(Writer's note: Mennskr (Norse humans) population: 1,716 + 362 living + 1,028 dead from the past decade resurrected = 3,106 people, besides the same amount of 237 deer + 2,002 crows.)
POV: Arnfinnr Álǫfsson, village tracker.
Date: Góa 12th, 798 AD. (Alt: 23rd February, 799 AD.) Location: Götaland (Ancient Sweden.)
He wakes up again upon his customised bed, a wooden upholstered frame with a pillowed backing giving a gentle hug under his head and neck. He rolls over, finding the water he had left last night for when he woke up, yet in a slightly different position.
"*Sip glug-glug*" He parches it down, his thirst quenched in feeling its somehow still cool temperature. He gets off the bed, feeling a strange impression on the opposite side, which he ignores, thinking it may have been his sleepwalking again, before going downstairs to his kitchen to find a man sitting at the table.
He flinched, his hand reaching to summon his adaptable hilt before recognising the slowly regrowing hair pattern on his greyed head, of the hunch he had from working long nights to feed him and of the smell of smoking dough from working at the stove to bake their bread for their family. ". . . Father. . ?" Arnfinnr's voice trailed, soon seeing the healed face of his good old teacher looking towards him with that quiet kindness he always had. "You are here!" He rushes over to give a hug, the sensations showing that it was not one of his usual dreams. It was real.
"Yes, my boy, I am." Álǫf's old gruffing ran through his ear, a pat on the back now provided to his son as to say to let go. "And not just me." A hand guided him towards a crib, by the edge of the lounge in clear view for all to see, a little girl whose face had once been marked by pneumonia, alive again. His sinewy hands raised his little girl, kissing her on her forehead awake.
"Little, Hrefna?" Arnfinnr's hushed tone and rushing fingers soon placed themselves by the torso of his sister, her strong grip for her age wrapping onto them with her wild, innocent green-matching apertures, trusting him as she had done.
A tear ran down his nose, snot threatening to build up from being reminded of the past, of how
There they were, she who was once his everything. "MOTHER!" He ran through the splintered corridors of cabled tarps that gave privacy to each of the reborn, soon stopping by the foot of the bed, for one who had been left in wait.
They hugged, his whimpers deriving the loving cuddling through stroking his back, joined with those who were already there or entering, guided to see the once-dead. Old memories blooming with the rose-tinted hue of times they had spent, or many bluing regrets they could never take back. Too much is happening in the span of a single morning, turning into a Teitidagr (Day of joy!) Their new homes at first were a hard-to-trust 'charity' that they then realised was better than they could have ever imagined. Arnfinnr's mother asked him to go, in realising a hidden truth of a young woman coming by to their bedside.
"-so you are saying you have been here since your happenstance a month ago?" One of Arnfinnr's great friends and a hidden crush, Auðun, questioned. With early silvering locks as a shining attribute that contrasted with her black eyes and sandy skin from spending long days ocean fishing.
"Yes, it has been a long time since I last saw you." His chest bellowed as a constant, slightly raised from subconsciously wanting to appear more masculine, his smile more natural from the fixing of his teeth and his pores clearer than they had ever been, increasing his personal confidence. Her own appearance, with the few scars she had asked to be removed for treatment, made an easier 'play' with the powder that accentuated her naturally sharp features, as one thing she has never told anyone. She has a crush on him, too.
"How has your brother been? Last I heard from him was during the attack by the goose." He kept a straight face, but it was obvious he was hoping not to embarrass Bjartr, who was in his new private domicile. "Oh, the usual. Now he got himself a dry-prepared gander curing, he has enough stockpile for another week."
Her eyebrows crossed from remembering them trying to chase the goose, him charge-falling into it to trap the skeining animal against his chest. "Well, that is what it gets for trying to pluck his eye out." Yeah, it was rather funny when it chomped onto the guy's nose bridge, hard to forget the flopping over like they were a foaling deer. "Your mother?" He asks, with her pointing where she sat by a bed, with a man resting asleep with his hand on her lap. "Ah, by your father." He nods, happy, no longer having lost them, for she had been an orphan since he first knew her, raised by her grandmother instead.
"Why do we not see them together? I know they would have missed you." He taps her shoulder calmingly, soon coming face-to-bed with Ívarr, his bear-like appearance and part-balding head with ash white hair reminding him of the silverback gorillas he had seen on his false window. "It is nice to meet you, madam, sir. I am Arnfinnr, a friend of your daughter." . . .
"And might I say, she would make you both proud." His paused comment was met with a longful staring before joy bore onto his face, his wide, gap-toothed smile making a whistling creak during his exhale before responding. "We never doubted that." Ívarr raised his mallet-hand in asking for a shake. His grip was incredible, but to not appear a chump, our tracker tried to put in an effort before letting go. "Nice hands, son. Mǫrkmann (Etimology for Marksman (Part for the Woodsman, someone specialised in bushcraft and tracking),) my guess is?" His rhetoric in seeing the work upon his palms surprised him. "We had your father, Álǫf, on the team. I remember you before my death."
