FLOOD

The Great Feast

I think what I liked best about the way Muspelheim celebrated was the music.

It reminded me of Kalda, the rollicking, cheerful fiddle. The way she used to dance, her head flung back, her cheeks red, spinning us both in circles until we were dizzy and too winded from laughing to continue.

The jotun honor their dead, and tonight the feast was in their name. The soldiers who died during the battle of course, but especially Kalda. They asked me what I wanted, kept asking me, and I kept saying nothing. Until the last time they asked and I requested one thing. Just one thing.

There was a picture above the big fireplace behind the head table, there for just one night. Taking the spot of the Muspelheim coat of arms for the length of the feast.

The portrait artist knew her. An old boyfriend I think.

When I looked up I could see that whoever he was, he'd truly known her. Maybe even loved her, because he captured her likeness perfectly.

In the picture she was laughing, her head tipped to the side, her dark hair tumbling down one shoulder. Her eyes sparkled, and the picture was so real it felt like I could reach out and touch her. That her skin would feel warm.

She was so alive in the painting. It brought tears to my eyes and my chest ached the slightest bit, and I was happy and sad all at the same time.

Maybe later I'd dismiss it as me being caught up in a moment of hysteria, maybe I'd decide I'd imagined it, but right now I was so sure I'd heard her back there. During the battle.

I'd felt her presence, heard her voice speak to me.

I jumped when a voice spoke in my ear over the music. "Vee?"

When I whirled around it wasn't Kalda—of course it wasn't her, ridiculous—Gunny was standing there, her smile wide and white, her eyes sparkling. She was wearing a green dress studded with a frosting of white crystals at the collar.

"You're actually wearing dress." I smiled at her, and Gunny's cheeks went bright red.

"Can't believe they got me into this. I figured I might as well though, the bandages came off this morning, finally. Got a proper bath so I figured, why not go whole hog, right?"

"Well, it paid off. You look beautiful."

And alive, I added in my head.

Instinctively I reached down, curling my fingers in Fiske's thick fur. His muscular form shifted beneath me, and he tilted his head to regard me with bright green eyes.

Fiske hadn't left my side since we'd returned. He was like a shadow, and I couldn't be more grateful. Grateful that he was alive, that we'd both survived this. Come out of it, not unscathed but...intact.

He didn't seem interested in returning to the forest, and I didn't ask him to. These days we didn't even have to speak to one another to know what the other was feeling.

Nobody else could know what we'd been through. No one else had been through that. Had come out alive. Had shared the heartbreak.

The only other person that could even get close was Eli.

"Wow, Gunny. You wore a dress."

Eli emerged from the crowd. He had to raise his voice over the cheerful fiddle music, and he was carrying three cups of mead, a bit awkwardly, one of the cups wedged against his chest between his arms. Gunny stepped forward to relieve him of one of them.