SPN Fanfic: Nornegrauten (revised)
(I did warn you all that there'd be some weird and random flying around, yes?)
ETA: Revised from the original post, hopefully less confusing now and not more. I'm happier with it now anyway. :-P
Title: Nornegrauten
Characters: John and Mary, an OC
Rating: GEN (Or Het with no active sexual content, I guess? o.O), PG-13
Warnings: Thematic spoilers for season 4. Pre-pilot, post 4.03., implications drawn from 4.16. AU, but also slightly speculation-as-fic. Contains inaccurate depictions of pregnancy, labour, weaving, yarn-craft and Norse mythology. Not humor.
Word Count: 3450
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural, or any poetic eddas.
Summary: Some pregnancies are more planned than others.
A/N: If you do not like the concept of Fate, you will probably not like this story. This has been gnawing at me since 4.03, the beginnings might go all the way back to "Faith". I don't know if anyone will enjoy it, or even read it, but at least it's finally out of my head.
Beta: Thank you, sadelyrate! ETA: Suggestion to add definitions from Ani-Maniac494 at FF.net, thank you!
-
Nornegrauten
by CaffieneKitty
-
Yggdrasil: The World Tree - The great ash tree which connects all the worlds, tended by the Norns, the Norse goddesses of Fate. They are Urd, Skuld and Verdandi.
-
Mary kept a walking stick from that trip into the woods, on the five-year anniversary of her parents' death. She'd taken it from an ash tree that still had a few blossoms left on it during the first week of May. Every day after, she cut a notch in the walking stick, closely packed together, like she was saving room for many more. After seven notches, she announced that she was pregnant.
"You sure?" John asked, still at home, on leave from his second tour of duty.
"Yes." Mary nodded, mouth set in a tense line.
"Oh," John said, then lost his voice and gathered her into his arms. She was shaking.
"Maybe... maybe this'll lay their ghosts to rest for you?"
Mary tensed. "What do you mean?"
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't-"
"What, John?"
"Just... maybe this'll make a happy reason to remember May second now?"
Mary clutched John tight, buried her face in his shoulder and wept. John stood, letting her soak his collar and making shushing noises. Idiot Winchester. Why'd you have to bring that up?
"I don't know, John," Mary snuffled. "I don't know if I can do this."
"Hey, what's with this 'I' stuff?" John said with a smile, stroking Mary's hair. "You're not having this kid alone, you know. I'm not going anywhere."
Mary shook her head, forehead still resting on John's shoulder. "That's not it, it's..."
"It's what?"
She pulled away to look at him, her eyes searching his. "I-" Mary let out a shuddering breath and looked away. "It's nothing."
John frowned as Mary turned away, closing in on herself. He looked over her shoulder at the calendar and the circled date of his return to duty next week. Mary had always supported his decision to stay with the Marine Corps after 'Nam ended, even encouraged it, calling him her 'brave warrior' without smirking too much.
After what had happened with her parents, an event he still didn't quite understand, John had wanted to be that for her; a strong protector, even if they both knew she didn't really need one. He knew that in many ways he couldn't even describe, Mary was tougher than he was. John was a Marine, he'd been to war, but Mary had a core of steel that she kept hidden, except when she needed it.
Maybe that was changing now somehow, with a baby on the way. Maybe it was time that being Mary's 'brave warrior' meant staying home.
John applied to muster out of the Corps the next day.
-
Skuld: The Maiden - Spins the threads of life, determines beginnings. Her name means 'should' or 'need'. She represents prediction, planning to enhance or avert the outcome of possible future events. She is training, preparation for events yet to occur.
-
In the first trimester, Mary spun yarn. Miles and miles of yarn.
A pregnant woman hadn't ever been a part of John's life before. Neither of their mothers were around for him to ask, but he'd heard about 'nesting' and figured this wool-spinning was a variation on the phenomenon. John stepped back, letting Mary do what she needed to.
He wasn't even sure where Mary had gotten the spinning wheel. It was just there in the corner of the living room one day when he got home from the garage, notched walking stick leaning against it. It was old, an antique. He wondered if it might be something left from her mother that Mary hadn't wanted to have around 'til now, although Mary's mother hadn't seemed like a handicraft type any more than Mary did. In his memory and from Mary's rare anecdotes and reminiscences, Deanna Campbell reminded John more of one of his platoon-mates than anyone's mother.
They got the wool cheap. Hayden, one of the guys in John's old unit in 'Nam literally bought a farm when he mustered out, joking about 'buying the farm' being the only way to truly muster out of the Marines. He had a quarter-section of land in California, raising sheep and a family, among other things.
Mary dyed the wool herself, making natural dyes by hand. She ground up plants, nut shells, rusty steel wool, and stewed them in a big old cook-pot on the stove, using her increasingly notched walking stick to poke the wool around in the dye bath. The older notches soaked up the day's color, the newer notches bright and pale until they had their turn in the dye. Old books of recipes turned up in their kitchen, with Mary frowning over them, making notes in her journal. The herbs and bark turned her hands every colour of the rainbow, and John kissed them every night.
