~oo00oo~
"My son." Laufey mourns.
The war has ended and Jötunheim has lost.
They might as well be an enslaved people, with the Casket of Winters taken from them and with their heir, the newly born infant, killed in battle.
Laufey feels the pain of the loss. His grief weights heavily on him.
His heir is dead.
His child is gone.
And his senses are dulled, having been depleted when he used them to call upon his child.
The thread is silent.
~0~
Long are the years that Laufey waits, a lonely figure on a powerless throne.
He waits, and plans for the moment he will one day strike and take from Asgard all that it took from him.
He waits for the day he would be judged worthy enough to rejoin his child. His son, his heir, who had died nameless, as it was in the fourth full moon that the naming ritual would have taken place.
He sharpens the blade that he will use against the AllFather.
If in the years between the Asgardian/ Jötunheim war he feels strange stirrings in his heart, a pulse that is not his own, he dismisses it as phantom pain of the child he once bore.
If he dreams of sunlight and gentle pasture, instead of Jötunheim's frigid cold, he believes it just, that this is his punishment for having lost his child.
He grieves still and feels the loss as it was only yesterday.
~0~
Laufey gasps and clutches at his heart. Feeling the pulse, the extra beat that once belonged to a child forever mourned. He ends on his knees, ignoring the guards.
He inhales and it is as if he has taken his first breath.
The bond that once existed between Laufey and his child reawakens. It stirs in him. Calling to him and Lauefy stares unseemly before him. Feeling the ties to his child and to his land. Ties lost when he thought himself unworthy. Ties being rebuilt, reforged.
His hand goes up as if reaching for something only he could see.
He smiles, content, grief now gone.
Hope has been rekindled. His realm will once again thrive, for his child is back. Jötunheim's heir lives and now believing himself worthy, all Laufey needs to do is call back the Casket of Ancient Winters, Jötunheim's most powerful weapon home.
~0~
End
~0~