So it goes with saying that only things I own with any connection to MARVEL I bought on Ebay or Etsy. MARVEL COMICS & MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE are their own creatures and I have nothing to do with either of them aside from the fact I enjoy reading or watching them, and am grateful for the ability to play in their world. I claim nothing, and I receive nothing for this, expect the pleasure of putting something out into the world.

This story is part of several prequels leading up to That Which Wanders is Unaware. The sequel to T.W.W.i.U will be updated every week, but the prequels will be updated is I get to them.

You can also find this story on ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN under the same title and pen name.

Don't forget to check out the Photobucket album by searching the title of this story and my user name.


CHAPTER ONE


1385 AD

ASGARD

THIS YEAR ON MIDGARD

The Union of Krewo establishes the Jagiellonian dynasty in Poland and Lithuania and brings an end to the Greater Poland Civil War.


ARNORA DAGNYSDOTTIR


In all truth, when someone uses the phrase 'my life began' it typically refers to the day of your birth, when you drew your first breath and cried your first note. If one was to take it literally and only so, that is all it would mean.

But the other truth of reality is that everything is subject to interpretation. Your life can begin, and end, and begin again. It happens to everyone, whether their consent or knowledge is present. It can be a moment that passes like a pin drop in a crowded room, or a landslide off a mountain. There may be no limit to its number because each life is different, no limit but the time left in body you live in.

My life began... when I was born. The 4th of April in the year 1177 AD, according to the standard of Midgard.

The name I was given was Arnora, and the name I inherited was Dagnysdottir for that is who I was. Arnora, daughter of Dagny, daughter of Kelda, daughter of Dagasi. And many others, but whose names have fallen out of use with the lifting of their Lights.

The names I did not inherit, on account of my gender, but are held just is dearly to my heart are Yingjie, the name of my father. Son of Khasar, son of Bataar. His names are good, and strong by my reckoning. They are names that had proven their worth.

But it would be the names he did not inherit into his that would truly affect the course of my life. The name of his mother, who has no other children. Eydis, daughter of Saga. Saga, who is also the mother of Eir. My grand aunt is Eir, the greatest healer in the history of Asgard, and with my birth, to my family and to the kingdom I have become a beacon of hope.

Saga's daughters both had the magick in their blood, but Eydis never took up the art, and Eir never took a husband or mothered a child. I am the next daughter down the line and the blood I share with them will determine the course of my life, or its shame.

My life began... with the arrival of my tenth year.

By the standards of Midgard I had been alive for thirty years, but even though our days are similar in length, time is viewed differently in Asgard and so is age. In our natural state we age three times slower than the mortals of Midgard. So on Asgard I was only a child of ten, and I had just reached the first transition point in my life. I was to undergo the Rite and receive the Idunn's blessing.

Idunn, the keeper of the Golden Apples is another woman whose destiny was chosen for her. Her name is not so much a name is it is a sacred title. She is the High Priestess of the Ageless Sisterhood, and she is faceless. She is never seen without her mask, because the woman may age, but what she represents should not. The Idunn has always existed, the one woman who is entrusted with the secrets of the Golden Apples, and will upon her deathbed pass the knowledge and name to a disciple of her choosing.

Idunn. A name that was most frightening to me. I was scared and my youthful ignorance grew into a sense of paranoia. I was sure that, being the great woman that she was, the Idunn would look down upon me and find me wanting. I was scared I would not receive her blessing, I would not receive the Apples. I would be left aging is I did, and never even reach my 300th year, withering away into nothing is everyone I knew looked on in pity and disgust.

Not even the reassurances of my mother could convince me otherwise. I had proof after all, Amora told me so herself. She said when she went through her rite a year before that the Idunn took one look at the boy next to her, and just passed him by! She even heard that the boy died of a 'disease', something horrible that only afflicted mortals, and no one even knew until they found him shriveled up like a grape left on a hot rock in the sun!