Wool hung to dry in the unfinished basement, dripping into the drain of what would be a second bathroom. When the wool was dry, Mary carded it and spun it, spinning wheel whirring every spare minute of the day.
-
The room designated as 'the baby's room' in their new house quickly filled with yarn. Near the end of July, John stood in the doorway of the room, looking around at the piles of loosely wound wool, arranged by colour and shade. More wool was in shades of red and black than any other. John figured that was probably the nature of naturally-dyed wool.
Mary brushed past him with another skein of yarn, a warm yellow that almost matched her hair. Her face was a mask of concentration and she was muttering to herself.
John leaned against the doorframe, smirking. "My mom turned my room into a craft room too, but she waited 'til after I joined the Marines."
Mary shot a glance at him as though she hadn't realized he was there, then smiled and laughed.
"You keep this up, there won't be room in here for the baby."
She put the yellow skein down at the edge of a pile of red. "It'll all be dealt with before the baby arrives. Nothing to worry about."
-
Mary hated oatmeal. Hated it. John was never a huge fan himself, but a tour of duty with the Marines in 'Nam taught a person to eat damn near anything and be glad of the chance. Mary outright despised the stuff. Squashy, sticky, bland, starchy paste. They never even had oatmeal in the house until she got pregnant. After that, just about every morning, she'd eat oatmeal.
John could tell she still hated it, but ate because... he wasn't sure. It was like she was driven to eat the stuff. Maybe it was a craving thing, or something from one of those pregnancy books.
She did all kinds of things to that oatmeal to make it tolerable; different herbs, dried fruit, nuts. Each bowl she ate, she chewed grimly, like it was a chore instead of breakfast. She kept her journal beside her, making notes, maybe keeping track of what herb and fruit combinations tasted good and what didn't. John didn't know. Mary never let him read her journals.
He offered to make her something else, even offered to have the occasionally foul-smelling stuff with her, but she always said no, that it was just something she had to do.
John chalked it up as being another 'pregnant' thing, and didn't raise an eyebrow. After the first few months the sight of Mary across the breakfast table, cutting another daily notch on the walking stick and eating oatmeal like she'd rather be eating gravel, felt normal.
Not good exactly, just normal.
-
Verdandi: The Mother - Weaves the tapestry that depicts and determines the fate of the world. Her name means 'that which is becoming'. She represents the now, the present, possibilities manifesting into fact. She is relentless, remorseless.
-
In the second trimester, Mary wove. Night and day, she wove.
While John was at work in early August, the loom showed up, filling the baby's room. Mary already had it set up and was crawling underneath, awkwardly tying yarn on to parts of the machine.
"Whoa, whoa! Honey, what are you doing?"
Mary gritted her teeth and pushed hair out of her eyes, looking up at John from under the machine. "Setting up a loom."
"Where did it come from?"
"Friend of a friend."
"You sure you're okay to crawl around under there?"
"I'm not made of glass, John."
"Can I help you with it?"
Mary shook her head and frowned down at the notes in her journal. "This is something I need to do."
John had learned not to argue with Mary long before he married her. Besides her hidden core of solid steel she was also stubborn as old boots. "Okay. If you're sure there's nothing I can do to help?"
She took a deep breath and ran a finger across the strands of yarn she had already tied into the machine. "As sure as I'll ever be."
"How about a cup of tea?"
Mary's head tilted down, hair swinging forward and obscuring her face. "Yeah," she said after a breath, tucking her hair behind her ear with a smile to look up at John through the bars of the loom. "Yeah. Tea would be great."
"I'm on it," John rumbled, grinning.
-
She picked the skeins of yarn and wove, day and night, shuttles of different colored yarn dangling from the underside of the weave while she consulted the notes in her journal. John watched as she wove. She frowned in concentration, picking a shuttle, stringing it through a few lines, then putting it down for a different one.
Mary didn't like John lurking over her shoulder while she wove, but she wasn't hiding the weaving from him. He couldn't tell what it might be when it was finished. It looked like there was no real pattern in the short chunks visible while Mary was weaving. Maybe it would be something that only looked right when seen from the right perspective. Whatever it was supposed to be, it was complex. Mary focused intently on sending each shuttle through, like she was defusing a bomb.
John watched and stayed out of the way, fixing up the room on weekends; painting a cleared section of wall, nailing down a floorboard, sanding rough patches on the door frame, making sure the old window that had been painted shut for years would open. Little things to keep close to Mary without disturbing her or making her feel watched.
Each day, the walking stick gained another notch. The new notches showed pale wood, the older dye-soaked ones looked like old dried blood.
-
Urd: The Crone - Measures the thread of each person's life and when their fate is complete, cuts them from the tapestry of the world. Her name means 'wyrd' or 'fate'. She represents the eternal, the primal, the ancient, the unknowable, the inevitable. She is the death that comes into the world with every life, and she guards eternity.
-
In the third trimester, Mary measured.
