30 days - Wind (part 4/5)

 He does not visit your wedding bed that night.

 

Which is not to say he does not visit your rooms you have been given and share in pleasantries that never last more than a few minutes, that tell neither of you anything more of the other.

 

(Your rooms are large and spacious, the walls hung in tapestries that ease some of the shine of gold, but they still do not feel near so open as your smaller room in your uncle’s home. You think it the windows and how they are neither so open nor so wide as those.)

 

You spin and you weave in your rooms and you visit with the Queen in her garden in the afternoons, and in the evenings you share in meals where you smile the pretty smile that back home caused concern and here no one notices.

 

(If any note that he doesn’t share your bed, they do not comment, satisfied, you suppose, by the polite smiles you exchange.)

 

“Are your rooms to your liking?” he asks you one day, gaze roaming along the walls.

 

“As well as they may,” you say instead of this is not home. 

 

He glances at you, then his eyes follow your hands as you weave, and he is silent for a few minutes. 

 

(That is what he does. He does not talk as others do, does not attempt to tell story or boast as his brother and friends do, does not gossip of others as Frigga’s attendants do. He asks questions.)

 

“Do you read the future in your weaving?”

 

You pause at that, because today has been worse than usual–one In Asgard we too many–and you do not mean your voice to be so unkind as it is.

 

(Except, you think, you do.)

 

“My name is not Frigga,” you say flatly, “nor am I the Fates. ‘Tis only weaving, my lord, or do you yet expecting me to do a trick?”

 

He blinks at you, head tilting to the side as if a bird.

 

(You breathe and calm the churning depth of your emotion, despite anything you might wish.)

 

“Hardly,” he says. He pauses, and between you your temper lies as you return to your weaving, ignoring him in the hopes perhaps he will leave you alone before he says a word of how things are done in Asgard, how unladylike of a woman in Asgard to snip and snap, to lose her control.

 

(To be more than a demure woman who does naught but tend to her husband’s household.)

 

“What is your knife for?” he asks.

 

“To cut the threads of a man’s life,” you say, voice silken and low.

 

He chuckles at that, turning and beginning to leave. He pauses at the door.

 

“Are you cold?” he asks. “In your rooms? Are they warm enough?”

 

You blink, stopping to look at him again. A hint of a smile still graces his face, though it does little to reveal his thoughts or where the question came from. He has one hand at the door.

 

“I am not cold,” you say, startled as you realize you are telling the truth. That it has been true of your rooms since you arrived. Here, if nowhere else, it is not temperature that makes you uncomfortable.

 

“Most excellent. Good day, my lady,” he says, and he is gone before you can say else.

30 Days - Wind (part 5/5)

 “Is it true?” Svala asks you one afternoon.

 

You wonder idly what truth it is she seeks this time; you have had hundreds of truths taken from you, idle questions that make you wonder what the Aesir even know of the Vanir, if anything.

 

(Is it true there is tar in your wine, is it true some women go bare-chested, is it true there are sea serpents large enough to make Jormungandr seem small, is it true is it true is it true and you smile the curve of a smile that here means nothing.)

 

“Is what true?” you ask politely, quietly, so as not to draw attention from the queen’s conversation.

 

(You have learned it is often best to hold your silences at these afternoon gatherings; it lessens how many A lady in Asgard’s you collect.)

 

“That your uncle bedded your mother?”

 

You should ask her to repeat the question, you should say Pardon, but the thought of saying pardon when you have been asked if your uncle Njord slept with your mother is nearly as offensive as the question itself.

 

“Is it true,” you say snidely, unkind and loud enough that all may hear, “that your husband brings his hounds to bed? No? Oh, beg pardon, Svala, it is only what I have heard at court.”

 

Svala flushes bright, and you see anger her eyes, but you smile sweetly at her as you stand.

 

“Pardon, Majesty,” you say to the queen, “but I have an appointment I forgot about elsewhere.”

 

(It is a thin lie, but you do not care. To suggest such–they forget, again and again and again, your uncle and mother are not Olympians, are not of that twisted branch, and you will not coddle their forgetfulness. Let them say you are not lady-like. If a lady of Asgard dares ask such, then it is even less the type of woman you would be.)

