Siblings, Part 2
Healing wing at the palace in Utgarð, Ýmirheim
Earth’s time unknown; Ýmirheim’s time unknown
I wake up slowly, slowly, slowly, but wherever I am coming into is not better than the black void I have just reluctantly moved away from.
It is worse, in fact.
My head feels like it wishes to split in two, and my sense of self likewise. I feel mainly older and smaller, shorter; however, a still-big chunk of me also feels younger and taller. And both selves have weighty baggages, each.
If I could throw up to relieve some of this conflicting burden, I would. But as it is, I cannot even move this achy, alien-feeling body – with all its ‘glorious’ splitting sensations – even slightly. I might fall into real pieces, too, if I moved!
The constant, unfamiliar song-humming that seems like it comes from all round me helps me to focus, to resettle myself, but the progress is so slow. And this song-humming feels wrong; it’s not the one that I am accustomed to hearing, that I wish to hear, and both selves concur with that.
I can’t open my mouth – everything feels laden – so I let out my own humming, to express what I cannot express through words.
It is both harder and easier to do: harder because the lethargy makes my concentration falter every so often and similarly affect my ability to speak through this means, distorting what I wish to convey, and easier because I do not need to prevaricate, hesitate, omit anything or try to find the right words.
As easy as it is to communicate through this means, all the same, it seems to sap a great amount of my energy, especially since the unfamiliar song-humming is still going on – and in fact, I’ve been liberally using it to focus my concentration. Drowsiness begins to dull my headache and sense of splitting unreality, and before long the black void welcomes me like an old friend.
It seems to be just a second afterwards that I become aware once more, although thankfully the return trip is no longer so maddenningly slow or tortuously weird and painful. Gladly and with not a little amount of relief, I also notice that my head doesn’t hurt so much anymore, and my sense of self is back to normal – well, normal-ish – with only the edges being blurred.
I am Harry James Potter, son of Lily Evans and James Potter. I am also Loki Laufey-childe, child of Laufey and… her spouse… which I think was named Farbauti, according to the memory that – `Owwwh!` My head throbs anew on that thought. But now that I remember that one, it won’t leave my mind alone, and consequently… “Owwwh.”
Damn. I must be more careful next time… if there’s a next time… with how Helblindi has managed to score such a blow in… “Owwwh.” I don’t even know if I want to have a second try when the first is already so – “Mmmh!”
And, “Loí?” – `Who is that?`
Someone – or more? – is nearby; so near. Hostile…?
No, I don’t think so. But still. The last time I was with somebody else, that person….
No, I wasn’t just with one person. `Laumir!` Where is my little sibling? Then again, where am I? My sense of smell feels dulled, just like my other senses; while I have gradually grown accustomed to the heightened ones of my “blue-angel” form, at that.
Go figure. When I have been too relaxed with the status quo….
`Whoa! Who is touching me?!`
“Arghhhh! Ngh.”
Damn. Come on, tongue! Speak! This is so frustrating! And why can’t I see?!
Another strain of song-humming from the same unfamiliar person begins to make itself known after a brief, loaded silence. It seeks to lull me back into the black void, I know; but I want to be awake!
Thankfully, what I’m dubbing the sleep-siren song soon ceases, and the agitation it has caused in me seems to be a better motivator for my body to obey my – however scattered – will than the lack of stimulus that greeted me in the beginning of this period of awareness. I manage to move my fingers now, in any case, and also to twitch my nostrils a little. (Well, at least it’s something!)
And then, a development that’s even more perfect in my current perception, level of immobility and anxiousness to just move, a huge someone scoops me up into their arms. To my increased happiness, they disregard the ensuing worried entreaties from the unfamiliar song-hummer from before, who now I realise must be a healer, who also cites what seem like facts drawn from a deep-scan unit, a tool that I have just begun to learn before… well, before that disaster of an encounter with one’s own sibling. I agree with them – my calm cuddler, that is, not the overwrought healer: How can being cuddled be bad for my health? And the said cuddler is so, so, so familiar, too, in a good way at that.
And my face is carefully directed to nuzzle into…?
`Oh.`
My cheeks burn. Honestly, I am caught between mortified embarrassment, gleeful anticipation and relieved happiness. – It’s Amma! Her scent here is so strong, and it always reminds me about the first time that I found out, during that nearly catastrophic encounter with the creatures that I know now as being called “the nightmare gliders” (What an apt name, that!), when she firstly… grew those back, for lack of a better term (And what a fascinating – if cheek-burning – topic, that: that milaðen can more or less control the appearance and disappearance of their breasts as well as… some other parts.)
