Who else is counting down the days until the 9th of June?
xoxo
Sif has encountered few sensations more satisfying than the last tug as she laces her boots. The two knots tightening over her shins are the last pieces of her armour locking into place.
She slings her filled quiver over her shoulder and carries her longbow into the field. The row of targets at the opposite end reminds her of the snow-goblins she built as a child in Asgardian winters, before the next sunrise took them away. Her friend waits at the sideline with her own bow and ammunition.
"Ready before me," Sif remarks. "Nice touch."
"I may be a novice at archery, but warrior blood has always run through my veins." This makes Sif look at the blue veins etched on the other's thickset wrists.
"Indeed. You're also holding your bow upside down."
"Oh."
Her companion pulls back her ginger curls into a ponytail with the same care as finding the archery stance Sif taught her. They settle into their metronome rhythm; always they seem to end up with one firing while the other in the middle of nocking their next arrow. For many minutes Sif lets her mind ride the buzz of flying missiles. She waits for it to happen in the corner of her eye.
As Sif pretends to take her next aim, she watches the woman beside her silently crumble apart.
Sif lowers her bow.
"Is the wind changing direction?" Sif is impressed with how little her friend's voice betrays her – an upright statue without a crack.
Sif relaxes the bowstring and replaces her arrow in its quiver. "Why do you watch me so whenever I do this?"
The gingery head tilts. "Why do I watch? I'm learning a new skill, Sif. You're a tough coach, but surely you understand I need to look now and again."
"No. Right before I fire an arrow, when you think I see you not." Sif says, "You stare at me with something else, as if in great sorrow that was not there earlier."
Her friend falters. "I know not what – "
"You do." Sif takes her friend's arm gently. "You have become my friend here, with every right to harbour your own secrets as you will. But, as your friend, I do ask you to disclose this one for me."
Perhaps she is just used to the likes of childhood pests like Loki, but Sif is surprised when her companion's admission comes easily, with easy honesty. "You remind me of someone."
Sif is not so surprised, however, by this answer. They are, after all, in the realm of eternity. Memories seem also to never truly die.
"Make no mistake – you are a true friend to me, Sif." The reciprocal grip on Sif's hand is firm. "But perhaps I was drawn to you in the first place by this resemblance."
"Another friend?" Sif guesses, but this does not feel quite right. "A sibling," she tries again.
She receives a fragmented smile. "A twin sister."
Sif nods. There was the source of the metronome rhythm.
"Her name?"
"Howea."
As if out of habit, she adds as though she has been for millennia: "I miss her."
"Does she still live in the Worlds Below?" Sif asks. She expects to hear yes. She wants to bite her own tongue out when her companion stares hard at her next arrow as she nocks it, and lets the answer fall to the ground among the long grass.
"No."
Sif does not ask where Howea dwells instead.
"There is no need to pity me." A pair of falcon eyes shine when they are lifted. "But – " she releases her arrow " – there is your disclosure."
They practice the next dozen shots in a silence that Sif feels cementing their trust. As soon as they met in Valhalla, Sif had liked Ylfa completely. She had found her new friend to be trustworthy from crown to toe, with a boldness that signposted her kinship to Sif. So it makes it all the more disconcerting that, in that morning, she is reminded so strongly of Loki.
Here is someone else in Valhalla, the realm of light, who cannot bring themselves to be completely happy. Who feels they are still missing something.
The thought slows her stride as they retrieve their arrows.
"What are you thinking of?"
Sif feels the curious scrutiny on her as they yank arrows from the padding of the targets. "Really, Sif, please do not waste pity on me."
"I don't."
"What, then?"
Sif sighs.
"You remind me of someone."
Frigga writes her letter in the sun. She notices her son's storm clouds crowning the amethyst mountains in the distance, so she will make the most of the warmth before relishing the rain. If Thor is letting the clouds build naturally, she expects the storm will reach the city in another three or four days. Frigga makes a note to check on him if it arrives any sooner.
