AWOWADD 6

Chapter 6: Strained Road

A darkness loomed over the three as they followed the gilded paths to the centre. The kings and queens of old stood still and motionless as if they turned to garden stones. Not an inkling was murmured under their breaths. The pitter patter of their feet seemed small, meek in comparison to the giants standing in front of them. The pillars enclosed the wide space with each footstep.

Kneeling in front of royalty, the boys hung their heads low. Odin King looked down upon them, searching his one eye for any telltale signs of their mischievous works.

"Thor. Loki," he addressed them accordingly. The princes lifted their heads, standing tall.

They bowed their heads once more. "Father," they chorused softly. They sauntered back a step. Sigyn knelt in front of the Kings, eyes staring straight at them. The clear eye staring right back curled her soul to shrink back further in its soul. Realizing her moment of embarrassment, she gazed at the mosaic. Her heart pounded much like those to the ones called to battle. Her thoughts raced about how dreadful her appearance could be- hair all ratty from the wind, dress crinkled and stained from mossy rocks, and the gritty feeling of dusted sand painted her dried face.

Sigyn could feel the curious looks bearing into her body, like tiny pricks of the sewing needle threading all her mistakes and ignorance. She felt the heat from her mother's disappointment that burnt even brighter than the One-Eyed King.

The rumble of the ocean's placations consumed her thoughts. Once, it was said that the hollowed halls of Vanaheim were beneath the sea. Its waves and salty shores shaped the arches, curved out secret passages and preserved its pearly structure. Then with the break of a her father's back and the strength of a thousand legions, he alone carried it from its oyster, berthing it to port. At times, she felt her father's story live on within in- feeling the weight of the castle bear onto her shoulders, searching for its master's heir. An implicant reminder of how far much she had to achieve, and how far she was from continuing his legacy.

Frigga saw the heaviness in the child's face. She saw how disorganized her the children appeared. So much unseen had passed and it all flew onto her shoulders. Pitiful, she knew her sons had some finger mark on this work. Though they be guests, it certainly did not call for improper state of affairs.

"Boys," her voice silenced the unspoken words of the few. "It seems you have met Her Highness," She stepped in tow with her husband.

The boys all but put their tails between their legs in front of their mother. Thor's shaggy hair gave him the advantage to hide the red in his cheeks whilst his brother did not. Frigga remained in front of them, a hand on both of their shoulders. Thor knew not to push his mother's grace. Especially when that grace wore thin when it came to their trouble making.

Whilst Frigga diverted her disappointment towards her boys, The Fisher King had no other choice but heave a sigh. His trident rang his forthcoming.

"Sigyn," he bellowed half-heartedly.

Sigyn renounced her position. A hand wrapped around the stay away hairs to the side with the rest of the braid. "Yes, Father," she said blinking away the tears she refused to admit.

Without proper gestures, he introduced, "This is Odin All-Father and his Queen, Frigga," The Asgardians acknowledged with a slight of the head. Vanaheimr stared past the Hall of the Deep, its wall and the people entire of it. He gazed offhandedly. The King licked the thing layer of wrinkled lips. "He has come for you,"

"For me?" She tilted her end. Innocence washed over her childish face.

Frigga's warm smile directed her fears away. She stepped lightly across the floor-boards.

"The King has kindly accepted you to stay in Asgard for the time being," she informed.

Sigyn's eyes darted from the Queen's to her lifeless mother's. They remained cold, without flow in them. Dilation prevented them from showing her clear irises.

"But why?"

Freyja sent herself away from her child. The heaviness beneath her breasts unsettled her nerves. She lowered her head ever the slightest, eyes blurring out Sigyn's form.

Frigga smile pitifully deepened. With every encouragement a mother possesses, she wore her warrior face painted behind those loaded lashes. "It is not safe for you here. Summer progress has ended. Winter will be on our shoes soon," she said.

Sigyn furrowed her eyebrows. "But I've endured our winters before. Why now?"

She did not expect her father's voluminous voice sound vehemently.

"For your safety," His voice croaked as if a thousand burdens landed.

From behind the lost girl, both boys shuffled their feet, eyes posted dead straight past. Stirred emotions surfaced like a bubbling pot of stew. The prince, Loki, could feel lost senses in his new companion. Her eyes dazed at the elders like an orphaned doe struggling to evade her captors. He steeled his eyes away from Thor's curious mind looking onward to the girl's demise.

Whispering words coiled around the thick air. Her irises thickened like the darkly woods in Alfheim. "You'll be coming with us, right Mother?"

Thin lips graced the Queen's mouth. Her coarse words stung like sea-salted rope burning against open flesh. With every clench of her heart begging for penance, the Queen's cold eyes locked onto the tiny frame of the child.

