I awoke to a beautiful Eastern woman with scars over her flesh and kohl lined eyes, vermillion eyeshadow like an Oni geisha, and long silken hair frothing in curls over her violet eyes.She smiled, revealing white fangs, as she tended to my wounds.“Huh?” I murmured, agape at this strange woman’s beauty. She was as tall as a Jotun Queen, but there was no fur or wings or claws about her. Simply red nails filed to a serpents tooth touch and berry stained lips of violet.“You came too, my Bride,” the mysterious woman winked.“This must be Vanaheim, where I am to meet the ghost of my mother. My guardian spirit has come to bring me home. Did I die, fair protector?” I murmured, flushing as I noticed she was in revealing Eastern robes, something called a kimono that Yuri was always trying to unsuccessfully replicate from purchases from the Peri traders at the ice markets. I sighed, smiling. “At leas

Yolanda was scouting ahead and had been gone since dawn. Jarngrimr paced the deck, in wool leggings, a Waterman fishing jacket, and captain’s broadshirt and piratical black tricorn hat.She spied out her spyglass up atop the rigging, muttered to herself, and climbed down, her long, silky, nixen hair furling out like a nixie’s ruddy black mane.She glimmered at me, hopping off the rigs and sails in gold black boots lined with polar bear fur, and grabbed my waist, hauling me up into her arms.“I ache for a fight, dear Turiel,” Jarnja simmered, yellow fire in her violet black eyes.I laughed, tickling her chin. “Jarnja, we must tie the rigging into half quarterstaff, and move the prow widdershins.”“You know how to sail Naglfari?” she asked, inquisitive.“I’m a quick learner. When Dominic was asking how to woo Yuriel, I asked him to teach me the Watermen Ways in return.”Q

The Crane Wife - In which Queen Jarngrimr contemplates her love for TurielThey said I should have loved a crane wife, her bleedingout in snow, onto ivory ice, I would give her my cloak andshe would be the female Christ, her blood stain my kimono,and as I carried her home to rice paper walls, on bent back,she would sing the sister stars down, and those souls departedwould flock around me, and I would know something of the afterlife,offering up my pain and beauty to death, and as her wings marriedmy mind and marred my pain stains into something quixotic, I wouldquicken, and Hell would have no place in my palace, and I would makea thousand like her, all for one wish of peace, after Hiroshima bombedme quite starstruck and desolate, and the grave of the fireflies wept.They say I should have loved a crane wife instead.Bu

I awoke to a ghostly beam from Mani's boat, god of moonlight, piercing me. It is said he saved two abandoned children starving at their parent's well, condemned to eat dust and mud, and adopted Hjuki and Bil, brother and sister, as his fosterchildren. Now, they guided stars across the sky under sweet lipped, black haired Mani's gentle dozey watch, spilling sweet magick milk to feed cats of ink, whose paws and sweet tongues lapped the milky starlight up, causing darkness to ink out the ancestors.Without the cats of Nott, the night goddess, and the sun queen Sunna and night king Mani's esteemed mother, who she gave to Mani when he turned thirteen, the whole sky would be the milk of Audhumla, our sacred auroch who nursed forefather Ymir, whom Wotan, Loki, and Mymyr had slain to make all the Nine Worlds.Yolanda gently dozed, and I imagined all the Hakkonsdottirs and Ynglings - my mother's surname, supposedly sired by fertility and beer and rain god Ingvi with his wife Ga

Yolanda and I sipped Shamayim coffee sweetened from the sugar mills of the South as Jarngrimr whistled a skaldic lay of Freida and Ottar the Boar. She seemed to fancy Hyndla, the dwarven giant crone who helped Freida and Ottar, once her human champion, now in her service immortally like Adonis in Meditteranea to Cybele. Jarnja sang of how Ottar and Freida met:Freida Rides Out To be like the Great Sow, Mother of Battle.they say I have gold tears that hide smiles,my teeth are bright as tusks, my breasts bemountains, little one, my thighs crush menand as I strangle their necks, they grin,pour wine into my lap, and drink down blood. See me on the battlefied, bright armor shining,See me in the bedroom, resplendent as a pearl,See me High Seated, prophesying Valraven’s fall,Wotan may be Frenzy, but I am the Blade, see mecut the Norn’s hair and spin it on my fingers.