When she was five years old, Honeymaren dreamed of a voice singing to her. The words were in a language she did not know, and the woman's voice seemed to drift through a forest at night. She recalled that she couldn't see the fog that was so omnipresent and there were strange lights in the sky.
But before she could find the singing woman, she woke up. Confused and a little distraught, she crawled into her mother's cot.
"What is it, dear heart?" Her mother asked.
"I dreamed I heard singing, mama." She looked up at her mother, finding comfort in warm brown eyes.
Smiling, her mother stroked a finger down her nose. "Go back to sleep, maybe she'll come to you again."
Yawning, Maren asked, "Who was she?"
"Only Ahtohallan knows."
?
Honeymaren didn't dream of the voice again until years later, during a time her limbs were growing too fast for her body and she began to find other women extremely fascinating.
She'd fallen asleep in a meadow, a field of flowers as her bed. As she dozed, that song returned, light and airy. Older now, she knew the language to be that of Arendelle. A puzzling thing, considering how often Yelana spoke ill of those people. Her mother was less harsh, to an extent.
Slowly, she peeked open one eye. There was a figure there, clad in white that shimmered in the moonlight. The woman had her arms stretched out, her head tilted back as she spun around. Honeymaren stared, enraptured.
But the dream faded before she could make out the woman's face, and she woke in her field of flowers, her body warm and the fog suffocating.
?
It was a song of joy, Maren realized in another dream after she came of age. But it echoed through the forest as light streamed in through the canopy. Joy and freedom and a longing that struck Honeymaren through the heart and made her very soul ache.
As she got closer to it, the voice became stronger, and clearer, and dancing through the trees was the woman in white. She moved so quickly that Maren could not see her face, but she had long hair the color of golden leaves in the summer. Afraid of waking, of losing the song and the woman who sang it, she closed her eyes and leaned against a tree.
The song seemed to envelop her like a warm embrace, until she thought the woman was so close she could touch her. Maren strained to keep her eyes shut, that longing seeping into her bones and spreading through her body until she realized it had been hers all along.
A hand touched hers, fingertips chilled as if from a winter storm. It slid up her arm, to her shoulder, before it cupped her face. The thumb brushed across her lower lip, a slow, steady pressure that made her knees weak and her legs quake.
The thumb moved away, past her upper lip to her cheek and its absence left Maren feeling wanting. But then there was breath cold like the edge of winter and she imagined her own fogging on it. The hand on her cheek tilted her head up and the woman kissed her, mouth warmer than she expected, considering, but lips as soft as she'd hoped for.
Maren's hands slid down a slender body to curvy hips, and she pulled the woman against her, just before she was pushed against a tree and pinned to it. Oh. Oh she hoped it would be one of those kind of dreams.
Coming up for air, she made the mistake of opening her eyes and saw, for just the briefest of moments, sad blue eyes.
She sat upright in her bed roll, frustrated and aching for a woman who didn't exist. Cursing under her breath, Maren flopped back down, digging her fingers into her blankets and struggling to get her breathing under control.
It felt like the spirits were toying with her, giving her these glimpses of someone who was out of reach, and far too infrequent of glimpses at that.
Turning her head she tried to peer across the goahti at her brother, but he was fast asleep, blissfully unbothered by dreams of ethereal women. And her mother, who had taken ill in recent weeks, lay still, breath slowly rising and falling.
?
Three years later, Honeymaren felt the first snowflake land on her face as she was brushing down her reindeer. She blinked, looking up in awe as more and more snow began to fall through the eternal fog. She'd seen snow before, of course. It fell in winter. The problem was, that this was summer. And a dryer part of the summer at that. For several heartbeats she admired the beauty of it all before she noticed how much more strongly it was coming down.
And then she was racing back to the village and her people.
Most of the evening was spent securing their food stores and making sure the animals and children were safe, and through it all the snow continued to fall, covering the trees and the bushes, the flowers and other plants in a thick, white blanket.
When it became obvious it was just going to keep coming down, the adults all broke up into their individual goahtis, and Honeymaren was no exception. She and Ryder cocooned themselves around their ailing mother, and she tried to sleep.
It didn't come easily, or without effort, but eventually Maren was able to drift into a fitful sleep. And her dreams, much like the stress that awaited her when she woke up again, were a discordant mess.
A discordant silence. She knew the path well by now, following it through pristine snow. And there, at the end of the path stood the woman. Dressed in blue, instead of white, but Honeymaren would recognize her anywhere.
"Are you okay?" She asked, hesitating on the threshold between forest and meadow.
"I'm never okay," the woman replied. Her back remained to Honeymaren.
"You've sung before. It was not like this."
"Here is where I am most free, most able to be myself. But I cannot have that. So I'll make my own freedom."
