[aw] through mushroom clouds and black fields

Siv Helsi · 09-12-2012, 09:45 AM

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Siv’s careful smile melted like ice, and her eyes gleamed in the firelight. She was not like this woman; she had not come to hate her parents. She did not feel much at all about them anymore. Every part of her was fashioned by her own design, tooled with ancient runic letters and shades of night, shadow, frost. No part of her was made for weakness, though it lingered when she looked upon her child (and there would be more soon, to add to this). Eris was right in this matter, but Siv recalled that the thing her former-leader had been fashioned from was weak at its core. Grief had made her weak, and some strange source now fed her needs as acceptance and honor could not. The dead did not need tears or pity. The dead went on to fight forever in the halls of Valhalla.

In thinking this, she imagined an infant grown to a man, imagined him next to Draugr, and knew in her heart that never again would she sacrifice something so dear. The things she made would live on. She would find her immortality there.

At night the celadon water was endlessly black. Siv herself looked that color, a shadow in deeper shadow, touched only by the barest fingers of firelight. At her throat, polished bone reflected the sheen of the flames. “Then you must be proud of your children,” the Helsi woman said lowly. Another bait—perhaps it would spark something in the ghost, make her flicker like a burning candle, make her falter and stumble. Even if she had no love for Salvia, there were the others…and there were those who had been lost.

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