He could not recall the last time the cold bothered him.
How long ago must it have truly been?
How many hundreds of years ago?
A boy hidden underneath the shelter of a loving mother's embrace.
Or shivering in the darkness of one harsh winter's nights, clinging to a brother for warmth.
A brother whose face becomes harder and harder to remember throughout the centuries.
Kratos looks up from his work atop the roof of his house. The night chill of winter was becoming too harsh for him to sleep comfortably anymore. He found himself waking up still fatigued and irritable every morning, no matter how early he had fallen asleep the previous evening.
Fimbulwinter the dwarfs called this. In his time living within Midgard, the snow had never fallen this thick before. The fire pit inside their home was unable to fight off the bitter chill seeping in through the walls and roof. He had long since repaired the hole left from his fight with Freya's son.
Freya...
Before he allowed his mind to wonder upon the goddess and her dead son, he went back to work. Insulating the roof with moss and mud mixed with pine needles and leaves. He couldn't get the same consistency he remembered Her attaining when she did this all those years ago.
He allowed his mind to stay here, to stay on Her.
She danced into his memory as she always did whenever he was alone doing something she taught him how to do. As if leaning over his shoulders and watching him try to imitate how she would do it. Sometimes she would smile encouragingly, sometimes she would giggle at his mishaps.
He silently smoothed the clay like mixture across the cracks and layers of wood on their roof.
No, his roof.
She is gone.
He lays down a thick layer of moss over top the mud and firmly presses it down. He remembered how she looked, sitting on top this very spot. Mud in her fingernails, pine needles in her disheveled hair, sweat seeping through the back of her red dress as she worked silently. Was she humming? No, she only started singing after they...-
"Hello!?"
Atreus shouts up to him from below. Frustration in the back of his voice, he must not have heard him calling the first few times.
Kratos grunts down at his son. "What is it boy?" He rasps.
His hands and arms are bloody, but Kratos isn't concerned.
A deer's limp body sat behind the boy. A young 12 point stag. Not entirely impressive but the kill looked clean and it only needed to feed them for the night.
"I don't know, you just looked weird sitting up there staring off into the void?" Atreus says while hauling the deer on to a wooden table they kept outside for skinning and preparing their meals.
"You've been extra grouchy the last few weeks. I've noticed you're not really sleeping at night...-"
"How do you know this?" Kratos interrupted, finished with the roof and jumping down, approaching the boy.
As he neared him he realized how less of a boy he was starting to appear.
He was growing faster and faster with each year.
Atreus ignores his oncoming approach and plunges his dagger into the belly of the deer. Allowing the remaining blood from within the animal to spill out into a bucket beneath the table.
"Thirteen years of me sleeping in a bed next to you snoring as loud as a bear. I don't know how mother did it, but since it's all I've ever known it's uncomfortably silent when I can't hear you at night." His voice was a mixture of concentration and irritation. Or maybe it was not?
His innocent juvenile voice was deepening with each passing year. Soon he would sound like a man whenever he spoke to him. Kratos wipes his muddy hands off and extended a hand out to Atreus's knife.
"Thirteen, huh?" He said to the boy.
Atreus' lips quickly pulled into his mouth as his teeth bit down onto them. Something his mother used to do. He was hiding a painfully bitter smile.
Faye was to blame for this. She would always make an impractical ruckus over his birthday every year. Baking him apples mixed with honey and seeds she forced him to harvest weeks before. Every year she refused to back down, even though his protests. The gifts grew more and more lavish the older their son got.
Since her death, Kratos has forgotten his last few birthdays. Today now adding yet another onto the pile.
"Go inside and wash up. I will prepare the meal tonight." He says to Atreus.
"You don't have to." He says avoiding eye contact.
"Do as I say boy. If you wish to see what I have acquired for you."
Atreus looks up at him with his bright blue eyes. A smile threatening to creep onto his face before he composes himself. He failed, the smile began shining brightly through.
"Yes sir." He says, handing him the knife and wiping his hands off as he walks away.
Kratos starts preparing the animal for a smoking pit.
He thinks of a glass bottle he found several months ago while he was out hunting. Once the weather permitted, he was going to enjoy it alone in a rocky pond not too far from the river by their house. The cold had frozen over the small lagoon two years ago, no end of this cruel weather was in sight. A selfish act of pleasure he would allow himself to take, relaxing in a place that soothed his soul. He'll forgo with his plan and instead, share it with Atreus tonight for his birthday.
