Sehnsucht: "The inconsolable longing in the human heart for we know not what"; a yearning for a far, familiar, non-earthly land one can identify as one's home.
"He looks lonely," Darcy wheedles, tugging Henry away from the frozen chicken display and slipping him back in her sleeve again, where he nuzzles into her palm soft and cuddly. "Don't you think we can maybe go to Jotunheimr and pick Henry up a friend?"
Helblindi vetoes this idea immediately.
Finding Henry a male friend to bond with would be disastrous, and Helblindi still hasn't forgotten the time they took Henry to a rural farm and watched as he ripped apart a rooster before their very eyes. Darcy had claimed it was just something about the age.
Henry had then proceeded to perform some rather inexplicably explicit acts with a hen, who was approximately twenty times his size. Darcy had passed out at that point, and Helblindi had apologised profusely to the horrified farmer.
Henry cheeps forlornly up at Helblindi through the confines of Darcy's sleeve, and he glares down at him, but the frost chicken is not intimidated at all.
Helblindi just sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, and he agrees that he will bring them to Jotunheimr to find a suitable companion for Henry.
Darcy refuses to leave the castle the minute they get into Jotunheimr, shivering up a storm, and Farbauti engages her in conversation, wrapping her in furs and setting her by the fire, sending Helblindi and Henry off into the frosty darkness.
The instant they step outside the castle's gates, Henry hops from his hand, peeping frantically as he buries himself in a drift of snow that comes up to Helblindi's waist. Helblindi waits for approximately fifteen minutes, during which rather loud squeals and ice-cracking screams emerge from the drift. Sighs before diving into the pile himself, tossing aside piles of snow in an attempt to find Henry before he loses the frost chick forever. Darcy would be heartbroken.
He comes back up with Henry gripped tightly in his fist, the chick fighting every inch of the way and drawing blood along the creases of Helblindi's fingers. Helblindi stuffs him unceremoniously into a pocket and marches back to the castle, trying to ignore the unceremonious peeping from the snow behind him.
Later that night, Farbauti wakes him in the middle of the night, hissing that they have an urgent problem.
Helblindi rouses himself, careful not to wake Darcy, who is sleeping like a log beside him, and follows his mother to the front windows.
"Oh, oh no," he breathes, watching the swarm of tiny blue frost chicks screaming at the gates.