The yarn was used up, the loom was silent, and a broad swatch of cloth gathered on the take-up roll. Mary unrolled it, stretching it out from the machine like a giant wool tongue.
"That's..." John said, taking in the whole thing.
The fabric Mary had made was abstract. Spots and lines of colour intersecting, chasing each other across the fabric, interweaving and separating. It kind of gave him a headache, like there was a picture there, but he couldn't tell what it was. Maybe it was one of those things where if you were too close to it, it just looked random, but when you stood back far enough to see the whole thing plain, the pattern would make sense. Looking at the lines and spots and whorls of color in the long fabric lying on the floor, he wondered just how far away that might be.
"It's, uh. Unique."
Mary smiled, measuring the distance between a stitch of red and a stitch of black and noting the figure in her journal.
John tilted his head, examining Mary's handiwork. "So. It's... a blanket? Or are we gonna be hanging this on a wall somewhere?"
Mary laid the measuring tape along a variegated line in shades of red that stretched half the length and frowned. "It's a gift. For the midwife."
"Midwife?"
"I'm having this baby at home, John."
"Oh." A glint of Mary's steel core lurked in her tone. "Okay... You've, uh, got one lined up?"
"I've made some calls." She slid her hand along the tapestry, smoothing it. "It's all arranged."
"Okay then." John pushed down the sour feeling of being left out of the decision-making process. Mary was the one giving birth. If she wanted to do it at home, so be it. Don't be an ass, Winchester. "You know, it'd be easier to finish up the room up if we could get the loom out of here. If you're done the weaving, we can cut it off the-"
"It's not ready to cut yet," Mary said, quickly and firmly.
"Can you go back and fix things in it if you leave it on the loom?"
"No. It's done, and there's no undoing it now. I just need to-" Mary looked up at him, placing her hand overtop of a new pair of gold-toned scissors. "It can't come off the loom yet, John. Please."
John met the steel in his wife's eyes and raised his hands in surrender, smiling. "Okay, okay. I'll keep working around it."
He puttered around the loom for the next month, sanding rough patches on the window frame, painting missed bits, staying close to Mary, ready to help. Really though, there wasn't much left to do in the room except take out the loom and put in the baby.
Winter settled in.
-
In the middle of the night a few days before Christmas, John found Mary in the kitchen. She was sitting at the table, eating oatmeal and crying desperate tears, her journal open beside her. Between her sobs, she muttered something that sounded like Latin or German, maybe a prayer.
"Mary? What's wrong?" He went and knelt beside her, the chill of the kitchen floor barely noticed.
Mary startled, and raised her eyes to John. "I- It's just..." She trailed off. Her lips thinned and eyes narrowed, examining John like he was a rope bridge over a gully; gauging how strong he was, how much load he could take before breaking.
"Let me help, Mary. Please?"
Mary's gaze dropped, staring down into her herb-sprinkled oatmeal. It smelled like cough medicine tonight. "It's- It's nothing. I just wish Mom..." Mary shook her head, stopping herself.
John silently ran a hand up and down her back before resting it between her shoulder-blades.
"What if-" Mary's breath hitched. "What if I'm doing the wrong things, John? What if I mess this up? I don't- I don't want this baby to, to-" She took a deep shuddering breath. "I can't screw this up. I can't. This is so important, more important than anything I've ever done."
John quelled his own echoing jitters. "It'll be fine, Mary. Doc says the baby's healthy, right?"
Mary nodded miserably.
"We'll figure out this whole 'being parents' thing fine on our own. People do it all the time. It'll all be fine."
Mary looked at him, eyes watery. She gave a bemused little smile and patted John's cheek. "Of course it will."
John felt like he'd said something immensely stupid and wasn't sure why. He'd had that feeling a lot around Mary lately, like anytime she spoke to him he only heard half the conversation. He frowned, reached over and held Mary's hand, looking into her eyes.
"This is our baby. Our family, Mary. I know how important this is. You might not think I do, but I do." He took his hand from Mary's back and ran it over her rounded belly. "A brand new person is in there. We did that. Us. It's a hell of a lot of responsibility, but you and me, together we can do it. We can do anything."
Mary tucked her hair behind her ear and met John's eyes again.
He pulled her hand to his mouth and kissed it, never breaking her gaze. "Trust me. Okay?"
Mary blew out a long breath before smiling. "Okay."
-
Nornor: Agent of Destiny - Attends the birth of the great and the infamous, measures and plots the life of an individual at birth, reciting prophetic poems. This measuring is symbolised through the twisting and casting of yarn, or through the marking of a staff to measure the child's life and domain and determine the effect that the child will have on the destiny of the world.
-
One night in late January, Mary had levered herself up from the couch halfway through the news. John assumed she was going to the bathroom again, a frequent occurrence now that the baby was parked right on top of her bladder. He peered over towards the bathroom, but saw it was empty. Something wasn't right.
He padded into the kitchen to find the big cook-pot Mary had used as a dye-bath on the stove, full of slowly bubbling oatmeal.
"What the-" He started towards the stove to turn it off when he heard a thump and a cry from upstairs.
