Osga

Osga embodies the non-glamorous competence that keeps a highland household alive.

Appearance

Osga is a broad, grey-braided Highlander woman.

In The Highlander

Osga is Branok Stoneheart's clan wife and the mother of two boys. She came to Stonevein Hall after his return from the sealed north and met him without fear, remarking that he had come back taller and approving when he denied it. When one boy asked whether he was still his mother's Branok, Branok knelt and said he was still Branok but did not know whether "still" was honest enough; Osga preferred that to pretty lies. She later told Dagna, Brynna and Eira of his night terrors and sleeplessness, and warned Eira that Branok had always been strongest when someone told him no.

She watched his formal weighing alone and did not share the hall's relief. Afterwards she told Eira that Orun had weighed the oath, not everything attached to it: she trusted Branok with her life, mostly with her sons, but believed no one should be trusted alone with power that rewards his pain. She urged Eira to be inconvenient, since Branok watched her as a weight he had not decided how to lift.

After the books

A continuing domestic authority within a community remaking itself. Her steadiness matters after the crisis as much as in it.