After she chooses a balcony that shades a row of fishponds below, she takes her time over the letter because it is so short. It is more of a note. She predicts the recipient will also take their time in reading it. As she pens the words onto paper, she is surer than ever that they will in time become truth.
When she is done, she calls for Odin's ravens until one descends from the blue canvas overhead to alight on the balcony rail. It gives her thumb a brazen peck before taking the fold of paper in its beak and speeding away to tell the world that she was right.
On his foot pivot, Thor launches Stormbreaker as far as he can from the clifftop. He watches it cut the air above the forests and foothills until it shrinks to a speck; even then, he can taste the electrified air in its wake. The mountain wind stings his cheeks into a smile. Although he could not be happier to leave behind his eras of fighting, Thor still loves the motions. His arms and shoulders will never forget how to throw a hammer or an axe, no matter how many years dead he remains.
When they were younger, Loki used to ask him if he worried about losing control over Mjolnir. If it would not slow when Thor made to catch it. It felt impossible to Thor that this would happen – it was a simple fact that his loyal weapon would do his bidding, and that included letting him regain his handle on it effortlessly, every time.
Thor watches his axe eventually reverse course and spin towards where he stands on the mountain, but does not reach out for it until he feels the perfect shift in the invisible current between he and it. He imagines the sensation to be akin to what Loki experiences when he commands his own magic.
Father said to beware if you still insist upon taking up sorcery, Loki
What if you lose control over it?
Impossible – it is me
Thor smiles at how naive they both were to think they would never lose control.
Now why was he here again?
He heaves Stormbreaker once more. Thor imagines what he must look like from below, if he is a god on a mountain wielding his weapon or a man trying to clear his head.
He is hurling the axe as though wishing to be rid of it, of something.
(Visions of broken soldiers in broken armour)
Thor reaches out at the perfect moment – Stormbreaker returns itself to his palm.
(He had not heard cries or broken laughter like theirs since the wake of the Snap)
Thor throws Stormbreaker even harder. It creates a gust that ripples the sea of treetops below, and somewhere a darker kind of wind begins to howl too.
(Broken soldiers in broken armour)
He takes a breath.
(Loki knew what he would see in the cave pool)
Thor sends Stormbreaker flying so fast it blurs into a shadow.
(Loki knew their sister presides on a mountaintop just like Thor does, galaxies below)
Thor roars. When Stormbreaker next leaves his grip, for an instant he thinks it has fractured the air itself to make the crack that sounds like giants' bones breaking. But then needles of rain start to chill his skin while clouds move into the sky like bruises in his periphery; if he did break open the sky, he is also trying to smother it.
He wonders how long he has been suppressing another storm. Thor thought he had been fine – he has everything now, after all.
More lightning appears above like a cat-o'-nine-tails.
What has his brother done now?
Thor raises the axe.
"Do my ears deceive me?" The voice behind him matches the chaos of wind and rain. "Or did I just hear your old self again?"
Thor lets his throwing arm continue the course of its motion as he turns around. Loki jerks out of Stormbreaker's path just in time and watches it vanish into the trees behind them. He knows Loki's glare would either evaporate or freeze the rain if only Loki did not need something from him.
"The answer is no," Loki continues. "My senses don't sabotage their master."
Thor holds out his hand. He has the petty satisfaction of seeing his brother's eyes widen as he hastily ducks below the blade as it spirals out of the trees back to its owner.
"And I thought it was only Father who once willed my execution," Loki says.
"What brings you here, Brother?" Thor tries to quiet the rain enough so they can converse without yelling, as if Thor would not raise his voice at him otherwise. "Need to refine your escape routes out of Valhalla? I'm afraid the rain might hinder your vision, and I know not when my mood will end it…"
"This isn't the side with the best view anyway," Loki deadpans. "Actually, I came to see what all the axe-throwing was about."
He gestures in the direction of the gilded palace in the distance, which has become a gold smudge in the rain. "It makes quite the aerial display from over there."