It took my mother a full month to get the cause of my fear out of me, and after that Amora became suspiciously absent from my life. It was only years later, coming on the cusp of rising maturity, that I realized what had happened and why. It was jealousy that motivated her maliciousness. Amora hated me for my name, so very similar to her own, and the prestige I was likely to be blessed with, just for the fact I was born to the right family.

But even with Amora no longer speaking disquieting lies in my ears my mother had to all but drag me to the ceremony, and whisper reassurances and minor threats to insure my obedience. I only gave her a reprieve when I saw the Idunn appear out of the crowd. I didn't dare misbehave then, because I knew for sure I would lose my chance.

I was is perfect is a nervous child could be. Then it all went away when she came to me, her attendant with her, holding the basket of Apples, and though I did not see it I felt her smile at me as she greeted me by my own name. The Idunn knew who I was! I was not scared anymore, I felt like the luckiest girl alive, and if it was not for my mothers finger against her grinning lips, I might have laughed with relief.

My life began... when I became a servant in the royal court.

I was fourteen now, and an Einharjar came to our home, bearing a sealed summons. Such a thing was not uncommon and even the fact that the seal was royal one, while very unusual, was not entirely alarming in itself given who we called family. What I did find strange was that it came for me!

I was still a young girl, not even having went through my first blood yet, and well from a family of note, did not bear much nobility of my own. I could not understand why they would summon me, and was left so dumbstruck that my mother had to take the letter from the guard herself.

The letter, is such a letter is known to do, explained itself. I was to be a servant in the royal household. That knowledge took away some of my shock. It was not uncommon for children of lesser noble households to fill such stations, in fact it was usually expected and encouraged by their family's is a way to elevate their place in society.

But it was usually something the family initiated, hosting events to introduce their children to the court and try to garner the best position for them as a means to be chosen by a family of certain station. I would not have to go through that process because someone chose me already, and that someone was the Lady Freya.

Freya, the daughter of Njord, the once King of Vanaheim. Freya, sister to the renowned Lord Frey. Freya, the Princess of Vanaheim.

I was ecstatic once I managed to process the news beyond my shock. But that night my parents fought. I could hear my mother shouting through the house. She was furious about it, and I could not understand why?

It was an honor to be chosen to serve a Princess, our Princess. My mother had more Aesir blood in her, but my father in contrast was more Vanir. He told me stories about Vanaheim, and the Vanir Royal Family. He said great things of the Golden Siblings, Frey and Freya. He talked about her beauty, and his hard won fame in the arena's. Everything he told me sounded so wonderful, it painted such a fine picture of them, I could not understand why my mother was so upset.

She even called her a cow, amidst a great number of other things I did not catch, but that was enough for me! I was horrified that Lady Freya would find out, and I would lose this chance. So I begged my mother to stop being so angry, and to not ruin this wonderful opportunity for me. I could not understand why her smile was so sad when she finally gave in.

I understood when I returned home from the first evening in Freya's service. I walked back home in tears.

I had this delusion in my head that somehow I had done something that caught her attention and intrigued the Golden Princess, that she choose me because she saw me as worthy. I could not have been more wrong.

Yes, I had done something to catch her attention, but it was not necessarily in a positive light. I had been born. Our families are distantly connected, not by blood, but allegiances in a time of war. It was a 'secret' that my father never mentioned, on the behest of my mother. A dark lining to a golden dawn.

Saga, my great grandmother on my father's side, who brought Eydis, and the renowned Eir into the world, also bore a third daughter. A daughter to a Jotunn. The giantess Skadi, a name I had never heard spoken until it was spat at me.

I was a grandniece to a Jotunn mongrel. That knowledge came with a terrible sting. My family breed with the enemy once. Though I shared none of Skadi's Jotunn blood, she was still half sister to my grandmother Eydis. I came from traitorous blood Freya told me, and the only reason she wanted me, despite my filthy family, is that I was Vanir, and that made me more qualified to serve her than a Aesir maiden. And someday, I might develop a skill great enough to make others overlook my dirty blood.

