death mother

[modirdauda-blog]

vitrixlic

‘Your stare offends what meager mind I have left, world walker.  Turn away or speak but do not linger in silence.  It turns the air foul.’ 

[kingoftheravensarchive]

     “Only on certain subjects. Wisdom       usually comes with age and       experience, does it not? I may be       old, but I am not that old.”

[modirdauda-blog]

‘You and I are far from the harbor of youth, my love.’

And the affection is lost from the words that fall hard in punctuation, the end  of a sentence finite and true. She was never one for lies, the Hagia. Never one to bear lilting words but to hear their honeyed sound.

‘Surely you have grown sage with the years.’ 

[modirdauda-blog]

kingoftheravens

‘Do you think yourself a wise  thing, maðurinn minn?’

[helreginn]

Fading breath came easier with the comfort of her mother’s touch. The short and fleeting years of adolescence, unaware of the horrific In medias res that was to come, the love that had grown for a child that should not have been, collided into fingers pressed into skin and a mother’s weary promise.

Knowingly broken; Empty. Safety was not the Hagia’s to bespeak. All effort to keep her daughter free of the cursed fate, planned for Aeons before she walked in the waking worlds, was for not.

But that was not for Hel to know. A child was not tasked with foresight. Hel never had been. Her fear came not from the threat of abduction, isolation and tyranny in wait of a moment that would ensure death’s embodiment know of a prophecy spoken around her in hushed tones and heartbroken whispers. It was a softness of words and the covenant of safety, as if it was no longer guaranteed. 

Hues of ashen grey and burnt ochre fell upon the mouth spewing things violent as the child had never heard. On  their own, she understood the words, but still there was no meaning to them without the reason for them. Vast  and limitless imagination, but the girl etinn could never  hope to concoct an explanation, a wherefore. Danger  had never saught her out. To that point, hers had been A life of privilege. One that would soon become unravelled and lost. 

"Why?" 

[modirdauda-blog]

In a word the mother has found  the iron of her footing turned to sand. She is shaken from the longed stance that has so long owned her frame, she  is pained as the rusted struts of steadfast denial moan beneath this new found burden. The weight of explanation. The dauntless Hag would wince were it not  for the life cradled beneath her wing, the  daughter bound to her breast. 

Why.

Do not ask such things of me, child. Do not wonder at the world that defies explanation,  that rejects understanding with all the  ease of oil upon water. 

Do not stare at the chaos that has befallen our ilk for the whole of knowing, do not marvel at the shadows promised upon the horizon. 

Do not ask why, for none can know.

Do not ask why, for your mother cannot voice what meager explanation hovers upon her lips.

Lips that tighten, flat and flush. 

Lips to dip to the crown of those jet locks, her father’s legacy. Lips that lay a kiss  upon the brow that would seek to know  that which was unknowable. 

[oncedeadliesmith-archive-blog]

“I’ve not yet come to decide what I would like to find in you, but comfort is not something I seek. Not from you, not from any. Oðinn supplies my comfort as brother and ring-giver, and he is the All-Father.”

His words made it seem as if he did not take the title serious, but he acknowledged the weight of it nonetheless.

“But you are right, fear is how I make my way. I do not fear fire, for fire I understand. It burns those who cannot work with it, and warms those who can… I have never been a cautious man.”

[modirdauda-blog]

‘You were never a man, sonur  jotunheimr. You may have fled from your roots, you may have  flayed them to ruin and left them with naught but the meanest of sinews. 

But they are yours, bound to  those hollow bones that so easily take flight.’ And though those false fair lips

settle in the lean of a half smirk, the Hag’s eyes know no grace. There is but the iron of her  pride here.

There is but the bite of her heritage.

The sting of his.

[qceenmother]

       “A queen is but a title. It is the         woman who stands behind the         title that makes it so. I may be a          woman of golden halls, but I am         not a woman who stands by and         does nothing.”

[modirdauda-blog]

‘Oh’

And the sound is long and  it is drawn. It is savage and  it basks in its beasthood, a growl before the gilded laurels of this creature false and hollow. In those naked ribs empty of heart or harrow it found its stage, reverberating unto generations,  each as strong as that first  utterance.

‘But you are, you are. And for that you should count yourself  lucky. The greatest sin you bear is the sin of indifference, the  sin of resting upon your divine arse whilst my children were  torn from the breast that bore  them. 

Mindlessness is your greatest  fault, oh thoughtless royal. Were your hand more evident in my  beloved’s destruction then you would have no lungs with which to breathe this hostile air.’ 

[helreginn]

There was no question of faith or trust. Her mother had told her and so she did. If prying eyes kept a distance, they might not even see her apart from the íviðja, she held herself so close. As ever, she was silent and still as trembling limbs would allow.