After the meat was cooked and the rest stored underneath a thick layer of snow for the next day. Kratos enters his home to find Atreus talking with the severed head of Mimir. The interior of their home had seen better days. Before his wife would organize jars of spices, jams, and preserved vegetables in salted water on the shelves. She would hang herbs and flowers to dry above them on the ceiling beams filling the cabin with a sweet smelling aura to drown out the smell of three beings inhabiting the house below. Their beds always filled with fresh straw and soft moss, the pillows and blankets were kept washed and made.
It had been a few years since their house was that tidy. He entered the room and was greeted with the smell of musk, rotting flesh, and shit. The layer of dirt that covered the floor crunching slightly underneath his boots. He set the meat down onto their table, avoiding the plates left over from the night before, knocking a few dirty cups down onto the ground.
"Well, you've certainly been busy." The head spoke to him. "Don't think I've seen you all day?"
"Thank you for cooking tonight." Atreus follows up, sitting down at the table in front of the mountain of smoked deer.
Kratos sat across from him silently and begins ripping apart chunks of meat away from the animal. The meat was cooked adequately, not overly seasoned as Atreus would normally prepare it. The boy had a pension for over seasoning their meals just as his mother once did.
"You know, I hate to nag but I can't remember the last time I've seen the two of you eat something other than meat these past few weeks," Mimir spoke at them from a shelf. "You can say goodbye to your teeth if you keep this sort of diet up."
"What?" Atreus says with his mouth full. "How can eating meat be bad for us?"
"Hmm," Kratos says swallowing. "He speaks the truth. I recall men of the sea struggling with sickness and tooth rot when they ate only fish for months on end."
He stands up from the table and walks over to the cellar where he once kept his blades and opens it up. He reaches down and grabs something wrapped up in a burlap cloth.
"We will worry about that tomorrow." He stands back up and walks over to Atreus at the table. Offering him the gift in his hand. "Tonight is a special night."
"Ahh Yes," Mimir spoke up. "Officially a teenager now eh?" He chuckled. "I remember those days, right brother?" He says cheerfully towards Kratos.
Kratos remains silent at the remark as his son unwraps the cloth from around the gift.
He held up the foggy glass bottle with a dull colored liquid in it. He smiles softly as if he was recalling a lighthearted memory from a few years ago.
"Thank you, father." He says warmly.
"Oh-ho!" Mimir says. "You Greeks best be careful if that's what I think it is!"
Atreus and Kratos turn their attention to face Mimir. "Speak head, what do you mean?" Kratos says. "It is only wine."
Atreus extracts the dry cork out with the tip of his knife. He brings the bottle up to smell it, only for a scowl and dry cough to follow behind the action. "Whoa! What is that?" He says rubbing his nose. "It hurts my chest just to smell it!"
Kratos snatches the bottle away from his son, concern cascading through his mind. Was it poisonous? Did he mistakenly offer his son poison, thinking it was a strange dark colored wine native to this land? He brings the bottle slowly to his nose and inhaled the scent. He quickly pulls away as the alcohol stings his senses.
Mimir can be heard laughing from the shelf. "You Greeks are a bit further along when it comes to crafting palatable beverages. We haven't quite worked out how to distill our wine. I'm willing to bet a few sips of that fermented fruit juice would knock a simple mortal flat on their back for a week." He winks slyly at Atreus. "But I'm sure a god such as yourself can handle a taste."
Atreus reaches for the bottle from his father's hands. A smile returning to his face as he lifted the bottle up. "Thank you again."
Kratos hums approvingly and motions for him to take the first sip. The teenager lifts the glass bottle up and raises his eyebrows.
"To a journey's end?" He says with a hint of worry in his voice. He shuts his eyes and with a scowl already on his face, forces several gulps down.
"Ahh." Mimir panics while watching the boy take gulp number three. "I advise moderation little brother."
Atreus rips his mouth away from the bottle and coughed violently. Kratos would have distressed, if not for the laughter that spilled forth between each cough. "Wow!"
Kratos took the bottle away from his hands and took a more conservative gulp.
His forehead intensity wrinkled. It was as if they were drinking magma from the pits of Muspelheim.
As he pulls the bottle away and the burning in his throat began to settle.
Kratos could almost taste a hint of apples.