And, as it has happened so many times before while I am staying here, I am once again encouraged to breastfeed from her. It doesn’t help that, from the previous instances in which I couldn’t evade being literally babied like this, the taste of the milk is… addicting; and the energising sensation that it always gives my whole self, even more.
It’s just so very embarrassing that my traitorous body and mind and all have chosen to get addicted to this against my will! And to top it all, here, there are however many people present and maybe even watching. If only I could shoo them away – or better yet, don’t get tempted like this!
I manage to tilt my face further instead, to bury it under Amma’s arm like a baby indeed, just as there’s some rustling of loincloth from somewhere nearer to where I lay before, followed by light, ginger-sounding padding feet.
A presence that feels unfamiliar but somehow rather related to me and Amma is approaching us, and, under the elation that my senses seem to be returning to their new normal, worry – and even a healthy dose of apprehension – grips my innards.
Is this Býleistr? (Helblindi won’t be unfamiliar-but-related to me, after all, in more ways than one. And I won’t forget the feel of their presence any time soon, given how it’s left confusing, headaching residue in my own sense of self after that disaster in the hallway.) But if it’s indeed my second-eldest sibling, why are they approaching now? Are they the one who greeted me some time ago – before this latest return to consciousness? Are they going to judge me before knowing me, like their elder womb-sibling did to such a disastrous effect? Are they going to hurt me now, while I am in quite a vulnerable state?
I become aware of digging my claws – not only fingers – into Amma’s unprotected skin when she hisses lowly in stifled pain. The pain seems to be quickly overlooked, nevertheless, as she coolly snaps something in Ýmska – the language of the milaðen, of which I am still learning, and know only a few stock phrases – and the healer echoes it in a gentler, more impassive tone.
A wavering, whimpering reply comes from nearer than the approximate distance of the presence suggests; so near. I cringe deeper into Amma’s embrace by reflex, startled by the closeness while the encounter with Helblindi is still on the fore of my mind.
Well, but I was sorted into Gryffindor, wasn’t I? And that me has not been at all changed or subverted by the acquisition of this form and the “hot-weather” one – the approximation of human height and shape, the one that I was changed into by that bit of protective magic I accidentally triggered in that abandoned house.
And courage is not the absence of fear.
Besides, one ought to not fear one’s family, right?
I dig my fingers into Amma’s belly – deliberately, now, but without the claws (And how strange is that still, having claws without being a typical childish or popular-trope monster!) – before she can deliver yet another harsh scolding – or so I assume – and ruin her relationship with her elder children further. And then, with much more effort to move than when I firstly woke up, having such an urgent goal to motivate me, I turn away from her and struggle to sit up.
She huffs and grumbles under her breath, but she helps me up anyway, even when I seek to lean my back against her instead of sitting facing her, and I count it as a win.
Apparently, Býleistr – if my guess nails it – thinks similarly, for they tentatively move forward and lower themself to their knees before Amma and I, making them have to look up into my blinking eyes.
But still, their presence is… lacking. I never knew one’s physical distance could mismatch with the mental one like this.
And I’m already ruining the chance for reintroduction to my own sibling, apparently, because they seem to misconstrue my thoughtful frown as a displeased one and proceed to babble things in Ýmska, as if a desperate supplicant before a monarch.
It sickens me. – A family member – an elder sibling, even – shouldn’t behave like this!
A protesting noise still suffices to shut them up, regardless, however pathetic it sounds – caught between a weak croak and a kitten’s yowl. So I continue trying…
…And bungle it further, by blurting out, “I couldn’t feel you much. But you were so near already!,” once I manage to clear out my throat a little bit, instead of asking for their name or… well, anything else that might be less touchy.
The humiliation on their face – craggy as ours all are in this form, but less craggy than Amma’s or Helblindi’s, perhaps due to age, familiar – and no longer seeming so ugly or monstrous – now after so long and so often interacting with milaðen – says it well.
And, belatedly, or maybe by design (though I’d hate to think so negatively of my own mother), Amma tells me mind to mind: `Leí is afraid, Loí.`
Great. I am afraid of Helblindi, and Býleistr is afraid of me. What a nice family reunion.