Reunion
Nothing will get done if I do not do it myself. It has been the fact of my life and my motto since a very, very, very long time ago. And apparently it does not cease to be true with my death.
Or after death, for that matter, apparently.
I wish to return to my twin, sorely. Odin wishes to reunite me with my twin – in one interpretation of his words, at least. So, deciding to satisfy both, I share my consciousness – my awareness of my twin and birth mother – with him.
I can only hope that he will not harm either of them. Not even my birth mother. Not before I know her better, at least.
I hope that we will not be waylaid by enemies and disasters on the way, too. Because, however mighty Odin might be, he is still one person. One wounded and exhausted and caught in a strong, strange feeling of bereavement, at that.
Well, hopefully, he will not suspect that I am more than just a shocky newborn jötun, as well.
But then, if Odin is here, aiding me, and I am a jötun, who is actually the enemy to both of us? Because his rushing heartbeats and breaths are not just indicative of worry and exercion, but also wariness and fear against a dangerous foe, like what I have experienced only a few times in my lifetime – my previous lifetime, apparently – and, to my knowledge, Odin has never felt it to such a point.
Who can frighten the King of Asgard so?
The question haunts me even as we rush indoors, which amplifies the odors of death and the various negative emotions and sounds. And down, down, down, down we hurtle into vestibules and corridors that become more and more removed from the direct touches and effects of the war.
And, just as we arrive in a level that feels so deep underground, far removed from the battle, a wall of terror-hopeless-desperate-love-grieving-pleading hits us like a physical blow, emanating from deeper down the corridor. And Odin hurtles even faster, perhaps because of that, leaping across a field of death choking the corridor, bursting into a room with even more potant emotions as well as the scent that I instinctively know as blood choking it.
And I hear my twin’s physical voice for the first time, crying the cries of a newborn seeking for their mother and other half, just as their presence slams back into mine, our previously tenuous bond reconnecting with a snap that is almost violent.
And, before I can process this new input, Odin bursts into even more frenzied action, mowing down the apparently rather unsuspecting jötnar within, coming towards them instead of them waylaying him as guards would, although they do fight like fighters, not like civilians, from how Odin moves and how surprisingly long they last under his onslaught.
And, just as I hear the last opponent – victim? – thud on the floor with a gurgling cry, Odin seems to reach the first source of the scent of blood, and my twin bumps none too gently against me, perhaps summoned by seiðr – his seiðr, since I feel yet too weak and unbalanced to use mine – and the two of us are laid much more gently on a rather soft, organic surface that feels like home.
And, all the while, the bond I and my twin have with our mother remains tenuous.
My twin whimpers. I whimper. But our voices are drowned beneath Odin’s snarling.
Snarling in an untranslatable language, one which nonetheless seems to resonate in me, familiar as if someone spoke it before to me – to us.
A youth’s voice – another kin-feeling presence, in fact – sobs back a weak retort in the same language, a small distance away, and half of me wants to know what they are fighting about, but….
But we are here – I and my twin and our nearly-no-longer-there shelter – and Odin did not spirit me way to Asgard alone and….
And I do not know what to think, what to feel, as I rarely did in my previous life.
If this life’s beginning is already like this, I dread what I and my twin will find along the way.
But we are alive and here, and it is undoubtably because Odin somehow had a change of plans, so, regardless of what I felt towards him in my previous life, I send him a vague feeling of calm and contentment and gratitude, reinforced by my twin.
And he welcomes us warmly.
Well, a new life, indeed!