John tore up the stairs, two at a time, grabbing the door frame to turn the corner into the baby's room. The tapestry was cut off the loom and lay on the floor, stretched out flat, notch-covered walking stick laying beside it. Mary was kneeling on the floor, gold-toned scissors in hand, panting.
"Mary?" John knelt beside her.
She looked up over her shoulder at John's arrival. Sweat stood out on her forehead. "It's time, John."
The doorbell rang.
"John. Door."
"But-"
"It's the gnh-!" Mary panted, eyes wide. "Midwife. Called her. I called her."
John thundered down the stairs, briefly wondering when Mary'd had the chance to phone anyone, and how they'd gotten here so fast. He opened the door.
An old woman with feathery hair that had once been red stood on the step, shawl dusted with snow.
"Are you- Mary's-"
"Will you not invite me in?" the woman asked in a Scandinavian-accented voice.
"Yes, yes." John stepped aside. "She's upstairs."
The midwife brushed past, and nodded towards the kitchen. "You'll not want that to burn."
John swung into the kitchen and turned off the burner under the pot before running back upstairs. The midwife had Mary's arm over her shoulder and was guiding her to the bedroom. John may never have been involved in a birth before, but this felt like everything was happening too fast.
"Is everything okay? We can still go to a hospital-"
John found himself on the receiving end of two nearly identical glares.
"Right, okay. Tell me what you need."
"Clean sheets," the old woman muttered. "Nothing rough."
"Right. On it."
As he ransacked the linen closet down the hall, John could hear the woman speaking softly to Mary... it sounded like chanting, in Norwegian or something. He distractedly wondered where Mary had learned Norwegian. Maybe she'd always known it. Campbell wasn't a Scandinavian name, but maybe Mary's mother had been from the older parts of Minnesota and taught Mary.
Even after five years of marriage, there were a lot of things John didn't know about Mary.
In the other room, Mary's voice was faint and strained. "But that's- That's not right. Oh god, did I screw up?"
The old woman switched to English. "No. You did not. This is the way it must be."
"But this baby needs to stop it from happening."
"The child will end it. But it cannot end unless it begins. So the child must begin it."
"No, no," Mary whispered.
"It is how it must be."
"No."
"No one escapes their wyrd, once set."
"Then unset it!" Mary snarled.
John's head came up at Mary's tone. He took the armload of sheets he had gathered and ran back to the room.
The old woman stood over Mary. "The thread is cut, the pattern is woven. There is no unsetting."
Mary hid her face in her hands and drew a deep breath.
"What the-? Are you okay, Mary?"
"It's, it's okay John," Mary shook her head and started panting again.
The old woman muttered, "He should not be here. It is not fitting."
John scowled. "Like hell it's not fitting, I'm the father!"
"Leave us be." The woman waved a dismissing hand.
Mary grabbed the woman's arm, eyes hard. "He stays."
The old woman looked at Mary, hesitating, then nodded. "Watch the door," she snapped at John then turned back to Mary.
Crazy old bat, John thought.
-
"He's perfect," the old woman said hours later, wrapping a clean sheet around the baby and placing him in Mary's arms. "A perfect, ordinary boy." Mary drew a shuddering breath.
"It's a boy?" John smiled so wide he thought his face would split.
The old woman hummed and nodded. "Yes. Like his brother."
"He doesn't have a brother," John corrected, absorbed in the sight of Mary holding their baby. Their son.
"Hm." The old woman hummed and nodded again.
Mary began crying, huge gasping sobs over the baby.
"Hey, hey, it's all right." John went to Mary and wedged himself behind her in the bed, wrapping his arms around his wife and newborn son. "It's all right, Mary. He's fine, he's beautiful. Look Mary. You did good."
Mary sobbed harder.
"You. Man."
John looked at the old woman in irritation.
"You treat her with care. She has done a greater thing than you will ever do. She has brought life back to the world."
Funny way to say it. "I know. Trust me, I know."
The old woman tilted her head sideways, like a robin examining a worm in the grass. "No. You don't. But you will."
John looked back down at Mary and the baby in her arms. He nuzzled into the sweaty hair behind her ear, looking down at the squalling, red-faced person in her arms. A brand new person.
He glanced back up saying, "Listen, ma'am, I didn't mean to be-" but the old woman was gone.
Hunh. Didn't even hear her go. He thought of checking through the house to make sure the disturbing old lady really had left and hadn't taken the TV, but knew he had the most important things in the entire world in his arms. Everything else was just stuff.
John settled back against the headboard, stroking Mary's hair and looking down at their son, marveling that a human being could ever be so small.
-
Nornegrauten: A thick porridge prepared as a sacrifice to the Nornor, in hopes of preventing the child from receiving a dark fate.
-
The next morning, Mary's tapestry and walking stick were nowhere to be found, and neither was the vat of oatmeal that had been on the stove last night. Somehow, it didn't matter.
- - -
(that's it)
Post A/N: The real definition of Nornegrauten, Norn, Wyrd. Hopefully I'm not too far off. Apologies to any real Norse people out there for stomping my clumsy feet all over your cultural heritage.