"My place is with the other priestesses," she said stoically.

Sigyn's hands cradled together, not knowing what else to do. She itched to wrap herself up in a bear skin blanket. The coldness in the air chiseled the nape of her neck and the remaining water logging her shoes curled around the warmth of her toes.

"But... who will come with me?" She looked to her graying father, caving his back forward. His frame half in darkness, half in the light. "Father? Frajonora?" Her head turned to each individual. Small lights appeared in those irises before she squandered them out with the elders' grimace.

"You must make the journey by yourself. With the King's family," The Queen of Asas stepped to, spreading a small smile. Hope washed out of Sigyn's vocabulary. "They will watch over you until it is safe for your return,"

Return. The bitterness settled in her mouth as if cotton was swabbed against her tongue. Her mind ran away from the palace, away from the shores, to the smoke driven villages by the cliff sides. Crags surrounded the outer rims, so deep that a single pebble could break the neck with the right amount of force. Grass as tall as her knee brushed against her legs. The wind wrapped around her freed hair, freeing her senses and alerting her body to press on. Dark clouds loomed over her. The lightning grew louder; her steps faltered.

She couldn't move another inch further to the gates. Barred from entrance, she didn't need eyes to look behind her in order to see the beasts snarling after her tracks. Claws shaped the shadows and drug her into the earth, falling... falling.

She never quite liked falling. The sensation in her blood lingered just a little more, then it was snuffed like a candle.

Autonomously she asked, "How long?"

"As long as it takes," Vanaheimr answered. A slight quiver in his lip faltered.

Her feet stoned to the floor. Her little heart barely could be heard anymore to her own ears. "When do I leave?"

This time, Odin King came forth. He brought at his side, his everlasting staff, forged as his mistress in all things. It gleamed like the scales of a golden dragon and never cracked under foreign weaponry.

His shining eye peered through her eyes, attempting to connect with her. "Whenever you're ready," The calm in his voice soothed her nerves. However they were laced with a certain warmth and security she had never known. Though he appeared old and had hair as white as snow, his strength was in his one good eye and the firm grip on his staff.

Iwaldi stood across his hall, looming over his balcony. The composited affair dispatched his body away. He shunned the stiff atmosphere in hopes for a cleared conscience. The sea gave him breath; his wispy returns blew at his cold face.

A resonant noise grew in the far rings of his abode. An aurora of colors eradicated the bleak sky. They expanded diagonally, shapes and sizes incompressible. His grasp on his trident seemed foreign and almost too hot to bear. The sky contracted, loose traces of what had been imprinted in his eyes.

Jeweled digits embraced his cloaked shoulder. The air seemed frigid but his wife's comfort gave him resolution. He engulfed his opposing hand over hers as they watched the unchanging skies, wishing, wandering.

"Pray to Hvergelmir," his crusted voice called. He needed no eyes to feel his wife's head nod ever so slightly in recognition. The pads on her fingers lightly pressed him. The gentle touch brought back unfamiliarity. It hardened his nerves.

He turned at his heel, nearly frightening the woman. Under his gaze, the King of Vanirs inspected for sign of betrayal. Her eyes along with the rest of her perfumed face became like a decoration attached to him. The oils to coif her hair, the beads embezzled clinging to her ears- Then he furrowed his eyes upon her neck. Pale and perfect white, the lines contouring her neck enticed him. He once remembered such skin in his prime days, with her at his side in an alcove surrounded by their own heat. How the light reflected at the bare flesh and he became enamored with the delicate way her skin glowed in midnight hours.

Now it was once more bare for him to seduce his mind. If it were another time, another era he would have reveled back those long past memories. The skin, still as soft as snow upon his fingers, seemed too bright.

Freyja's anxiety was noticeable as her jawline quivered under his touch. Her devotion laid only to him, when his hand no longer restrained his mistress tool. Even now as he caressed the trident, she longed for the youth in his hands to reciprocate onto her.

Iwaldi cracked his gaze and retracted his fingers. Instead, he turned his back at her and slapped a hand onto the balcony. Inclining his head to the skies that cannot be moved, he squinted his salty eyes. He rested his staff by the wall. "She will need it. Brísingamen,"

Freyja clasped her hands over her mouth as she let out a feminine cry. She closed her eyes and inched away from her husband. Her chest heaved with the urge to bawl fifty thousand tears into the sea. As they would land they would curl into the sand of oysters becoming bejeweled treasures for mongers and pirates to devour each other over for.

For the first time since the moment of Sigyn's awakened fate, husband and wife relinquished their decorations away and shared a farewell outside their halls where relishing eyes whispered haphazardly over dangerous secrets.