Valediction [Fólkvangr End, Book 3][Loki Fanfiction]

Chapter Thirty, Pt. II - A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning

Author's Note: Well, I feel like I owe an explanation but I actually wouldn't even know where to begin with one. It's been a long time but also no time at all has passed for me. This book has been following me around constantly like an utterly useless ghost. Needing to be finished but with no help as to how. It's been a long, long, arduous journey to get to here. But I owe you all so much and deserve so little. You are all what made me finish this journey. So this is for you. For all of you. Thank you.

As virtuous men pass mildly away,

And whisper to their souls to go,

Whilst some of their sad friends do say,

"The breath goes now," and some say, "No,"

So let us melt, and make no noise,

No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;

'Twere profanation of our joys

To tell the laity our love.

Moving of the earth brings harms and fears,

Men reckon what it did and meant;

But trepidation of the spheres,

Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love

(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit

Absence, because it doth remove

Those things which elemented it.

But we, by a love so much refined

That our selves know not what it is,

Inter-assured of the mind,

Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,

Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion.

Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two:

Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show

To move, but doth, if the other do;

And though it in the center sit,

Yet when the other far doth roam,

It leans, and hearkens after it,

And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,

Like the other foot, obliquely run;

Thy firmness makes my circle just,

And makes me end where I begun.

                                - John Donne

Hera gestures to the side of the saddle, where I find a crossbow.

I stare at it. I run my fingers over its detailed woodwork gently. I look back up at the back of Hera's head.

"I don't know how to use this!" I call over the roar of wind in my ears. The sound of wind is not quite loud enough to muffle her exasperated sigh.

"It is not for you, child," she explains. She gestures downwards to the battlefield. "Jump!"

I whip my head back around to look at her with disbelief. Her lips are pressed into a firm line. There's no jesting with Hera. She glances back at me over her shoulder with a look so pointed I can hardly move fast enough. I toss my arm through the crossbow and swing my leg over the saddle of the horse so I'm sidesaddle. I say a quick prayer and cross my arms over my chest and slip from the horse and straight into freefall.