Gentleness
A hand that seems to dwarf my head runs itself gently over my hair, again and again and again.
The hand of a frost giant.
Maybe even an ergi jötun, a man who bore a child, as I am draped over… his?… chest, now, and feel no evidence of womanly bosom.
But an ergi jötun with a gentle hand… if it were at all possible.
If I am not dreaming.
And I would love to know that I am only dreaming.
Because it would mean that I am not a jötun, a monster; that I am still Odinson, still an ás, Frigga’s son, Thor’s brother.
Because it would mean that I have not been lied to, all my life.
But the hand that runs itself over my hair again and again and again is gentle, so gentle, gentler than Thor’s whenever he interacts physically with me, since my earliest memory.
And a power not of my own encases me, now, softly like a comforting blanket, and so familiar.
It stays gentle, even as it soaks me through.
It claims me back as part of it, relishes joyously in the reclaiming, and I know then that it is not a dream.