Honeymaren stepped into the meadow, but ice sprouted up between her and the woman. And then it surrounded the woman until it formed a cage. And seeing that cage, Honeymaren wondered if the woman had always been trapped so, and she'd just never noticed through her own selfish needs.
Before she could reach her, Honeymaren woke up.
?
She finally told her brother and mother, some time after the snow had melted and summer had returned. About the music she heard and the song that was sung and this woman who danced in a field of flowers.
Honeymaren kept the more erotic parts to herself.
Her mother should have died years ago, but she was still here, still strong, still an inspiration to Honeymaren and stubbornly trying to live long enough to see the stars again. And so she listened, and smiled as Maren told her about her dreams. "And Ahtohallan has still not told you who she is, has it?"
"No, mother." Maren smiled wryly, thinking back to her childhood questions.
"Then you're gonna have to wait," Ryder said. He squeezed her arm, and ducked out of the goahti. But before Maren could follow him, her mother took her hand.
"Your father said he dreamed of reindeer."
Maren tilted her head and her mother chuckled, "We barely knew each other. He was from one of the other tribes, in the southwestern part of the forest. A few days after we met for the first time, I ran over him while riding my reindeer."
"You ran over him?!" Maren barked out a laugh.
"Mmhmm. It wasn't exactly what he'd dreamed of, but it involved reindeer."
"So I should expect to meet my future wife when she runs over me on a reindeer while yodeling?" Maren joked.
Her mother laughed, "Maybe not that literal, no."
?
Honeymaren felt like she was falling. Like she'd tumbled off a cliff and was going to fall into the raging river. There was no other way to describe the way she felt the moment the Arendellan had opened her mouth.
Even before she recognized those eyes she knew that voice. She'd heard it singing a dozen times in her dreams, she'd tasted those red lips and felt those hands on her body.
The woman of her dreams made flesh, and what's more, she was here to help.
Honeymaren had recognized the shawl immediately; her mother had made her memorize the symbols of all the Northuldra families.
You belong here she wanted to tell Elsa. You're one of us.
You belong here with me.
It was Elsa who approached her after the fire spirit had settled down, "Thank you. For telling us about our mother."
"My mother once told me that remembering the past protects the future." Maren hoped she wasn't staring too hard. Gods but Elsa was even more beautiful up close.
"That's one of the reasons I'm here," Elsa admitted, expression momentarily downcast. "There's something I need to learn, to discover, if I'm to help my… our people. Arendelle and Northuldra alike."
Around them, for the first time that Honeymaren had ever seen in her life, Northuldra and Arendellan alike were mingling. Weapons and old scores were set aside, replaced by meals and awkward conversation. But there was growing warmth, too. Honeymaren wet her lips, then boldly took Elsa's hand as they walked around the village, "Would you like to know more about your mother's family?"
Elsa looked at her, with her impossibly blue eyes, "I would love that."
"There are six tribes, and nearly thirty families between us. My mother is from this tribe, and my father from one that wanders to the southwest. Many of them were cut off from each other when the fog fell. Your mother's… your family hails from farther North, past the Giants and on the eastern borders of the fog." Honeymaren felt Elsa squeeze her hand tightly, and fought off her own nerves, "Like all our families they share in taking care of each other, but they're also the storykeepers, helping pass down all the knowledge of our people."
"Are there … are there any of them here?" Elsa asked, almost shyly. Honeymaren rubbed her thumb over her knuckles and shook her head.
"They're a few days travel away, and the giants present a problem so we rarely interact. I know you've got a few cousins and an auntie, at the least." She wanted nothing more than to envelop Elsa in her arms, and brush her fingers through her hair, but she restrained herself; you didn't just meet a person and fling yourself at them telling them you've dreamed of meeting them your whole life.
"I'll introduce both you and your sister to them the first chance we get." They'd been walking around the outskirts and now Honeymaren started to guide them towards one of the campfires. A little reindeer started to follow them, likely as entranced by Elsa as Honeymaren was.
"Thank you, that means a lot to me."
Honeymaren nodded, and then sat with Elsa and the baby by the fire. She gestured at the shawl, "I want to show you something. May I?"
Elsa nodded, smiling, and for half a heartbeat Honeymaren stared at her beautiful face cast in firelight. There was movement out of the corner of Maren's eye and she thought she saw her mother duck into her goahti. She would have to talk to her later, but she returned her attention to Elsa.
She could love this woman easily and she could only hope that Elsa might some day feel the same. But for now, for this moment, she put those growing feelings aside so that she could maybe give Elsa some insight into whatever it was she needed to do. Carefully, she guided Elsa's attention to her mother's shawl, "You know air, water, fire and earth? But look, there's a fifth spirit…"