learnt how to cast – but magical flames are flat and cold, and do not gleam as mundane ones do.
But, he thinks, magic could still help him, if he is careful and delicate about it. His magic is anything but delicate, though. It's raging storms and heavy stone; potent, but difficult to shape to his will.
It batters at him as he calls it up with a hushed word – 'sglein' – yanking at his braids and flaying hard against his skin, and when he channels it through his body, his muscles judder and ache from the strain of forcing a vast avalanche into a thin stream of power that trickles slowly from his fingertips as he draws runes against the air.
Diamond-sharp sparks burst forth from them, bright as fallen stars.
Dwyrain laughs.