Lore: When a Trickster Meets His Match

Chapter Four: Asgard

There was blackness. It was still and silent. Nothing stirred. Nothing but the thrum of muffled anticipation of those things that waited there, suspenseful like a baited breath. This darkness had no measure of time. It could have been a minute of darkness or a million years. That was the nature of the dark. It was the cruel lifeblood of the things that lived without light.

Then there came a band of brightness.

From this thin band of light, the dark place was illuminated. Now things were visible. Behold the mist that, like a sleeper awakening to the dawn, began to move. As if it was aware and sentient. Like a worm poking from dark soil, the clouds inched and crawled closer to the horizon. Those shades of blue and purple, rolling like waves, that drifted in a thick mist above the meadow. With the time that grew on, the clouds began to stir even more. They knew. They knew what would come. With just a widening of that band of gold, with just the first rays of day. . .

Sunrise.

Morning.

Blue turned to pink. Silver transformed to gold. The rising sun blossomed in the sky the way that a flower sheds its petals, growing upward in a beautiful stem of dwindling darkness. Below in the meadow, the sleepers began to awaken. Once the flowers stood like cold, mute sentries in the darkness. Closed off and silent, their faces downcast as they inspected the soil. Yet when that gold spilled over them, they were shaken into wakefulness. Like drowsy children, their bodies began to stretch and shudder in their morning routine. As they were warmed by the sun, their stems stood up. Their faces searched the sky. Petals of all different colours opened and spread their beauty. It was the magic of Vanaheim. A distinct and beautiful enchantment.

Sigyn loved it all. Lying on her back and feeling the first grips of the sunny warmth on her face, illuminated by one bronze ray that fell down her cheek and lined her chin, she looked up at the sky. The first wind of the day was chilly and she shuddered as it brushed her, sweeping goosebumps up and down her arms. From where she lay in the grass, her dress was dampened with dew and her elbows and shoulders were slick with mist. Before long, she knew, the mist and dew would be evaporated by the sun. She would be warmed and her skin baked to a lovely, golden brown. Waiting hours there, she would feel a part of those flowers in the field. As if she felt the song of the flowers, which she watched opening around her like a parade of parasols, she heard the music and got up to dance.

The dress she wore in the field was already stained with earth and damp from dew, so she paid no attention to the branches that snagged at her hem or the twigs that snapped under her bare feet. She ran carefully between each of the long stalks and dodged the smaller herbs and weeds that grew between the starbursts and the Freyr's bloom, which she had always taken to calling sunflowers. Oftentimes this trial of not stepping on blossoms would make her turn, twist and pirouette. A loud laugh escaped her. Picking up her skirts, she danced between the blossoms. Sometimes, she would even sing.

Beloved Vanahem! Sigyn would stretch her arms wide as if to embrace her whole kingdom. I bless your sun! The blessed call of spring's begun! Oh Vanaheim! I bless your grounds! I bless your field and compost mounds! Dear land of sunshine, summer and spring, hail to Lord Freyr - Vanaheim's king. . .

Sigyn paused for breath in the shade of a silver birch tree. The bark stung her elbow, leaving little crags and indentations in her skin, and she even had to brush off a few ants that had started to trail along her arm. Her lungs burned. At each corner of her mouth, there were smarting pains from the wide, uncontrolled smile that she had let loose. How could she feel anything but joy in her father's homeland?

No one would disturb her here, not even the servants that had the high duty of having to return the princess - by now looking nothing more than an urchin with knotted, unkempt hair and a dress soiled and stained by the earth itself - back into the glowing picture of royalty. It was one place that the King decreed was for his only daughter. One of his most beloved fields, filled with flowers that she loved most, and encircled by a silver stream of fresh water. Sigyn could dip her toes into its tepid waters, bury her feet into the muck and even befriend the amphibians and pond-skaters that liked to reside in the shade of the wych elms. All without comment of the servants and without judgement, thanks to her dear father. Mostly without judgement, anyway.