All usual disclaimers apply.

-Interlude-

Sachiko Hinoshiza was known by most, but few truly knew her. They knew of her, some were her friends but even her closest of confidants could not tell anyone where she was born, who her parents were, where she went to high school, or what her hobbies were as a kid.

To most, she may have been born fully formed, beautiful and vivacious with maybe a sinister twinkle in her eye in the rare occasion she had been wronged. Most did know that she was married more than once, which seemed strange since she was relatively young. Those who had married her always got the feeling she had a husband before them, but none knew who was the first. They just knew, as they signed the divorce papers, they were the latest of her spouses.

Sachiko Hinoshiza had a longing. She was not exactly wife material, and she seemed too strong to be just looking for the perfect husband. In truth, she was powerful. When she married Mr. Hinoshiza, he knew that she was married before him, to a foreign CEO. To him, she was perfect. Though she looked Japanese, she had this sort of exotic flair and he often questioned if she wasn't just a half-breed.

"The strangest of things are in the most familiar of places," she always replied. Mr. Hinoshiza, though he wasn't on good enough moral ground to be completely faithful, was almost mad with awe at all the perverse and pleasurable things she'd do to him and with him. There were days he was sure she wasn't real. However strange, passionate and sexual, though, she always made him wear socks on his feet.

He asked her once, thinking she had a foot phobia.

"Phobia? No. I was married to a man with perfect and beautiful feet, but he was not the man I wanted. Now I just take that attribute out of the equation."

That only seemed to confuse Mr. Hinoshiza even more, but still, he was on his way to obey her whim when she expressed a profuse desire to move to the seaside, claiming she liked the salty air. The winters were when she was most active, spending nearly every hour on the snowy bay, shoveling, skating, skiing, and walking. It seemed strange that the height of someone's desire to be outside was during the coldest of months. She got really intense during the Winter Olympics and other winter events.

Little did her husband, her friends, her neighbors know, Mrs. Hinoshiza had seen countless winters, at one point went skiing a thousand and one leagues. She had desired to be promised a young boy for marriage when he came of age, knowing he would grow to be fine and handsome in the future, but got an older husband with clean feet.

When she had first seen Hikaru in town, she recognized him, but knew him by another name. That hardly mattered. Her assumptions about him were correct. He was growing to be fine and handsome, if he wasn't already before. The boy she set her sights upon was slowly becoming a nice sturdy man, face still beautiful and bright.

But with all that happened, how she had missed the signs, Mrs. Hinoshiza couldn't believe she had drowned herself in alcohol, like a depressed, rejected college girl and threw herself at Hikaru, desperate to convince him to stay with her, to run away with her to the mountains. For his own safety. Before everything erupted.

Mrs. Hinoshiza stumbled out to her porch, her head aching, feeling an empty feeling in her gut of failure and also unrequited desire. There was not much she could do now. Nothing short of flat out telling Hikaru, but that wouldn't make him believe anything except the fact that she was crazy. Let the Big Man himself do his thing to make up for her blunder, he'd have a better chance than anyone of them. Or if Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Diva could get their act together…

A dark-skinned man with a black dog walked by and stopped, staring right at her.

"Well…" the man said with a wry smirk. "That's one way to get a teenaged boy to see the light. So-to-speak."

Mrs. Hinoshiza snarled, as the man seemed to take a modicum of enjoyment from her situation. Frustrated and her ego bruised she slammed her hand down on the wooden railing encircling her porch, the wood around her hand slowly being encrusted in veins of ice that spread from her fingers.

"Watch yourself, else I freeze your wings off!"

The man didn't take the threat, he stood with his arms crossed, "No need to take your wrath on me, you messed up by yourself…"

Her name came out of his lips like a flap of bird's wings. Only he didn't call her 'Sachiko' or 'Mrs. Hinoshiza.'

Skadi.

A/N:A small interlude to gain some light on some of these characters. Skadi is in fact a Norse goddess who has a lovely folktale that deals with a certain god of light. Thanks to those who have followed and reviewed thus far, and for those who asked some questions I won't answer directly as I assure you they will be answered soon in later chapters.