The Fenrir Saga - Part I

Chapter 21

Beonnie

They stayed for quite a while that night. Jack had thousands of questions regarding my father, and I tried to explain as much as possible. And he explained all he could.

I now understood that when my father was gone all the time, he was away to check on his younger sister to make sure she was doing alright. His paranoia about me and his overprotective nature was because he was haunted by the same reason that had made Jack move his children to a completely different continent. After all, he wanted to protect his kin. Me.

As much as Jack was saddened by the realization that his eldest son was dead, he was happier to have rekindled with two of his kin.

Yes, so Hild was my aunt, and I was her niece. I had lost a lot, but I had now also gained a family.

After another long but pleasant family dinner, Hild poured some coffee first to Vidar, then Jack, and then herself. She sat down.

"Perhaps, Jack, you can now do the grandfatherly thing and get your grandchild registered into high school. We have an appointment tomorrow, but I also have my first workday. It is time.." she gave him a stern look. "..that you took some responsibility here."

He laughed.

"Of course!" he grinned towards me. "Do I need to wear grandpa clothes and have a crutch?"

Heh.

"No, you can be a cool grandpa, thank you very much," I replied, not without being a little worried. Hild would understand better what was cringe and what not to do as an older relative in a high school environment. I wasn't sure Jack had even attended high school.

"It is settled then," Hild clasped her hands and smiled towards us.

I leaned back into the sofa and nodded toward the map hanging on the wall.

"How come we found you? I mean, the probability of us just randomly landing in your town is very low. How did that happen?"

Jack nodded, stretched his long arms, and clasped his hands behind his head, leaning back on the sofa too.

"Yeah, well. I knew you would come, well I didn't know you would come, but I knew I would bump into Hild sooner or later. Even if I tried to do everything I could to avoid it. We naturally gravitate toward each other. You'll see what I mean at some point."

"But then, Hild's brother – won't he do that too eventually?"

Jack got a more solemn expression on his face, gravel in his voice.

"Yes, it should be so, but we have not... followed him the same way as Hild. Perhaps our paths crossed and we didn't know," he said and smiled meekly, pain flashing by in his eyes.

I went to bed early that night. I wasn't starting school tomorrow, at least I hoped I didn't, but it still felt like the first day of school altogether. I also had some things gnawing on me. Apparently, the necklaces were of some significance to our kind. We hadn't mentioned them since that night when Vidar *sigh* had fished mine out from under my top, but I had seen that he also carried one. Therefore I was pretty sure that the two necklaces in my father's leather pouch belonged to the twins. One was Hild's, and one was the twin brother's. Only, I had given it away to Zac. And now I realized that it never was mine to give away in the first place.

The following day both Hild and I were nervous. Clothes were tried, discarded, tried again, and make-up was put on, and well, there was a lot of fidgeting. Hild left first, and after she was gone, I ransacked her wardrobe to see if there was something I could borrow. There wasn't. I ended up going with white jeans and a black tube top, showing off my shoulders but nothing else. I had a small scar on my shoulder after the waterfall incident, but it seemed that no matter what I wore, at least one scar would be on display anyway. The sunglasses to top it off, and then I went downstairs to give Harry his breakfast and take him for a walk.