This was what my mother was upset about. She did not mention it in a mother's desire to protect her child's innocence. She meant well by it, but not telling me left me open to attack. I did not hate her for it though, I was too upset, and I just wanted her to hold me and take away my tears with gentle words and the safety of her arms.

She told me is she comforted me that night, the parts the Princess 'forgot' to mention. Yes, it was true that my great grandmother Saga bore a child to a Jotunn, who by all accounts was an exceptional warrior among his people. This did not make my blood 'dirty' is the 'cow queen' said.

Times were different. It was not forbidden or frowned upon to cross over the racial line is it was now. Our family was not the only one to do so either. It was a time of war, and the Jotunn were allies to the Vanir. Many daughters of Vanaheim were chosen to bear Jotunn children, as a means to strengthen the alliance. My grand aunt Skadi was one of the children born out of that alliance.

And the real reason the Princess hates me, is her father, the great King Njord, took Skadi is his wife after his first marriage ended with a funeral pyre. It is not me the Princess hates, just a tiny connection to someone she feels tarnishes her reputation more than her own poor behavior.

While my mother held me, and ran her fingers through my hair, while she soothed me with happy memories and gentle words, she told me there was no shame if I never went back. They would find another house to take me. I made the first adult decision of my life that night.

It was her love is a mother that made her say that for she did not wish to see me cry, but she was wrong. There would be shame. Freya would see to it personally that I never lived it down. She would slander my name, label me weak and say I scorned her good will, if I gave her the opportunity. Worse still, she would slander my family's name.

I went back. I endured, and I never cried in my mothers embrace again. I was a daughter of Asgard and Vanaheim, born into a family of nobility, even if it was minor at best. I always knew, despite my mothers coddling, that I was born to meet certain expectations and this would be one of them. I could and would be stronger than cruel words.

I would not shame my family by running away from the first sign of hardship. I would not give Freya that much pleasure.

My life began... the day I bled.

Idunn's rite, or Freya's abuse paled in the presence of my first blood. When our women, Aesir and Vanir alike, reach a certain level of maturity we know by the drops of blood between our thighs. It's not like the women of Midgard who they say bleed every month, but a singular event in our lives is our bodies change. I was fifteen, and I was on the edge of the next transition of my life. I could bare children of my own now, that meant I was also of marrying age and would soon be expected to take a husband.

I was a woman now, but I felt like a frightened child again.

I had not felt so nervous in what seemed like two hundred years. I was afraid it would hurt. I was far from ignorant toward what happens between a man and a woman, I served in Freya's chambers after all. I was quite familiar with it, but only in the way of second hand accounts. Dirty sheets, clothing and naked skin were my teachers, as were the gossiping tongues of the other maids, but I never witnessed or participated in the act itself.

It came with other nervous thoughts is well. Once I was married, I would not live in the house of my parents anymore. I would live with my husband, a man who was still more of a faceless concept than a real person, and manage a house of my own.

And I would finally be tested. My mother, ever determined to hang on to my childhood for me, made sure it was always put off, but now that I was a truly woman, there was no more avoiding it. I would go to Eir myself, and she would look to see if I had inherited our family's gift. To see at last if I lived up to the hope my birth brought.

That was something completely out of my control, it would either be there or it would not. If it was not it would bring such shame and disappointment to my family, and it would be a burden inherited by the next generation, one that would most likely be my children. There was nothing I could do except wait and hope the Norn's were kind.

The answer came, and it brought great celebration. I had the gift. I would be a healer, I would be Eir's student, and someday in the future I would be her heir is well and take my place is head of the healing hall, and personal healer to the Royal family. It was what my family prayed for ever since I was born. I was happy with them, and relieved, and concerned.

