Family Reunions
Jötunheim is… not as bleak and broken as I imagined, it turns out.
Or at least the hallway interior of one of its buildings is, into which we have just emerged from the Between.
I cannot contemplate it for long, however, or be too discomfited by the fact that Nalla is now truly a jötun – hairless, gigantic, blue-skinned, white-marked, red-eyed and mostly naked – as we almost immediately come across a group of other jötnar.
And they – or something in them – somehow feel familiar, just like Nalla, although less viscerally linked to me.
And their collective attention is all on me.
Shrinking deeper into Nalla’s arms – although my mind keeps shrieking at me to get as far away from the jötun – only makes the attention sharper, more intense. I am beginning to truly regret ever agreeing to come here! Worse, there is nothing and nobody else to distract me or these… people.
Fortunately… or not… Nalla then speaks, naming each individual and their relation to me, while pointing at them in turn, without ever relinquishing me from his arms, although some of the… family?… wheedle him for just that outcome, in an Allspeak-friendly language he uses.
Huh. This is most awkward!