[modirdauda-blog]

And so the mother’s hold tightens, fingers pressed to white against the frail bones of her precious daughter.  So often she has feared that the harmony of those dying joints would falter at her touch, so often had she feared that the  pressure would be too great, that she  would seek to grasp and instead would  send her daughter to ash and powder.

But it was better that she know the bruise  of her mother’s grasp, better she grow  calloused and strong, laced with the scars of prepartion gifted by love. Better she be ready for the true hurts that  lingered with a sick promise just upon the horizon.

Better. Fingers rise to the dead locks that cascade beautiful, they trace against a scalp forever aching.

Born in pain.

‘With me, you are safe. I would see the seas turned molten, would see the mountains  inverted, would see the very air turned to  flame before I would know you to suffer.’ 

[modirdauda-blog]

motherofasgard started following you

‘Queens are creatures of blood and bone. Creatures  of marrow split and sucked  down with the starvation of the ravenous. Queens are creatures hard. Queens are creatures fierce. You, golden lady, you are no  queen.’ 

[oncedeadliesmith-archive-blog]

“I do not speak so freely of things I do not have intimate knowledge of.”

He knew it was a risky statement, but he smiled to himself even so.

“But you know of me, shall I be flattered or fearful? I’ve no illusions about my reputation across the Nine.”

[modirdauda-blog]

She dons a half smirk, for he  is playing with the flame that  lingers between those open lips. She might as well let the heat of it linger between them, the air  pregnant with its smoke.

‘You would not have survived to speak of your reputation were you not a creature of fear.’

And now the fire has a bite, it has a purpose, the embers  flaming crimson upon the belly of her tongue.

‘Fear is what has saved you, fear is what has kept you. Were you to  find comfort with me, you would  find ruin in the next breath.’ 

[oncedeadliesmith-archive-blog]

She did not swoon like Vanir ladies, nor roll her eyes like so many Aesir.

She didn’t want hollow words, and he hadn’t the foresight to give her what she did want.

“I could not compete with roaring, I’m afraid.”

He ventured a little closer, smirking just slightly, his voice lulling to a whisper.

“Besides, the fire in your words would spurn great beasts, sending them back into the night if they dared to be lured by such beauty.”

[modirdauda-blog]

The Great Hag looses a low  whistle, her lips pursing in a  mirror of her inner surety. 

‘So it is my fire that so stokes your eye, Laufeyson, not my breasts?’  She imagines the great giantess

rolling her head on a limp neck, admonishing her son from afar for his attempt that the sheer  cliff face of Angrboda. 

‘And to think, I had imagined  them so lovely.’ 

[modirdauda-blog]

helheimrsbrokentoy started following you

Her lips are snarled, her jaw pressed hard against skin made  iron in the fires of Utgard. 

‘You will stay by my side, child, or you will know the ache of Hel. Your father’s embrace is sweet but for a breath before it will  turn to ash in your arms leaving you  naked before the hatred of the Asa.’ 

[oncedeadliesmith-archive-blog]

“I was only attempting flattery.  Do not harm me for such paltry  attempts. I can, after all, do better.”

[modirdauda-blog]

No small part of this giant queen smiles at the words that roll from  an infamous tongue. 

This creature is named spineless by her kin and fellows, he is spat as coward and fool.  And perhaps he is. 

But there is a novelty in matching wits with the stuff of legends.

‘Then flatter me. But do not weep when your words fall on ears  deafened by the roars of greater beasts.’ 

[oncedeadliesmith-archive-blog]

     “Fagrliga. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

[modirdauda-blog]

‘You’re taking steps longer than your legs if you think this is going to be a  pleasure, world walker.’ 

[modirdauda-blog]

oncedeadliesmith started following you

‘laglegur drengur’

[modirdauda-blog]

‘They say that time halts for those that lose their hearts.  They say that the days part like tides, passing in a delta round the island of your grief.

Tell me, are they right?  Tell me, am I timeless?’

[modirdauda-blog]

theblindgodhodr

‘A little to your left.’ 

And the call is biting and it  harsh and it a mockery of the blind eyes that stare sightless.  It is the cruelty of a child playing  as a woman, a body grown but a  mind still mired in the petty tidings of youth.

‘Or maybe it’s your right.’ 

[modirdauda-blog]

ofhelheiim

‘Again.’

And the mother’s call is sharp,  it is daggers in the night. It is a blade unsheathed, naked and fierce,  sharpened by the burden of years.

It is a shield shaped as a weapon, a witch’s vision sending her child to battle before the first siren call.

Be ready, it screams, housed in that  iron jaw, be ready.

‘Fix your shoulders, ‘stance like that will leave you gutted for the crows.’