Thor twirls Stormbreaker in his grip. He is wearing a crimson cloak out of old habit, and feels it tugging at him impatiently from behind in the cold gusts. "Well, I wanted a change of scenery after the darker things I've seen of late."
Loki has also taken to his familiar green mantle, hanging heavy with stormwater. Maybe it is the storm that makes them try to turn back time – from below, they could be two gods upon a mountain again. Maybe Thor could throw Loki down to the ground and demand of him the Tesseract, so everything would rewrite and they could ensure this time they both lived their happy endings instead of one continuing to upturn everything in his path to find it.
"When did you find the cave pool"? He demands instead.
"Months ago," Loki says. "Before you all made me promise to stop venturing off alone so often."
"How did you find it?"
"It did require a view," his brother answers. "One from the top of the universe."
"The hike." Thor both marvels and reviles once again his brother's ability to turn every pleasantry into strategy. "So it wasn't only pathways out of this realm that you were looking for, but also scrying windows."
"That wasn't the only reason I elected for us to go." True to form, Loki has the nerve to look irked at this suggestion. "I thought I just may as well sweep for any anomalous magic while we were up there. It still took months of further exploring to find it – "
"But why?" Thor lowers at him. He knows the clouds overhead are darkening and thickening even further. Yet again he wants to shake his brother, or hug him, or both. "Are you so desperate for more that you would prefer to spy into every other world, even Hel, instead of seeing your family who stand before you?"
Behind the grey rain, Loki resembles some kind of wraith or zombie except that those creatures look more peaceable. "The First Einherjar don't belong down there. I know you know that. Of the two of us, I thought the mighty Thor would be the one raring to alleviate the suffering of our people."
Thor snorts. "Loki, even after all you've done for Asgard, I still fail to picture you raring to help anyone."
"Well, you won't with that attitude." Loki's shrug is one-shouldered, as halfhearted as his disagreement there.
Thor still wants to humour his little brother, because was that not their life together? Thor humouring Loki and Loki humouring Thor as far as they dared go, until they inevitably went too far and had to reel each other back.
He asks, "How could the First Einherjar wrongly fall to Hel in the first place?"
"In the waters" Loki replies, "surely you noticed how Hela's magic still infested them."
As unwilling as he is to revisit the memory, Thor's mind sinks into the gloom of the cave like the stone that his brother threw into the pool. Of course he remembers seeing Hela's magic, clinging to the soldiers like mold and looking far too akin to Loki's for his liking.
Loki continues, "According to Brunnhilde, they were the army whom Hela first killed alongside the Valkyrie, and later resurrected to fight us when we returned from Sakaar. Hela and her necromancy stopped them from entering Valhalla."
"So?"
The gleam in Loki's eye does not look promising. Or rather, it looks to promise everything that Thor does not want.
"If we had a pathway to Hel, we can bring the Einherjar here."
Thor takes his time; he heaves a deep sigh, as though steadying himself for a race, or a brawl, as challenging his brother usually feels like both.
He already knew his brother wanted to leave Valhalla. But clearly, he was naive to assume Loki had his eye on places like Alfheim, Ria, or even Midgard to wreak havoc, forgotten oases of stars or the empty gulf in space that Old Asgard used to fill. Instead, Loki wants to raid the lowest of the low, where Hela rules, with a hope of taking an army back with them.
(Thor had his fair share of leading them into realms he too once considered hellish)
(My friends –
We're going to Jotunheim)
(But that should have been enough, they were supposed to be at goddamn rest now – )
"Brother, I wish as much as you do to ease our people's suffering, but if Hela is what imprisons them there, then we could not simply barge in without a good plan of overcoming her."
"I agree completely, we won't do get help. But have you still no faith in my magic?" Loki perches upon a boulder as he speaks. With his green cloak nailed down by the rain, he looks as though the moss has overtaken him after decades seated upon the stone. "If we take advantage of our little spyhole into Hel, with a little more time I can figure out how to counter her sorcery, and make sure she never leaves that realm."
