30 Days - Wind (part 3/5)

[felicitygs]

 The Aesir dress as if war might break out in a moment, and more than a few eye you and yours with curiosity at how lightly and loosely you dress. You suspect it will be common enough to come.

 

They do not, at least, dress for a wedding in armour, though there are still gleams of metal trim and a fondness for leather that strikes you as mildly odd. Perhaps the reason they are not cold is how they layer, but you doubt it. Everyone looks warm, and last night a servant apologized for the heat.

 

You regard each other, alone for a few brief minutes before the ceremony. 

 

(As if it will suddenly allow you to fit a proper courtship in such scant time.)

 

“Why,” he asks, first to break the silence, “do all your women wear knives?”

 

Instinctively, your hand reaches for the knife. Unlike the gold and gems that have been tucked into your hair and clasp the shoulders of chiton, it is plain and very nearly hidden in the folds of your cloth, and you did not expect any here to notice it, not at first. 

 

(Foolish, you think; they are a people of war and of course they would notice a weapon. Or their men would; other than one woman who follows in the first prince’s wake, none of their women seem armed. It is strange, and you feel the faint twinge of worry as you look on them, for surely surely they are not so foolish to go about so without a knife at their waist. And yet they do, and you remind yourself that you are in Asgard, not Vanaheim, and things are different here.)

 

“To gut fish,” you say and smile, not bothering to hide your lie as you look up at him.

 

(And it is up and up and up, and he is not even tall for an Aesir; you nearly feel a child next to him with your height, the top of your head just barely reaching his shoulder.)

 

“I have seen fish before, and the knives to gut them,” he says mildly, but there is no reproach in his voice. Not yet. He keeps his features controlled, as controlled as you have kept yours.

 

“Why, highness, do you suggest I would lie to you?”

 

He smiles, a quick flickering thing like light on water.

 

“I am suggesting you are leading me on,” he says with a chuckle.

 

(Inside, something eases, and the hope you have clung to since you first made your choice burns a little brighter.)