 

“Of course,” the queen says, graceful as always, and she gives your curtsy a nod before you leave.

 

(Svala will not be at these gatherings in the future, and no one dares ask such Is it true questions again, but you know it is in their minds. It is a comfort, at least, that the queen has put an end to it.)

 

In truth, you do not have anywhere to go except back to your rooms, and you cannot stomach the thought of being trapped there; you wander away from the gardens until you end up at the pastures by the stables. They remind you a little of home, with tall grasses and wildflowers.

 

There is no one here, no one to see you pull the shawl tight to your shoulders for warmth, no one to see you when you sit beneath a twisted old tree. The land here is flat and you can see all the way back to the palace. You stare at it for a while, your thoughts idle, and suddenly all you can think is how you miss home, miss the feel and smell of the sea, miss the sight of wave-beaten rocks. There are no gulls here despite their not-ocean, no salt in the air to sting your eyes and lay flavour on your tongue. The landscape has trees–pine and oak and hundreds you have no name for–not the scraggly and twisted olive trees that dot the craggy peaks of home, and here, where no one can see, for the first time since you arrived weeks ago, you pull your knees close and weep for what you needed to leave behind.

 

(Peace is hard-won, you think, and you should not mourn for what you have given. It is better than blood and death, and at least you yet live.)

 

(It does not ease how your heart aches.)

 

Something snuffles your hair and you start, looking up through tears. The something prances back, a horse, and you rub your eyes, sure your vision too blurred, and instead see that your eyes do not deceive you. He does have eight legs.

 

You laugh, weak and knowing it sounds near hysterical.

 

The horse eyes you warily, but when you do not do anything else, he shoves his nose back in your lap.

 

“I do not have anything,” you tell the stallion as he snuffs, reaching to scratch behind his ears. He seems near disappointed, or as disappointed as a horse may be, rolling his eyes at you. 

 

“Do not look at me that way, I did not know I would be meeting a horse today, let alone one with eight legs. Is there nothing normal about this place?”

 

(Perhaps it is ridiculous to talk as if he understands you, but a horse, at least, will have no way to demand a thousand truths from you, nor remind you that it is impolite to show your temper.)

 

The horse huffs, stirring you hair, before losing interest. He does not go far though.

 

(Perhaps he is as puzzled by you as you by him; you certainly do not resemble any Aesir here.)

 

The next day, instead of an afternoon with the queen, you go to the pastures and their faint echo of home, and when the strange horse begins to follow behind you, you offer him sugar and apples snuck away from your morning meal, stroke his soft nose, and talk to him as you wish you could talk to anyone here.

 

(Sometimes, you think he must understand you; it is in his reactions, snuffs and whinnies and nudges, eye rolls and headbutts, but surely not. He is only a horse, though one of many extra limbs and of a size that you’ve never seen in a horse, and you only want for someone who might understand and sympathize. Wishful thinking, you think, and nothing more.)

30 Days - Transformation

 There is a certain sound to real pearls, a click-clack roll in the ear feel that synthetics have never quite mirrored, but no one listens for these days.

 

Listen, listen, she murmurs. Click-clack roll in the ear, and you savour the sound on your tongue before you repeat it, hollow facsimilie but close enough, you think, close enough.

 

There is a characteristic to change that involves blood and rebirth, ancient and old and you stamp your feet on the ground, to make another drumbeat, a heartbeat, the sound just before a charge, and rolls and overlaps with the sound of the pearls in your hand.

 

Blood and bone and so much more and you smile wide, stamp your feet, and lean your head back. The rain has its own percussion, a softer one, the mourning of the past, what is left behind.

 

Good, you think, someone must mourn what ends.

 

Sea and earth and air; all that’s left is fire, and that is all you are, fire, so in truth you have even that.

 

From your ashes, they say, will rise another tree, a different tree, and a dead dead god and his wife.

 

You will be an end, she says.

 

No, you correct. I am a beginning.