ETA: Revised from the original post, hopefully less confusing now and not more. I'm happier with it now anyway. :-P
Title: Nornegrauten
Characters: John and Mary, an OC
Rating: GEN (Or Het with no active sexual content, I guess? o.O), PG-13
Warnings: Thematic spoilers for season 4. Pre-pilot, post 4.03., implications drawn from 4.16. AU, but also slightly speculation-as-fic. Contains inaccurate depictions of pregnancy, labour, weaving, yarn-craft and Norse mythology. Not humor.
Word Count: 3450
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural, or any poetic eddas.
Summary: Some pregnancies are more planned than others.
A/N: If you do not like the concept of Fate, you will probably not like this story. This has been gnawing at me since 4.03, the beginnings might go all the way back to "Faith". I don't know if anyone will enjoy it, or even read it, but at least it's finally out of my head.
Beta: Thank you, sadelyrate! ETA: Suggestion to add definitions from Ani-Maniac494 at FF.net, thank you!
-
Nornegrauten
by CaffieneKitty
-
Yggdrasil: The World Tree - The great ash tree which connects all the worlds, tended by the Norns, the Norse goddesses of Fate. They are Urd, Skuld and Verdandi.
-
Mary kept a walking stick from that trip into the woods, on the five-year anniversary of her parents' death. She'd taken it from an ash tree that still had a few blossoms left on it during the first week of May. Every day after, she cut a notch in the walking stick, closely packed together, like she was saving room for many more. After seven notches, she announced that she was pregnant.
"You sure?" John asked, still at home, on leave from his second tour of duty.
"Yes." Mary nodded, mouth set in a tense line.
"Oh," John said, then lost his voice and gathered her into his arms. She was shaking.
"Maybe... maybe this'll lay their ghosts to rest for you?"
Mary tensed. "What do you mean?"
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't-"
"What, John?"
"Just... maybe this'll make a happy reason to remember May second now?"
Mary clutched John tight, buried her face in his shoulder and wept. John stood, letting her soak his collar and making shushing noises. Idiot Winchester. Why'd you have to bring that up?
"I don't know, John," Mary snuffled. "I don't know if I can do this."
"Hey, what's with this 'I' stuff?" John said with a smile, stroking Mary's hair. "You're not having this kid alone, you know. I'm not going anywhere."
Mary shook her head, forehead still resting on John's shoulder. "That's not it, it's..."
"It's what?"
She pulled away to look at him, her eyes searching his. "I-" Mary let out a shuddering breath and looked away. "It's nothing."
John frowned as Mary turned away, closing in on herself. He looked over her shoulder at the calendar and the circled date of his return to duty next week. Mary had always supported his decision to stay with the Marine Corps after 'Nam ended, even encouraged it, calling him her 'brave warrior' without smirking too much.
After what had happened with her parents, an event he still didn't quite understand, John had wanted to be that for her; a strong protector, even if they both knew she didn't really need one. He knew that in many ways he couldn't even describe, Mary was tougher than he was. John was a Marine, he'd been to war, but Mary had a core of steel that she kept hidden, except when she needed it.
Maybe that was changing now somehow, with a baby on the way. Maybe it was time that being Mary's 'brave warrior' meant staying home.
John applied to muster out of the Corps the next day.
-
Skuld: The Maiden - Spins the threads of life, determines beginnings. Her name means 'should' or 'need'. She represents prediction, planning to enhance or avert the outcome of possible future events. She is training, preparation for events yet to occur.
-
In the first trimester, Mary spun yarn. Miles and miles of yarn.
A pregnant woman hadn't ever been a part of John's life before. Neither of their mothers were around for him to ask, but he'd heard about 'nesting' and figured this wool-spinning was a variation on the phenomenon. John stepped back, letting Mary do what she needed to.
He wasn't even sure where Mary had gotten the spinning wheel. It was just there in the corner of the living room one day when he got home from the garage, notched walking stick leaning against it. It was old, an antique. He wondered if it might be something left from her mother that Mary hadn't wanted to have around 'til now, although Mary's mother hadn't seemed like a handicraft type any more than Mary did. In his memory and from Mary's rare anecdotes and reminiscences, Deanna Campbell reminded John more of one of his platoon-mates than anyone's mother.
They got the wool cheap. Hayden, one of the guys in John's old unit in 'Nam literally bought a farm when he mustered out, joking about 'buying the farm' being the only way to truly muster out of the Marines. He had a quarter-section of land in California, raising sheep and a family, among other things.
Mary dyed the wool herself, making natural dyes by hand. She ground up plants, nut shells, rusty steel wool, and stewed them in a big old cook-pot on the stove, using her increasingly notched walking stick to poke the wool around in the dye bath. The older notches soaked up the day's color, the newer notches bright and pale until they had their turn in the dye. Old books of recipes turned up in their kitchen, with Mary frowning over them, making notes in her journal. The herbs and bark turned her hands every colour of the rainbow, and John kissed them every night.
