Evolution

Chapter 25

It took the girls a few days to adjust to the perpetual chill in the temple. Every morning, Bel delivered breakfast to their room, they took lunch in the dining hall alone, and they met Loki for supper. After a week, he began to come back to their room after supper to tell stories, both from the books on the shelves and stories from both the history of Asgard and the history of Jotunheim. Brynja occasionally even told a story from Midgardian history. Storytelling shortly was expanded to include illusions the girls could watch and explore, Loki and Brynja building the fantasy worlds together as they had done years before. The children were fascinated by the magic and stunned that their mother was able to use it. They were both even more surprised when they asked if she had shown their father what she could do and her answer was no.

One evening, when the girls had been tucked into bed and were sound asleep, Loki and Brynja sat at her breakfast table with tea, watching the stars, books on the table between them from their storytelling.

Loki took a few of the books back to the dresser and returned with Ginsberg's Howl, "Bryn, may I ask you something quite possibly very personal?"

As he sat down, she smiled, "Of course- when have I ever not answered your questions?"

He opened to the inscription and pointed to it, "Who was Sunflower?"

Brynja tenderly took the book from his hands and read the inscription, her fingers gently tracing over the handwriting, "She was so very dear to me. I loved her in a way I have loved so very few. She died a year later. She was so young, only 23, when the disease took her. It had only been identified as a disease a few years before. Nobody knew how to cure it- they still don't- but the drugs that make life long now for people with it didn't exist then. The disease was spread sexually or through blood- one of her former lovers had shared it with her. Sunflower fought it as best she could, but she met a terrible and painful death because of it. She's one of many warriors who lost that fight. I miss her still- her smile, her laugh, her sense of fun and play, and the way she would recite poetry at any opportunity. I'm sure you've figured out which poem in here was ours."

Loki reached across the table and took her hand, "Bryn...she was your lover? The woman who you have seen 'might have been' moments for in your Witchery?"

"Yes. One of many lovers over the years, but one of only a very few who I could have spent the rest of my life with."

"'We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread bleak imageless locomotive, a beautiful golden sunflower inside...,'" Loki recited.

"Even as she died and her body withered, the disease destroying her in ways I could not imagine, yes, she was my beautiful golden Sunflower." Loki could feel her sadness from across the table. He did not know how to respond- he had never watched someone die from any sort of plague. Brynja rose slowly and went to her desk. She retrieved the photo album and brought it over to the table. He brought his chair next to hers and sat close to her.

She opened to the first page, "I only have one photo from my first trip in the 1920s. I landed in Chicago and spent a year there before hopping a train to Detroit. Both cities were alive with jazz and booze, the illegal bars the centre of city life. I loved it. I know there were a lot of bad men around town and I used my charm to meet a lot of low-level gangsters. This picture was taken in the United Artists theatre in Detroit the first year it was open- 1928. I left Midgard not very long after." She turned the page, "You'll recognise this woman. She's my Starlet." Loki stared at the images of the beautiful dark haired woman from the two larger photographs on the top of Brynja's trunks. The photographs were always glamorous, whether she was in a bathtub full of bubbles, surrounded by reporters, or in her silk loungewear. There were photographs of Brynja with her, her hair swept up, her suits tailored and her dresses nearly as stunning as those worn by her Starlet, her makeup perfect. Loki was drawn to one image in particular that was the size of a full page of the album- in it, Brynja was leaning out of the window of a panel truck handing a loaf of bread to a young woman in a very worn dress, a baby wrapped tightly on her back. The woman's eyes were desperate, her face gaunt and tired.