Thor imagines his brother slipping into the caves day after day, hunched over the pool with his handful of light as if he has lost something in the depths. He imagines Loki murmuring to himself as he watches Hela's magic through the visions he draws to the water's surface.
"So you want to go back to the caves." Thor cannot bother to phrase it as a question.
He imagines a little less of Loki reemerging from the cave each time.
Loki shrugs again. "You don't have to join me every single time if you really don't want to."
Every challenge his brother put to him when they were alive, Thor met with relish. He was always the God of Thunder even before he could lift Mjolnir.
But Thor is tired of always, always, doing something.
The rain falls even harder. The sea is barely distinguishable from the sky, except when lightning unzips the sky and its temper breaks through to pummel the water.
"How are you so certain those soldiers aren't in Hel because they deserved it for another reason, besides falling victim to a curse?"
Loki spreads his arms wide as if either to fly or to invite the Norns to strike him down.
"Do you really suppose that's a possibility, Brother? You dreamt of becoming one of the Einherjar yourself because they were renowned as the most courageous of us all. Then how did I get here?"
Thor wants to shake his head. He wants to ignore the grain of truth in what Loki is saying, that those soldiers should not be down there, because Thor is so tired. Because it means he ought to lift the axe, the hammer, once more.
Thor is still the God of Thunder, but by the Norns can his brother not let just him have a damn break for once?
"Loki." Thor moves forward and finds himself placing a hand on his brother's armoured shoulder slick with rainwater. "I see what you're trying to do here. You hope those visions from the cave will persuade me to join you on a wild rescue mission beyond Valhalla to ease your thirst for chaos – "
"It's not chaos – "
" – But they can't." He drowns Loki's voice with his own, with rain, because the alternative is too much. "This is merely a repeat of our first time upon this mountain – I won't go with you."
He watches Loki stare at the hand on his shoulder as though realising it is a chain to the earth rather than a reassurance. To anyone watching, it would look like Thor is simply explaining to his younger brother that the pet bird might not return if its cage is left open.
"I am not my old self, despite what you insist," Thor says. "But I'm not lost to you either."
(Just so, so tired)
"I'm still here." Thor wills him to understand, again. "You could stay here too."
He hopes he is not breaking anything when he utters, "We're not the heroes anymore."
Thor has heard a mother kraken keening in grief before. He had watched the nest from a distance as one of her eggs remained whole and motionless long after the others had hatched. Loki's expression now reminds him of the egg.
Loki asks him, "Then what are we?"
"We're brothers," Thor answers. He wills him to understand – he wishes his will were enough. "Same as ever."
And he knows, knows, knows it is true, he just wonders if this time it is what Loki needs.
Thor says, "I thought that was all you ever wanted."
I never wanted the throne –
Loki's bitter smile is as broken as the Bifrost was.
"I want to be your equal."
And this astounds Thor, because after all they have been through how can his little brother still think that he is not?
"You had your time." Loki anticipates the silent question. "Until the very end."
The storm seems to have drained the colour out of Loki, or perhaps it is just the burning gold of Valhalla in the sun that gives him any colour in the first place. Perhaps Loki will never truly be suited for Valhalla. Chaos is not meant to find peace.
(Part of the journey is the end –
Thor has heard this somewhere before)
Thor tries for a second to be like Loki – to be able to detect a lie as it rolls off a tongue, as he asks, "Would you still be doing this if there were a way to bring them to Valhalla without us leaving?"
But Loki only counters, "Where's the fun in that?"
"Fun?" Thor retorts. He sweeps his hand at the drenched view of the land and ocean. "Maybe in the assurance of keeping our places here? What if returning to Valhalla is impossible after leaving? If we only became stuck down there alongside the Einherjar, then what?"
"Then we would find a way out." Loki responds with as much confidence as if they are planning a tea party.