Wool hung to dry in the unfinished basement, dripping into the drain of what would be a second bathroom. When the wool was dry, Mary carded it and spun it, spinning wheel whirring every spare minute of the day.
-
The room designated as 'the baby's room' in their new house quickly filled with yarn. Near the end of July, John stood in the doorway of the room, looking around at the piles of loosely wound wool, arranged by colour and shade. More wool was in shades of red and black than any other. John figured that was probably the nature of naturally-dyed wool.
Mary brushed past him with another skein of yarn, a warm yellow that almost matched her hair. Her face was a mask of concentration and she was muttering to herself.
John leaned against the doorframe, smirking. "My mom turned my room into a craft room too, but she waited 'til after I joined the Marines."
Mary shot a glance at him as though she hadn't realized he was there, then smiled and laughed.
"You keep this up, there won't be room in here for the baby."
She put the yellow skein down at the edge of a pile of red. "It'll all be dealt with before the baby arrives. Nothing to worry about."
-
Mary hated oatmeal. Hated it. John was never a huge fan himself, but a tour of duty with the Marines in 'Nam taught a person to eat damn near anything and be glad of the chance. Mary outright despised the stuff. Squashy, sticky, bland, starchy paste. They never even had oatmeal in the house until she got pregnant. After that, just about every morning, she'd eat oatmeal.
John could tell she still hated it, but ate because... he wasn't sure. It was like she was driven to eat the stuff. Maybe it was a craving thing, or something from one of those pregnancy books.
She did all kinds of things to that oatmeal to make it tolerable; different herbs, dried fruit, nuts. Each bowl she ate, she chewed grimly, like it was a chore instead of breakfast. She kept her journal beside her, making notes, maybe keeping track of what herb and fruit combinations tasted good and what didn't. John didn't know. Mary never let him read her journals.
He offered to make her something else, even offered to have the occasionally foul-smelling stuff with her, but she always said no, that it was just something she had to do.
John chalked it up as being another 'pregnant' thing, and didn't raise an eyebrow. After the first few months the sight of Mary across the breakfast table, cutting another daily notch on the walking stick and eating oatmeal like she'd rather be eating gravel, felt normal.
Not good exactly, just normal.
-
Verdandi: The Mother - Weaves the tapestry that depicts and determines the fate of the world. Her name means 'that which is becoming'. She represents the now, the present, possibilities manifesting into fact. She is relentless, remorseless.
-
In the second trimester, Mary wove. Night and day, she wove.
While John was at work in early August, the loom showed up, filling the baby's room. Mary already had it set up and was crawling underneath, awkwardly tying yarn on to parts of the machine.
"Whoa, whoa! Honey, what are you doing?"
Mary gritted her teeth and pushed hair out of her eyes, looking up at John from under the machine. "Setting up a loom."
"Where did it come from?"
"Friend of a friend."
"You sure you're okay to crawl around under there?"
"I'm not made of glass, John."
"Can I help you with it?"
Mary shook her head and frowned down at the notes in her journal. "This is something I need to do."
John had learned not to argue with Mary long before he married her. Besides her hidden core of solid steel she was also stubborn as old boots. "Okay. If you're sure there's nothing I can do to help?"
She took a deep breath and ran a finger across the strands of yarn she had already tied into the machine. "As sure as I'll ever be."
"How about a cup of tea?"
Mary's head tilted down, hair swinging forward and obscuring her face. "Yeah," she said after a breath, tucking her hair behind her ear with a smile to look up at John through the bars of the loom. "Yeah. Tea would be great."
"I'm on it," John rumbled, grinning.
-
She picked the skeins of yarn and wove, day and night, shuttles of different colored yarn dangling from the underside of the weave while she consulted the notes in her journal. John watched as she wove. She frowned in concentration, picking a shuttle, stringing it through a few lines, then putting it down for a different one.
Mary didn't like John lurking over her shoulder while she wove, but she wasn't hiding the weaving from him. He couldn't tell what it might be when it was finished. It looked like there was no real pattern in the short chunks visible while Mary was weaving. Maybe it would be something that only looked right when seen from the right perspective. Whatever it was supposed to be, it was complex. Mary focused intently on sending each shuttle through, like she was defusing a bomb.
John watched and stayed out of the way, fixing up the room on weekends; painting a cleared section of wall, nailing down a floorboard, sanding rough patches on the door frame, making sure the old window that had been painted shut for years would open. Little things to keep close to Mary without disturbing her or making her feel watched.
Each day, the walking stick gained another notch. The new notches showed pale wood, the older dye-soaked ones looked like old dried blood.
-
Urd: The Crone - Measures the thread of each person's life and when their fate is complete, cuts them from the tapestry of the world. Her name means 'wyrd' or 'fate'. She represents the eternal, the primal, the ancient, the unknowable, the inevitable. She is the death that comes into the world with every life, and she guards eternity.
-
In the third trimester, Mary measured.
The yarn was used up, the loom was silent, and a broad swatch of cloth gathered on the take-up roll. Mary unrolled it, stretching it out from the machine like a giant wool tongue.
