She was walking in the forest near Helga and Floki's cottage home, along a small and narrow trail that snaked its way through the lush shrubbery that covered the forest floor, humming a small tune absentmindedly as she reached out her hand to sway over the leaves of a nearby gold flaming bush.
She was not thinking about anything in particular, she was merely out on a little stroll, enjoying the beautiful sight of the forest slowly turning golden instead of green, as if nature knew that summer was ending even before the people that lived in it did.
She felt her legs moving by themselves as she continued along the narrow path carved into the flourishing thicket surrounding her as words started forming on her lips, a song coming together over her lips, her voice resonating through the otherwise silent forest:
"Apples flame red on the branches of the trees,
the harvest begins.
Walking through the forest all alone,
quiet in peace.
Golden colors and late summer's breeze
filling the heart with wistful music."
Her voice sounded strange, and Frida could not help but to get the feeling that someone was watching her as she walked slowly in between the big tree trunks that sprouted with oak leaves above her.
She could hear that the sea shore was still close by, the small gurgling of salty water licking earth soothing her ears gently.
She thought that she saw a couple of brown eyes staring at her from behind a blooming dogberry bush, but she simply kept going. She had to get somewhere.
"Waters of the lake rippling with the lark,
mysterious and dark.
Flocks of starlings gliding high over island,
soon they'll depart.
Golden kings and late summer's breeze
filling the heart with wistful music."
She soon sensed how the forest around her grew darker and darker.
She did not know for how long she had been walking, but she sensed that she was closing in on her destination. The brown eyes were still watching her, she felt it, but she too felt a familiar warmth bubbling from the pits of her stomach, and she swayed her hands down over her stomach. It was flat.
"Fragrance of wood fumes among ferns brownish,
blue black berries.
Quiet buzzing between leaves that are fading,
the night is near.
Golden colors and late summer's breeze
filling the heart with wistful music."
An unfamiliar whistling sound snaked its way into Frida's ears as the words of the song rang out from her lips. She felt a tingling sensation in the back of her mind, a warning from someone watching.
Maybe it was the creature with brown eyes telling her to be careful?
Her eyes quickly scanned the forest in front of her, and she noticed a small meadow up ahead, silently unveiling itself there in between the lavish bushes speckled with ripe pome fruits. She started walking faster.
"Ripe rowanberries behind deep green branches,
red fruitful dances.
Walking through the forest all alone,
now I must go home!
Golden kings and late summer's breeze
filling the heart with wistful music."
As soon as she stepped into the meadow, a perfume that reminded her of parsley quickly made its way up her nostrils, and she suddenly found her eyes roaming over to the middle of the meadow.
Right there, as if it had appeared out of nowhere, towered the most majestic tree Frida had ever laid her eyes upon.
It was an ash tree, a huge one of its kind, and Frida felt her eyes widen as she took a couple of steps closer to it, and she marveled over its majestic appearance there in the middle of the meadow, how its branches reached up into the sky, higher than most of the castles she had seen in England even.
She reached out her hand to touch its trunk, she felt that she had too, curiosity shooting from her heart and pumping through her blood.
But before she managed to place her hand upon its toughened bark, a hideous whistling sounded once more just down by her feet, and she quickly let her eyes fall to the roots of the tree, only to scream into the quiet forest air.
What had first appeared to be the enormous roots of the ash tree were all really serpents.
Hundreds of them.
As if growing from the earth surrounding the tree, large and terrible serpents twisted and turned there, their sharp venomous tongues licking each other with the horrifying whistle that she had heard before.
She felt her blood drum dangerously in her veins, her heart pounding achingly in her chest, a sudden wind roaring around her, almost blasting her into the pit of snakes in front of her.
Frida tried to hold back, she tried to grab the trunk of the tree to steady herself, but just as she let her fingers brush against its rough bark, one of the serpents rose in front of her, its eyes piercing into hers while its tongue danced slyly over her.
She tried to scream once more, but no sound left her lips.
She realized that she could not breathe.
The serpent stared at her with death in its eyes, and she could see it pulling its head back a bit, its mouth opening slightly, revealing poisonous sharpness that was its teeth. They dripped with blood and venom.
Over the hideous sound of the whistling snakes, she suddenly noticed someone whispering, and she quickly turned her eyes to stare into a couple of brown ones further up the trunk of the tree.
It was a squirrel talking to her, and she saw that it was crying.
"Hurry, jump in there," it rushed at her, and fear exploded in her chest as she realized what it was telling her.
"What?" she managed to whisper as she felt one of the snakes gliding its slimy body over her shin.
When she looked down, she realized that she was nude as she stood there, not a single cloth covering her body. She suddenly felt self-conscious and bare, and she tried to cover herself, to guard her body from the serpent, but it was too late.
A sharp pain shot from stomach, and a final painful shriek escaped her lips as the giant serpent launched itself at her, its sharp teeth biting into her pelvis and dragging her into the deathly pit below, darkness and pain quickly swallowing her completely.
She was going to die.
This was her time.
A single eye was glaring at her, icy blue and piercing as she sunk into the darkness. Odin was watching her.
"Frida!"
"By Odin's great beard! Help me!"
Frida felt her body being tossed around between the snakes, and she heard a familiar voice calling her name. She tried to reach out for its owner, but she could not find him.
She cried out helplessly, feeling herself fall and fall, deeper and deeper into the darkness.
Serpents, waves of blood, turmoil, chaos, death. It was all coming over her like a heavy fur, forcing her down into the darkest pits of the world.
The smell of salt and iron paralyzed her, and she soon found herself staring into a couple of circled dark eyes that shone from the darkness. The owner of the eyes snickered at her.
Frida finally awoke from her dream.
As she opened her eyes, she felt her body immediately collapsing into the arms of someone, someone holding her as she was lying on the warm earth of the forest. Frida gasped out loudly, panicky and relieved at the same time, and her eyes quickly shot up to stare directly into the same couple of dark circled eyes that she had shone from the darkness in her dream.
Floki was holding her in his arms, his forehead carved deeply with concerned furrows, his eyes serious and afraid as he looked down on her.
Frida quickly let her eyes fall to her stomach, and she let a big gush of air escape her lungs as she saw that it was not flat anymore, like in her dream. She threw her arms tight around the man holding her, wrapping herself completely close into Floki's chest.
She could hear him exhaling in surprise, a hissing sneaking into her ear, reminding her of the whistles of the serpents. But she found herself relieved that it was Floki hissing at her now, and not the serpents, so she simply hugged him even tighter as her mind confusedly struggled to focus on reality again.
"Oh dear, what is happening to her?" Frida heard Helga's voice clinging from somewhere above them, but she could not find her as her eyes still rolled in her skull manically.
She heard Floki making a strange sound, like a shushing, which made her muscles loosen into his embrace again, her mind slipping back and forth between darkness and Floki.
He spoke some words that she did not understand, and she tried to open her eyes to see where she was.
She remembered sitting down by a tree on her small stroll through the forest. She must have fallen asleep.
Her heart was pounding achingly in her chest.
When she finally managed to open them fully, they immediately steered in on a small girl that was looking at her shyly from behind her mother's dress. When Frida realized that it was Angrboða smiling at her, she tried to smile back.
But she had not as much as stretched her lips when she heard the small girl whispering something that made cold chills travel down her spine once more: "Snakes bite."