Yeah, that gathers it. "You have those same eyes." Arnfinnr nearly blushed from being remembered as such, but it is good he was looked over fondly. "Now, I should get out of bed, need to stretch my legs." He removed his cover, shifting himself over to then stand.
But a Bus-guard golem came over, its physical presence a deterrent to moving off before their time to get up was ready, his legs readjusting and balancing off. "Oh*Fah*" He gets back into bed, rolling his eyes while watching their warden wander off. "Wanted to see your old man again, I know his type, he probably feels guilty when he was unable to save me from that avalanche." He looks around, soon seeing the herb-picker of their old squad, Búi, with her midnight black hair and highly pale complexion, making her appear a Japanese Nara period Yūrei of the coldest depths, yet in reality a shy woman who liked gardening and in the past had kept a tamed wolf, which was brought back as well, right next to her.
"Hey ǫndvinr (Friendly ghost!) Have not seen you in forever." He used an old nickname from when she could vanish and come around with forageables by around evening, her expression lighting up and waving back towards him in joyful silence. The wolf was allowed to move, soon coming over to Ívarr and jumping onto his bed to rest upon his legs.
"Missed you too, old friend." He pats his back and scritches right behind his ears, on the spots they always leaned into with happy *HRrm* noises with a wagging tail. "Now, I know it will be a slow day, better for you young people to get out there, we will catch up to you, is that not right, my vænnkona (Fair lady?)" Seemed he leaned his torso forward, suddenly lifting her off the chair and putting his wife against his chest, long missing her after she had died in childbirth of their twins, soon after his own death.
"Why were you allowed to move while he is not, mother?" Auðun asks them, earning a chuckle before she got up, kiss-rite, to show herself doing an athletics check, lifting her daughter by a cradle carry before setting her back down on a bench. It seems her parents a physically direct streak of personality.
"*-heheh*That is why." Edda kept the minor laughing in play, lastly sitting back down on the chair and re-smooching her husband. "Just as I remembered." Ívarr would frassle with honour, as she was a woman strong enough to lift him, even! "Go on now, we will be here for a while." Edda reclines, her arm resting behind his neck while lying on top of the blanket, starry from being brought back to the love of their lives, their daughter shoulder-checks Arnfinnr, who walks out with her in tailing.
"Have you heard the news?" Both heard from a group against the wall of a hallway, mumblings of a marriage bearing a pining between two Deities, with all peoples in this Cavern invited!
"SHOULD_WE_GET_A_PRESENT?" Auðun fires fast enough for the sentence to be near-jumbled in her soundings, but Arnfinnr had trained himself to understand what she would say. "We have nothing close to give them in equal." He would state, glum from ascertaining that the best item between them would be her prized amber necklace or his bronze sica dagger. "Then I have an idea. Wait here!" She would point to a nearby parking after asking for the dagger, retravelling through the portal and entering a few Model minutes, having restructured both items into a single tool.
She had utilised the printing machine's unique capabilities by using both materials in the outcome: A ceremonial piece dagger with the stantienite (Amber with a more reflective structure) embedded into the hilt pommel, and the iron chain turned to steel, connected through the more modernised tang button and quillon.
The amber's internal structure was made hyper-specular, the inner patterns making concentric walls of light that refract in geometric, occult ways. If it were not known it was made with a modern machine, one would think it was a prized royal museum piece. "You give it to him." She flicked it up into the air before catching it by the blade, the handle facing towards him. "You made it, you do it!" Arnfinnir's mouth flattened in fondness, yet his upper lip turbecled into a curvy shape from believing it was her work that made it look as perfect as it did.
"Fine~." Auðun puts it over her neck, appearing as a talisman that sits over her oxen-designed shirt. "Then it would be better to go together." A sudden spurning from her position, she pushes him from his back towards the location they had heard was for the sudden marriage.
By the top of the right tower, that is where they teleport through and find a giant venue that is capable of seating 10,000 hapsegopterix crow-sized guests. Double what is necessary, but a good instance of sentiment when creating such grand events. Everyone sat with their groups, either as mixed species or unified wholes, before it began via the sun's highest point. A sudden darkening of the room was paved through with the entrance of Heath and Skaði, the great scientist God in a modern groomsmen suit:
Coloured a darkened pine green for the blazer, waistcoat and connectively tailored trousers, a nicely whitened shirt. . . And a wine-dark red tie beside a flowery handkerchief sitting in the breast pocket.
The great Huntress finds the dresses he gave as options too showy or floor-overflowing, personally found too impractical even for such an event. So, she chose to be chic and wore a thigh-length dress, but with a longer train overskirt that reached her knees' backs with snowflaking accents. The colours she chose were a sky blue to match her eyes, and for her slim Oxford-style bodice, a coral lavender, contrastingly showing her Divine-influenced frosty skin from her wintery concepts. Both looked beautiful, and the outfits matched their personalities nicely.