"That's..." John said, taking in the whole thing.
The fabric Mary had made was abstract. Spots and lines of colour intersecting, chasing each other across the fabric, interweaving and separating. It kind of gave him a headache, like there was a picture there, but he couldn't tell what it was. Maybe it was one of those things where if you were too close to it, it just looked random, but when you stood back far enough to see the whole thing plain, the pattern would make sense. Looking at the lines and spots and whorls of color in the long fabric lying on the floor, he wondered just how far away that might be.
"It's, uh. Unique."
Mary smiled, measuring the distance between a stitch of red and a stitch of black and noting the figure in her journal.
John tilted his head, examining Mary's handiwork. "So. It's... a blanket? Or are we gonna be hanging this on a wall somewhere?"
Mary laid the measuring tape along a variegated line in shades of red that stretched half the length and frowned. "It's a gift. For the midwife."
"Midwife?"
"I'm having this baby at home, John."
"Oh." A glint of Mary's steel core lurked in her tone. "Okay... You've, uh, got one lined up?"
"I've made some calls." She slid her hand along the tapestry, smoothing it. "It's all arranged."
"Okay then." John pushed down the sour feeling of being left out of the decision-making process. Mary was the one giving birth. If she wanted to do it at home, so be it. Don't be an ass, Winchester. "You know, it'd be easier to finish up the room up if we could get the loom out of here. If you're done the weaving, we can cut it off the-"
"It's not ready to cut yet," Mary said, quickly and firmly.
"Can you go back and fix things in it if you leave it on the loom?"
"No. It's done, and there's no undoing it now. I just need to-" Mary looked up at him, placing her hand overtop of a new pair of gold-toned scissors. "It can't come off the loom yet, John. Please."
John met the steel in his wife's eyes and raised his hands in surrender, smiling. "Okay, okay. I'll keep working around it."
He puttered around the loom for the next month, sanding rough patches on the window frame, painting missed bits, staying close to Mary, ready to help. Really though, there wasn't much left to do in the room except take out the loom and put in the baby.
Winter settled in.
-
In the middle of the night a few days before Christmas, John found Mary in the kitchen. She was sitting at the table, eating oatmeal and crying desperate tears, her journal open beside her. Between her sobs, she muttered something that sounded like Latin or German, maybe a prayer.
"Mary? What's wrong?" He went and knelt beside her, the chill of the kitchen floor barely noticed.
Mary startled, and raised her eyes to John. "I- It's just..." She trailed off. Her lips thinned and eyes narrowed, examining John like he was a rope bridge over a gully; gauging how strong he was, how much load he could take before breaking.
"Let me help, Mary. Please?"
Mary's gaze dropped, staring down into her herb-sprinkled oatmeal. It smelled like cough medicine tonight. "It's- It's nothing. I just wish Mom..." Mary shook her head, stopping herself.
John silently ran a hand up and down her back before resting it between her shoulder-blades.
"What if-" Mary's breath hitched. "What if I'm doing the wrong things, John? What if I mess this up? I don't- I don't want this baby to, to-" She took a deep shuddering breath. "I can't screw this up. I can't. This is so important, more important than anything I've ever done."
John quelled his own echoing jitters. "It'll be fine, Mary. Doc says the baby's healthy, right?"
Mary nodded miserably.
"We'll figure out this whole 'being parents' thing fine on our own. People do it all the time. It'll all be fine."
Mary looked at him, eyes watery. She gave a bemused little smile and patted John's cheek. "Of course it will."
John felt like he'd said something immensely stupid and wasn't sure why. He'd had that feeling a lot around Mary lately, like anytime she spoke to him he only heard half the conversation. He frowned, reached over and held Mary's hand, looking into her eyes.
"This is our baby. Our family, Mary. I know how important this is. You might not think I do, but I do." He took his hand from Mary's back and ran it over her rounded belly. "A brand new person is in there. We did that. Us. It's a hell of a lot of responsibility, but you and me, together we can do it. We can do anything."
Mary tucked her hair behind her ear and met John's eyes again.
He pulled her hand to his mouth and kissed it, never breaking her gaze. "Trust me. Okay?"
Mary blew out a long breath before smiling. "Okay."
-
Nornor: Agent of Destiny - Attends the birth of the great and the infamous, measures and plots the life of an individual at birth, reciting prophetic poems. This measuring is symbolised through the twisting and casting of yarn, or through the marking of a staff to measure the child's life and domain and determine the effect that the child will have on the destiny of the world.
-
One night in late January, Mary had levered herself up from the couch halfway through the news. John assumed she was going to the bathroom again, a frequent occurrence now that the baby was parked right on top of her bladder. He peered over towards the bathroom, but saw it was empty. Something wasn't right.
He padded into the kitchen to find the big cook-pot Mary had used as a dye-bath on the stove, full of slowly bubbling oatmeal.
"What the-" He started towards the stove to turn it off when he heard a thump and a cry from upstairs.
