Astrid Langsommer untied the sash from around her waist and let her robe fall from her body to her straw bed. Naked in the drafty confines of her husband's quaint mill hut, she shivered. Moonlight seeped through the cracks in the shutters dashing icy white against the vicious makeshift altar she'd made for herself - to the Dark Mother.
The steel dagger on her left was sticky, glossy with nightshade nectar. The wood carving on her right bid her thoughts be dark. Three candles stood in the middle looking over a tattered book with faded pages. Astrid had all but memorized the book, which she kept stored beneath the loose floorboard beside her bed - the floorboard her husband kept promising to fix but never had. Thankfully. Crowning her altar - the altar she'd thought so hard about she'd dreamed of it - was the skull of an elk.
It was an elk familiar to her. Since three summers prior, the same elk had been coming to chew on the grass surrounding their wheat field. Well, actually it had munched on the wheat the first year, so Astrid and her husband had taken to pissing around the garden. It seemed to work. She had grown very fond of the elk since then.
The day her husband Dagrun had left for harvest market in Whiterun, Staring at the stag's skull, she recalled how the life thrilled through her - a darkness through which she was the light - while she'd run after the stag. She'd heard it crashing through the forest better than she'd seen it. And when she'd happened upon him again, he'd been squalling pitiably. And she'd almost given in.
For a moment, they'd stared daggers at each other. Astrid had shot and killed many a beast since the time of her first moonsblood. She'd learned to soften her heart to the death of the creature she killed. But in the woods that morning, with the wounded stag staring at her, all she had felt was hard determination. She'd raised her bow, taken aim, and shot the beast in the eye.
That same day, she'd hewn a limb from a milling log and begun the carving.
Her heart pounded, and in the deadly midnight stillness, she heard the warm sound of running blood - her own blood, safely kept in her own skin. Thoughts of hypocrisy crossed her mind. How could she say that another's should spill when she felt comfort at her own? Yet, the ritual must be performed. She'd done all this work, for one. Found the book, saved for the book, hidden the book, carved the effigy, bought the knife, picked the nightshade, hunted the stag. She would have her freedom if her blood ran cold of it.
Astrid knelt before her altar on the packed earth floor of her meagre home. She picked up the flint and steel in front of her and struck a spark toward the tinderbox. A spark lit in her own tinderbox as she did it: the reality of her intent. Another strike, another spark that banked off the sharp sliver of moonlight. The earth beneath her knees burned like ice. A third, and the straw in the tinderbox began to smoke. She could smell it well before the moonlight showed her. And then she could smell herself.
With another few strikes, the straw was lit. Astrid took the left-most candle from in front of her and dipped the wick in the yellow flame. Then she covered the burning straw with the stone lid of the box to snuff it. Once she'd lit all the candles, she looked at the leather bound book before her. And she wondered again just what kind of creature had leant its flesh to that leather.
It wasn't part of the ritual, but she wanted to do it anyway. She needed to do it for her own peace of mind. There was a reason she was performing the Dark Sacrament against her husband, and she needed to say it out loud. So with her right hand, she picked up the wooden effigy she'd made of him and spoke to it.
"Dagrun, you sick shit. Even if you weren't whoring your way through the taverns in Markarth, endangering yourself and me with the pox, I'd still perform this ritual. With any luck, the Dark Mother will hear my plea before you return and I'll be free from your disgusting perversions. Never again will you have me in back. Never again - never again! - will I suck my own dirt from your foul root, you monster. You may be stronger than me, but you're not stronger than a silent arrow in the eye. I hate you! I hate the way you treat me like a tanning rack!"
She picked up the dagger beside her and raised it high above her head. With her skin crawling with cold and fear and hot, hot rage - her tweaking nipples, her tweaking bud - she plunged the tip of the dagger into the pulp of her effigy. Hate dripped from between her teeth and fell from her lips as she spoke the invocation she'd been memorizing for a year.
"Muetterlein, ach Muetterlein!"
