𝐖𝐀𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐆𝐀𝐌𝐄, ᵗᵛᵈᵘ

two.

ACT ONE, CHAPTER TWO,
THE NEW WORLD

Finn started getting headaches after Freya left. They started small, his eyes began to hurt, then they began to water. He passed that off as sadness. Then he started waking up, crying silently in his sleep. Then the headaches got worse and he started seeing things too. One night, he woke up sobbing so hysterically, scarcely able to breathe through the sickly sweet burning smell that clogged up his nose. He didn't know where it came from, but a part of him recognized himself as the cause, even though the man on the steps had grey skin, like stone. He threw up over the side of the bed and his parents awoke to retching sounds he couldn't control.

Father was panicking. Mikael worried that the plague had returned to take his son. He hurried the boats and the packing and, instead of waiting for his wife to give birth before departing, he sent a half-formed prayer to the goddess Freyja and set sail.

The journey was long and, despite everything, Finn enjoyed being at sea. His Father avoided him and his Mother continued practising her new dark magic only lying down. And Elijah was born at sea. He was named Einarr, nine days after his birth when Father sat him upon his knee and claimed him in an act of duty and disinterest, but everyone called him Elijah. Still, Fathers do not raise their sons until they turn eight and pick up a sword, so a Mother may name her child whatever she wishes. Esther went into labour at night and Finn awoke from a dream of a stag with bloodied antlers to the sound of her screams. The birthing bed was a nightmare in its own right, but Mother and babe both emerged unscathed. Finn did not think Elijah was a pretty child; he had brown eyes but was unable to open them for long, his nose looked more like a growth than a facial feature, and his face was squished and wrinkled. They didn't seem like very handsome features but people kept saying the babe was good-looking, and Finn could accept when he was wrong. But he didn't have to understand it, nor to agree with it.

That wasn't to say he didn't care for his new brother. Elijah's feet were so small that Finn could wrap them in his hands, and Elijah's favourite thing to do seemed to be grabbing one of Finn's fingers and refusing to let go. Finn adored his brother, and he was certain Freya would have done too.

But he still thought babies were ugly.

Finn spent the rest of the trip caring for his brother. He told Elijah stories about Thor (because those were the stories Freya loved best), sang songs to calm him down, and stole a lump of wood he could make into a crude carving of mjolnir that Elijah would only be able to appreciate as a teething toy.

After Elijah was born, the journey only took a few more days before they arrived and dragged the longships ashore. Ayanna could speak to the natives, though Father insisted she translate for him. At some point, Father had pushed Ayanna to her limits so Mother started translating and Elijah was left in Finn's care, who was left in Ayanna's care as she organised their temporary settlement. The benefit to this was that Ayanna could be convinced to teach Finn magic. She taught him small things, but Finn could feel something urging him on. It told him that this knowledge would be important, that understanding it was vital. The feeling was reminiscent of meeting his Aunt Dahlia. It was an omen of destiny.

The efforts to build a home there were arduous and lonely for a child who wasn't big enough to work and had yet to learn the language. But Finn put himself to work anyway. He followed strangers around, baby in his arms, and smiled a closed-lipped smile at them as he pointed to things and named them. Some people didn't care for a student and shooed him away politely, but sometimes they would sit him down and speak to him with slow words. Elijah began learning to speak in two languages at the same time, while Finn made himself a student of many teachers.

He tried to ignore the odd feeling some of the locals gave him, they were nice enough and no one else seemed to share his weariness. In fact, Ayanna had seemed thrilled to touch the people who gave him a sense of wrong-predator-animal. She said they were werewolves.

That night he dreamt of a woman, cleaved to pieces and screaming curses. These dreams were not to be mentioned to anyone.

778 words.