John tore up the stairs, two at a time, grabbing the door frame to turn the corner into the baby's room. The tapestry was cut off the loom and lay on the floor, stretched out flat, notch-covered walking stick laying beside it. Mary was kneeling on the floor, gold-toned scissors in hand, panting.
"Mary?" John knelt beside her.
She looked up over her shoulder at John's arrival. Sweat stood out on her forehead. "It's time, John."
The doorbell rang.
"John. Door."
"But-"
"It's the gnh-!" Mary panted, eyes wide. "Midwife. Called her. I called her."
John thundered down the stairs, briefly wondering when Mary'd had the chance to phone anyone, and how they'd gotten here so fast. He opened the door.
An old woman with feathery hair that had once been red stood on the step, shawl dusted with snow.
"Are you- Mary's-"
"Will you not invite me in?" the woman asked in a Scandinavian-accented voice.
"Yes, yes." John stepped aside. "She's upstairs."
The midwife brushed past, and nodded towards the kitchen. "You'll not want that to burn."
John swung into the kitchen and turned off the burner under the pot before running back upstairs. The midwife had Mary's arm over her shoulder and was guiding her to the bedroom. John may never have been involved in a birth before, but this felt like everything was happening too fast.
"Is everything okay? We can still go to a hospital-"
John found himself on the receiving end of two nearly identical glares.
"Right, okay. Tell me what you need."
"Clean sheets," the old woman muttered. "Nothing rough."
"Right. On it."
As he ransacked the linen closet down the hall, John could hear the woman speaking softly to Mary... it sounded like chanting, in Norwegian or something. He distractedly wondered where Mary had learned Norwegian. Maybe she'd always known it. Campbell wasn't a Scandinavian name, but maybe Mary's mother had been from the older parts of Minnesota and taught Mary.
Even after five years of marriage, there were a lot of things John didn't know about Mary.
In the other room, Mary's voice was faint and strained. "But that's- That's not right. Oh god, did I screw up?"
The old woman switched to English. "No. You did not. This is the way it must be."
"But this baby needs to stop it from happening."
"The child will end it. But it cannot end unless it begins. So the child must begin it."
"No, no," Mary whispered.
"It is how it must be."
"No."
"No one escapes their wyrd, once set."
"Then unset it!" Mary snarled.
John's head came up at Mary's tone. He took the armload of sheets he had gathered and ran back to the room.
The old woman stood over Mary. "The thread is cut, the pattern is woven. There is no unsetting."
Mary hid her face in her hands and drew a deep breath.
"What the-? Are you okay, Mary?"
"It's, it's okay John," Mary shook her head and started panting again.
The old woman muttered, "He should not be here. It is not fitting."
John scowled. "Like hell it's not fitting, I'm the father!"
"Leave us be." The woman waved a dismissing hand.
Mary grabbed the woman's arm, eyes hard. "He stays."
The old woman looked at Mary, hesitating, then nodded. "Watch the door," she snapped at John then turned back to Mary.
Crazy old bat, John thought.
-
"He's perfect," the old woman said hours later, wrapping a clean sheet around the baby and placing him in Mary's arms. "A perfect, ordinary boy." Mary drew a shuddering breath.
"It's a boy?" John smiled so wide he thought his face would split.
The old woman hummed and nodded. "Yes. Like his brother."
"He doesn't have a brother," John corrected, absorbed in the sight of Mary holding their baby. Their son.
"Hm." The old woman hummed and nodded again.
Mary began crying, huge gasping sobs over the baby.
"Hey, hey, it's all right." John went to Mary and wedged himself behind her in the bed, wrapping his arms around his wife and newborn son. "It's all right, Mary. He's fine, he's beautiful. Look Mary. You did good."
Mary sobbed harder.
"You. Man."
John looked at the old woman in irritation.
"You treat her with care. She has done a greater thing than you will ever do. She has brought life back to the world."
Funny way to say it. "I know. Trust me, I know."
The old woman tilted her head sideways, like a robin examining a worm in the grass. "No. You don't. But you will."
John looked back down at Mary and the baby in her arms. He nuzzled into the sweaty hair behind her ear, looking down at the squalling, red-faced person in her arms. A brand new person.
He glanced back up saying, "Listen, ma'am, I didn't mean to be-" but the old woman was gone.
Hunh. Didn't even hear her go. He thought of checking through the house to make sure the disturbing old lady really had left and hadn't taken the TV, but knew he had the most important things in the entire world in his arms. Everything else was just stuff.
John settled back against the headboard, stroking Mary's hair and looking down at their son, marveling that a human being could ever be so small.
-
Nornegrauten: A thick porridge prepared as a sacrifice to the Nornor, in hopes of preventing the child from receiving a dark fate.
-
The next morning, Mary's tapestry and walking stick were nowhere to be found, and neither was the vat of oatmeal that had been on the stove last night. Somehow, it didn't matter.
- - -
(that's it)
Post A/N: The real definition of Nornegrauten, Norn, Wyrd. Hopefully I'm not too far off. Apologies to any real Norse people out there for stomping my clumsy feet all over your cultural heritage.