Thor narrows his eyes. "Brilliant plan. So you would have no way to secure our return."
"Believe me, I've been trying," Loki bites. He hops off the rock. When he lands, the new mud from the rain spatters Thor's cape. "But, naturally, no such convenient form of rescue seems available to us. It's as if we're trying to do something out of the ordinary, Brother."
Thor ignores the mud and the jibe, and plays his best card. "After a lifetime of craving their approval, you've forgotten about Frigga and Odin with remarkable speed."
"And every time you bring them up is now just another reason to go."
Behind Loki, there is shrub with leaves shaped like cupped hands from which the rainwater drips steadily into the mud. Thor's attention fixes onto one leaf and he counts five droplets before responding. "How do you come to that conclusion, Brother?"
Evidently Loki also saved his best card for last, and Thor is not sure how they are meant to decide whose hand trumps the other.
"How many in Valhalla do you think are missing their own children who served in that army?"
They stand stubbornly for a long moment with eyes locked.
(You'd only consider leaving Valhalla if it were for the good of a realm?)
(My friends –
Thor curses in his head. He should have stopped humouring Loki much, much earlier than this.
– we're going to Jotunheim)
How much harder it would be to reel them back in.
The rain has slowed to a drizzle without Thor realising. What is left are the broken clouds like a grey blanket torn full of holes, and the smell of the forest and rising steam. He detests the thought that begins to grow like mildew on the walls of his skull, but Thor suspects his brother would be more satisfied if Loki had fallen to Hel too.
"If your intentions are really so pure," Thor says before he can stop himself, "then you would go even without me." Frigga and Odin would kill him, if such a thing were possible in the afterlife, for suggesting this even as a bluff.
(I won't let my brother march into Jotunheim alone)
Regret – nearly – fills Thor's mouth like blood from a bitten tongue.
Loki's short laugh ruffles the damp tree leaves. "I make no claim of purity. I only threw those reasons in for you."
"I knew it." Odin sighs. "Of course he still plans something, even after his promises."
His father's disappointment rumbles like an earthquake that Thor hopes does not reach his brother just yet. But it is not enough for Thor to regret telling Odin of what Loki showed him in the caves, of the fresh but familiar gleam in Loki's eyes. If it prevents his brother from committing some irreversible stupidity that tears them apart again, then Thor will regret nothing.
But – "Your mother or I can fashion a tethering enchantment to keep him from crossing world borders, or a shadowing spell to alert us if he tries – "
"Wait, Father." Thor places a hand on Odin's arm as though afraid he would cast the magic that very second. "We cannot forcibly bind him to Valhalla."
Even as he says it, he remembers that Loki himself had trapped Odin with his own magic on Earth, before disguising as the Allfather. The way his father looks at him makes Thor want to shrink into a speck, but Odin is gentle as he removes Thor's hold. "Don't forget we are all bound here, Thor."
"But he'll sense it." Thor keeps his voice low as if Loki may already be eavesdropping. "He is attuned to your and Mother's magic better than anyone. It will only hurt his trust in us. We need to speak with him."
Odin's cool palm, not casting magic, but settling on Thor's cheek. "You have grown sager than I, it seems."
"Perhaps only when it comes to Loki."
Odin smiles. "Very well. Although I'm afraid we may exhaust the speaking avenue with him very soon. What do you suggest we do if he slips away while our backs are turned?"
"He won't." Thor is certain, and the certainty weighs on him more than he expected. "Not without me."
"Don't decide now," Loki is saying, "but think about it. And while you do, look more closely around you. You'll start to notice the others who don't quite rest in peace as much as you."
Thor unclenches his teeth enough to respond, "You think it's peaceful being dead with you?"
Loki only laughs once more before he turns to leave.
Thor asks, "Why do you insist on dragging me along on your soul searching?"
Loki looks at him over his shoulder.
(I won't let my brother march into Jotunheim alone)
"Don't you want to come along?"
