Asgard was nothing that Frigga had imagined. There were people everywhere. They were caked with mud or covered in gems, all busy about their tasks, and few of them smiled.
It was not as was Vanaheim. In Vanaheim a stranger would be welcomed with open arms. In Asgard, it was as though she was an insect, not worth the attention of those with whom she had come to live.
They starred at her as she stood, arrayed in gold with her hair piled high on her head and amber drops dangling from her ears, before them to watch as her husband – their wayward prince – was crowned King.
They starred and they whispered, but there was none that offered friendship or spoke to her as though she were welcome among them.
In her home, she had been surrounded by a fraction of the people who lived beside her now, but there, they had been friends and kin, none without a fair word, even to a stranger. Here, it was as good as if she were alone.
In those first days as she explored the City and the Palace, she made many false steps, but there were none she had any desire to ask to show her how things were here. She wanted to learn on her own.
She found solace in the palace gardens that had belonged to Odin's mother.
The former queen had passed while Odin had been away, and while they had not parted well, they had once been close, and she knew he grieved.
Frigga wandered the gardens, and she made them her own.
Odin, she knew, was unhappy.
His father, he hated. Bor craved war and conquest above all else, and his motives were abhorrent to his son. They had never agreed.
He was as lonesome as she. She could see it behind his proud stance and in the depth of his blue eyes. She could not leave him so unaided. She did not hold long onto her anger.
She missed her home and her family. But she did not regret her decision.
She would yet learn the way of this place.
She would have to, being its queen.
She had been raised a warrior.
Asgard would be her home now.
