The spear in question was in terrible disrepair, no doubt from neglect, with wind and weather hacking away at the shaft and splitting splinters. Upon the iron blade, too, they spat acrid breaths, which turned it orange and flaky. Like a babe weaned too early from the teat it sat and rotted in the corner, useless in all the hermit's endeavors; it did not aid him in hunting or fishing, and as far as he knew he had entered no blood-feuds with another man's family. No one seemed particularly keen either about stealing his lands or the meager products he reaped from them.

But could a wolf truly outgrow fangs, or a stag antlers? Rather, when these things fell away, new ones grew in to fill the gaps. Warriors, similarly, perhaps could never escape their own tools of justice and survival; their antlers, too, found their way back into their hands. Eventually.

"Well, before she tries to wield my spear," Hrífa mumbled naïvely, "I'd better go and polish it. Good day." He did not want her getting splinters, after all. And he, too, needed to pack his belongings. He'd begun to compile a list of necessities in his grey little brain just as he turned away from Adlif, and attempted to scurry away to his solitude.