"If I did, I wouldn't be doing it for me, would I?" Thor points out dryly.
Loki pauses, and smiles faintly. "No. It would be for Asgard, which means it would be for you. That much hasn't changed."
Loki is chaos in a land of peace, but he is also Thor's brother.
"Hold on." Thor slips Stormbreaker into the holster across his back. "I'm on my way home, too."
(I won't let my brother march into Jotunheim – )
"Thank you for the storm, by the way," Loki says. "I was just thinking the sunshine was overstaying its welcome again."
Thor shakes his head. "I didn't do it for you."
"But it was triggered because of me, I gather."
Thor sighs.
As the damp rocks and bark crunch beneath their feet, Thor thinks that if he really will not help Loki leave, giving his brother the rain may be all that he can do for him.
She waits by the front gate. The posts are entwined with blissberry vines that tie her cottage to the forest. The chill in the air that would squeeze her bones if she were alive does not faze her now, but she adjusts her grey shawl around her shoulders out of habit.
Despite their past estrangement, Idunn was not one for melodrama. She would not send such a cryptic message and leave the recipient waiting for very long. Sure enough, Dyrvordr hears the whisper of her pseudo-daughter's footsteps through the forest floor of scarlet and amber leaves. In the seconds before Idunn appears, Dyrvordr wonders if her daughter will have brought the subject of her letter along with her, and shudders in either anticipation or dread. But the face that emerges through the branches is timelessly familiar, and alone.
When Idunn reaches her at the gate, Dyrvordr says, "I got your letter." Sometimes, it is just easier to start things off with the obvious.
Idunn nods. "May I come in?"
"Always."
Idunn has them sit in the twin armchairs by the hearth, without stopping to brew tea. They do not need the formal setup for her to take her daughter seriously, but Dyrvordr decides to hurmour it. Although the lack of a teacup in her lap makes her arms itch.
Though she was the one to steer them into their seats, Idunn seems to be waiting for Dyrvordr to speak first. Obligingly, the Tea Maker dips into the pocket on the inside of her shawl. As she pulls out the neatly folded paper, she says more of the obvious. "You never told me you had a son."
Idunn's murmur hangs in the still air. "Two."
Dyrvordr closes her eyes briefly. "Ah."
She unfolds the letter and touches her fingertip lightly to her daughter's handwriting that she could recognise with her eyes closed.
"Will you tell me about them?"
Her daughter replies, "I suppose you want to hear about the youngest first."
Dyrvordr smiles. "Perhaps. You might want to try change my mind about him as he made such a terrible first impression when I met him myself."
There are the twin glimmers in Idunn's eyes again from before, but now which Dyrvordr can decipher.
When Idunn says "I'm proud of him," Dyrvordr feels the need to look down as if witnessing something too private, even though her daughter hands the words almost desperately to her.
(She looks down at the letter, at her daughter's handwriting that she could recognise with her eyes closed)
(She studies Idunn's new signature, her new name –
He'll be okay
He's my son
Love,
Frigga)
"He knew nearly all of it by the time he found me," Dyrvordr admits.
Idunn – the Tea Maker will never be accustomed to using her Aesir name Frigga – says, "He even figured out the bridge and the wishing well that mark the path to my old orchard before he died."
"That ghastly Rainbow Bridge your husband was always so proud of?"
Idunn chuckles. "You know full well Odin had no say in its design."
"He was Asgard's Allfather for centuries. Don't tell me he couldn't find time to do something about that giant kaleidoscope."
Idunn laughs. Dyrvordr adds, "Same goes for that well. Why in Yggdrasil hang on to a severed head, no matter how prophetic it claims to be? And suspending it in a wishing well, no less."
"You'll be glad to know that Mimir's head was also destroyed when Ragnarok burned down the Bifrost," Idunn responds. "It can't corrupt anyone any longer."
"Good." Dyrvordr has a glass bowl of flowers on the table between them. She catches the eye of her own reflection in the bowl's curves. "Its Sight was nowhere near as accurate as a witch's."
