The Journey to Find Mimir

Chapter Seven: Blessing and a Curse

I sat next to that trashcan for a very long time. Where else did I belong? I did not even care that my coat was getting dirty, or that my body was bruised from the fight. I did not care about anything anymore. Numbness filled my lungs, my limbs, my heart.

Finally, I picked myself up. The only thought on my mind was not being there in the morning. I pointed myself towards my apartment, as empty as I had left. The night's fight played over in my head.

First it was Junior's voice: How is Mommy's little receipt?

Then, it was Nabbi's voice: Don't return until you're right in the head. 

My shoulders slumped. I would never be right in the head again. If I could fix my family's reputation then maybe I could walk with a little pride, but our name was permanently stained.

 An old soup can lay in the street. I gave it a firm kick!  so it clattered down the cobblestone road.

How would I fix it anyway? Should I go back to the University of Alviss and major in Iron Smelting instead of fashion? Should I throw out my sewing machine? Toss my yards of fabric into the dumpster? Bitterness crept in. Maybe I could resurrect my father and convince him not to go to the Island of Lyngvi. I came across the old soup can a second time and kick! Perhaps I should go back in time and convince my father to never meet my mother in the first place!

The mead was finally wearing off now. Despair clung to me like a heavy jacket. I stopped walking and looked up at the cavern ceiling. It was dark.

"I'm alone," I said to no one. 

Anger began to bubble in my stomach. 

"I'm alone," I said again, my voice rising.

Inside of me, anger began to boil. Junior had tarnished my name. No one respected my dedication to fashion. My father was dead. And my mother--

A bitter, empty laugh fought its way out of my chest. I couldn't remember the last time I had laughed, but it certainly had not felt like this. 

 Freya. The goddess of love. She didn't care about me. I had only met her once. The morning of my 16th birthday, to see if I was a craftsman like my dad. She made me alone, too. 

"I'm an orphan." The words began to grow louder. "No one in the world but me, now! No one who cares! I don't even care!"

The words began to shout out of me. Pain. Loss. Shame. Anger. They exploded from my chest like a nuclear blast.

"I'm an orphan!" I shouted to the cavern ceiling. " You hear me, Freya? You never did ANYTHING for me!"

My voice bounced off the rooftops and down the street. Then, there was silence. Not even an echo.

I fell to my knees. What was I going to do? My body felt cold and clammy, as if I had become stricken with some horrible flu. I held my head in my hands. How could I move past this? A dark thought flitted across my subconscious. Could I move past this?

As I knelt there on the cobblestone alley, at the lowest I had ever been, something bizarre occurred. 

A strange noise sounded from above. At first, I did not care in the slightest. But the noise was persistent and growing louder. My head tipped up towards the cavern ceiling. Nothing but dark clouds of smog. The sound of crackling electricity filled the air. I tried to identify the source as something came into view. I gasped. 

A speck of brilliant light appeared in the sky, shining fifty feet above my head. The speck was growing. It became a long and glowing line of light, as if someone had slashed through the dark clouds with a golden knife. The rip was huge. It open liked a buttonhole. Brightness spilled from it and onto the street, drenching the alley in a shower of gold and white. 

A faint shadow passed through the hole. I watched something -- no, someone -- fall from the golden rip. As soon as the form passed through the hole, the slice closed just as quickly as it had appeared, sucking in light and sizzling electricity like the world's most powerful vacuum cleaner. I watched, mouth open, as the glowing figure fell to Nidavellir. A huge crash sounded in the direction of my apartment. Darkness returned to the alley. The air around me softly fizzled with the sound of static. 

I snapped back to reality. What had just happened? I rubbed my eyes, looking at the place in the sky where the phenomenon had occurred. It looked unchanged. Then, I began to turn in the direction of the crash. Who had fallen from that hole? A dwarf? A human? One of the Norse gods? Whoever they were, they might need my help. 

For a moment the world was still. Then, before I knew it, I was running, leaving the shadows of the alley behind me, my mind empty of everything except for finding that brilliant form. I ran in the direction of the light.