"*Ah*To be young." A feminine voice would comment in the background through an allowed view of a single nano-sight drone from the Iðavǫllr council, Baduhenna ran her own hand against her cheek in her flowing, Bronze Age reminiscent corded shirt with a large plaque buckle of the forest-borne in FRISII (Ancient Frisia.) But machined through comparatively better sewing and stitching techniques to adjustably fit this new outfit.
"You are only a few centuries older than her." Tuisco's left head comments with an inflective dimorphism, in contrast to his right head's more jovial fontaining. A prose that led his 'sons' to chuckle in the background dually. "I mean him." She shifts herself upon the comfy chair, recollecting the 3 tribes she had once aided and her mortal lover, blessed to be beside her, in giving Demi-God generations before all being slaughtered by the Romans during their invasions. "They are so. . ." Unvoiced but palpable, she hoped to find a relationship like that again, someday.
"Maybe part of the Slavic folk that came? Porevit is wise yet alone, a previous Pantheon's leader before becoming subordinate to Konungr Tiwaz." Vafþrúðnir votes out a potential interest. "Aye, better than his brother Leshi, at least. Would not want to be betrothed to a child kidnapper, even if he does so to bring them away from harm by the kin that mistreat them."
Mannr's left head *Yemo cringingly retorts, also finding Leshi's wife, Kikimora (Forest Spirit) Leshachikha, rather crazy in terms of her brutal protection over any cruelty against animals. "Let us not discuss them." Móðir Jǫrð heard the commotion and, to protect her sister-in-arms' and Vanir-Allied's slowly forced hands, 'gently' tuned in with a smile that could freeze the planet's core over. All who were guilty arcanoflexively lowered their heads. Others there quietly acted by continuing to drink, talking as if uninvolved with each other, or choosing to excuse themselves.
"*Oh*Seems it is my turn for the Uni-pod." Gerðr rubs her dressed leg while hiding her fear from near-chuckling at the antics of those of direct interim consequence, adjusting the chair to appear tidy, then walks at the fastest available pace while appearing stiffly dignified.
". . . Thank you, sister." Baduhenna had felt there was no need to stand up for them when as a War Matron Goddess, she should be the better woman and not act to their insensitive remarks, yet 'someone' else would shut them down every time for her. "You matter, -Henna." Móðir Jǫrð nicknames with centuries worth of love and sympathy before casting a temporary punishment, many blameworthy heads unfolding in unison as puppets on strings, using Heath's technique of mind acceleration magic to perform a small 'inner session.'
Something new she has been applying, for the great scientist God's knowledge has been most helpful. No, I will not tell you what they are going through. Even I found them too off-putting. Let us say they returned with more 'respectful' hearts a moment after, continuing to marvel at the wedding with them also spotting another like themselves.
This drone, unlike others, had a spotlight that made it appear shining, a mechanical wisp in view that floated above her own chair. Given notice to everyone in this room, respectfully interacting as the neighbourly centenarian she was. "-*Aw*Sterling is such a sweetheart." Grandma endearingly teases without turning on the microphone after seeing her grandson with his meðr (Norse peoples) sisters and brother through her own Uni-pod nano-sight drone, also spotting Goldie, Valyria and Rhoyna sitting in front of the arrangement.
And their people will treat her just as kindly, cosmopolitanism binding them in soul and body. This moment was one of peace and thriving connections, Heath and Skaði at the podium with arms chained by their gloves handfasting, a red ribbon slowly falling away and carried off into an open sky that newly appeared through illusionment, carried off a dove.
A visual conjuring of both's emotions collaborating in the sky, the dove's etching enlarged to a hyper-flashing of Ionospheric halos and spirited jets that mingled in colours of a modernistic triadic nature. It led further down, blending in a grand geomagnetic display of RGB, a storm of their deepest wants and love, both for each other and all who were invited. But this form of otherwise Divine sorcery was one they had been used to after spending so long in ETERNAL, well. That was for those who were here for longer than a week.
All who were brought in last night cried, as this beauty was rare within the night's horizon. They were safe, they were home, the normal and once-dead required no comfort, but for this moment, they felt touch was necessary. They hugged as if there were no tomorrow.
Heath and Skaði rose into the 'sky,' a slow bi-orbital of attraction showing the flanking of their clothes rising with magic concentrically in a spinning top, their heads under the blinding streaking of atmospheric works closed in, a kiss that many wished to have seen or have been for themselves, they clapped in following the manners asked of by the now normal-sized tall God, fireworks shooting off from behind them in finally being used after failing to find a use for them for the tournament or show prior, many preparing themselves for the loud *BOOMS* ahead.
They glide back down in a slow whirling that reminded others of the bladed maple seeds, a beautiful show of aerodynamics and artful lighting that had them slowly drift off each other, His calloused hand pulling her hair away behind the shining left ear.
"Time for tea?" Heath would ask his love, who nods with a blank expression, yet her skin was so blue it nearly glowed, steam appearing to wheeze out of her nose and ears in bursts. Surprising with