Idunn gazes into the hearth for a minute as if a fire smolders inside. "Sometimes I think he could have been raised by witches too."
"Mimir?"
"Loki."
Of course – Dyrvordr hears how Idunn's voice softens upon the name. It is funny how names have taken a bigger role than the Tea Maker ever cared for them to have, after she and her sisters spent much of their lifetimes flitting from one to another the way they might change shoes.
"He sees more than with just his eyes," Idunn – Frigga – says.
At that moment is when Dyrvordr realises the flowers she has arranged in the bowl are forget-me-nots.
"When he visited, I thought that his magic felt familiar," she says. "I didn't understand why at the time, but now I assume you were his teacher in that field."
There is that softness again when Idunn answers. "He needed it."
The Tea Maker thinks back to the stranger on her doorstep, who did not drink her tea, whom she would have gladly displaced from her house with her own brand of magic after hearing of his absurd quest. She tries to grasp that that was her… grandson. That her grandson was that.
"Like I said earlier, I don't regret growing the orchard." Idunn smiles. "Otherwise, I wouldn't have met Odin. Or my sons."
"But you lost me."
Dyrvordr still cannot help it – a lifetime and now an afterlife to heal wounds and yet the scar tissue still stings.
"I've learned a thing or two about forgiving your children." Idunn twists her hands clasped in her lap but does not lose her dreamy stare. "And you're even stronger than I – I came to regret leaving, but I knew we would be okay when we met again."
Her daughter rises from her chair to sit at her feet. "Although I didn't think the next time we met would be here."
Dyrvordr lets Idunn – Frigga – warm her gnarled hands between her smooth ones. "I'm sorry to leave it for so long, Mother."
They sit for a time without moving, until the shadows start to lean inward as though to make room for the setting suns to nestle. Her daughter and she are no longer in a rush to break apart.
"How much do your sons know about me?" Dyrvordr asks. "About you, before you were Queen of Asgard?"
"About as much as everyone else, or so I originally thought," Idunn muses. "That is, the Orchard Keeper Idunn is a long-gone figure of history, from whose Golden Apples of Youth the first few generations of Aesir gained immortality and were elevated to godhood."
"Your son seemed to know otherwise, my dear."
"That must have been something he found out on his own. Somehow." Idunn says. "And perhaps then Thor also knows. It's difficult to understand how much exactly Loki will tell Thor." Dyrvordr can recognise the wry look on Idunn's face even from the obscure angle at which she sees it.
"Thor?" This rings a more recent bell. "The God of Thunder?" She has heard the name occasionally in Valhalla, on her rare trips to the eastern villages beyond the woods.
Idunn appears rueful. "I still have much to tell you."
But this only makes Dyrvordr smile. "My sisters and I never bothered to keep track of your husband's life or descendancy when we left the living worlds. We only cared for yours. Even then, we refrained from seeing too much of your life after witches." It was the reason she chose to start her garden far from Valhalla's coastline. From the ocean floor.
"Why?"
"I wanted you to tell me about it yourself." Dyrvordr shrugs. "The next time we would meet again."
Idunn smiles.
"Yes, Mother." She gets to her feet. "But first, let's make some tea."
Frigga gulps the last mouthful of her tea – she knows her mouth and throat would be parched from all the talking if they were alive. She is just about to ask her pseudo-mother of her sisters in the other woods when they are interrupted by the wind. It is not the wind itself that pauses her tongue, but the scent of rain that it brings even through closed windows.
Frigga always smells and feels his storms before she sees and hears them. Thunder starts to tremor silently in her bones as though Thor is right beside her in his discontentment. Outside the window, purple storm clouds start to blot the birch tree line.
Dyrvordr looks at her. "Something's amiss."
Frigga sighs.
"Just a God of Thunder."
Who else is terrified of the sense of wrenching emptiness they might have six weeks after the 9th of June?
xoxo