I was glad that the magic was in me, that I could make my family proud. It was the rest of the world that made me nervous. I knew how magic was viewed, it was no secret to me, I saw it every time people looked at my father.

Seiðrmadr they called him. Had my father just been a born a woman, he would have been honored and praised, and been Eir's heir himself, but by the chance of his gender he was denied the right to use his gifts. He was nothing but a man with tricks to them and I hated them for that, every time the laughed at my father and he simply smiled and kept performing for them.

I would never let them mock me for 'performing tricks'. I would work hard, and be a great healer. I made that promise to myself. I would never do anything else but heal with my magic, I would make them respect me, respect us. They would call me father great someday, because I was his daughter and my gifts came to me through him!

Eir was an excellent teacher, kind and patient, but stern and serious is well. She was of course still the Healer of the Royal family and with the brash nature of the elder Prince, Thor, she was often busy too.

That is how I meant Mýrún. A young woman with two years on me, who was a healer by practice, not birth, and had a striking lineage is well. Her mother is a Valkyrior, and Mýrún inherited some of her personality along with her looks. She was also one of Eir's more skilled apprentices. When Eir could not teach me it was Mýrún who supervised my studies, and we soon found we had much in common, even though we never agreed on the importance of fashion.

My life began...the day I met my betrothed.

Since my body had matured into a woman's body, I had begun receiving suitor, and they came with even greater frequency ever since I was officially named the Heir of Eir. It is for that reason my parents were very thorough in their judgment of who they would consider for my hand.

Asgardian marriages, especially in the higher houses with nobility, are usually arranged. But unlike on Midgard that does not necessarily mean forced. A suitor comes calling, and it is up to the parents of the daughter to judge their worth. Many things are questioned. The mans family. His station. His reputation. His properties if he has them. His temperament and personality. His previous marriages if they exist, and finally the opinion of the daughter herself.

You see, the parents choose who they think is good enough for their daughter, but the final judgment is hers. She can refuse any and all of them if she does not find the men suitable, and even if she agrees she still has an opportunity to change her mind, for it is customary to spend a period of at least ten Midgardian years engaged before the marriage actually happens.

The man I said yes to was an Einharjar. A rising lieutenant of the Royal Guard, whose father had distinguished himself as a general in the Jotunn conflict, and known to breed some of the finest horses in Asgard. His name is Randúlfr son of Hávarðr, and with him I began my life.


NOTES FOR THE READERS:


The MCU has given us a great deal of information about Asgard, but there is just is much that they haven't given and through out this story of the series I will attempt to fill in some of those gaps.

So far this is what I've added. In actual Norse mythology Idunn is just another Goddess amongst Gods and Goddesses. However since in the MCU (barring loki) the Asgardian don't commonly view themselves is God's, I had to find way to account for her importance. So I made her the High priestess of a spiritual order. I don't consider Asgard to be a very religious place, so it's more comparable to a guild then a church.

Regarding the Vanir, to my knowledge Hogun (which is a play on the word Shogun, and not an actual name) is the Vanir to be named so far. Also in the comic they called it the Vanir System, which implies vanaheim is an actual planet unlike asgard. that implies a certain amount of cultural diversity. So I have pulled influence from the established Mongolian and Tibetan, is well as chinese, India, Malaysian and a little bit of Russian (because Frigga in the comics is said to be Vanir too).

I've also made another adjustment is for is biology. A race that can successfully slow the body's aging process to a crawl, and allow themselves to live for thousands of years has to be able to make other biological alterations. So with that in mind and the their life span, it seems natural that there would find a solution to the issue of menstruation. Otherwise, by their view of time, they would be bleeding every day.

Lastly, and I will do my best to accommodate this, but the MCU has show us limited views of everyday Asgard, and has only introduced a fraction of the characters from the comic. If conflicts arise I will do my best to smooth them over and make adjustments. However this story is set in the past tense, so it is reasonable to assume any characters that show up in future MCU films could have matured or changed between this stories and their appearances in the films.