fic | thor (2011) | yggdrasill dreaming: interlude (i)
Interlude.
- Veðrfölnir caught a warm wind at the fourth to highest rung and rode that the rest of the way to the top of Yggdrasill. The breeze pulled at her feathers and she turned to adjust for it. Yggdrasill's branches waved; her blessed leaves ruffled on end. More than the winds unique to the great tree worked here, thought Veðrfölnir. The thought worried her, as it had worried her since the hour of the Bifröst’s fall.
She spiraled up the last two rungs. The branches thinned. A spire rose, leaves like fans spread about it. There at the tip, seated in her nest, the eagle turned her head upside down to greet Veðrfölnir.
"Welcome home," said the eagle.
"Lift your head," said Veðrfölnir gruffly, "unless you want me to sit on the inside of your beak."
The eagle turned her head about again. Veðrfölnir circled the nest thrice, then landed neatly upon the eagle's crown. She fluttered her wings out and folded them against her sides.
"Have a nice flight?" asked the eagle.
"How kind of you to ask," said Veðrfölnir dryly, but she was pleased. How many endless eons had she and the eagle known each other? And still the eagle thought of Veðrfölnir. Veðrfölnir preened at her breast, seeking the proper composure there. She couldn't let the eagle get too comfortable, after all.
Before she could think of a suitably clever remark, a little red head peeked out from the eagle's nest and said, "Well, hello to you, Veðrfölnir. We were just talking about you." Ratatoskr smiled ingratiatingly up at her. Veðrfölnir was not ingratiated.
Her ruff flared. "What," she demanded, "are you doing here?"
"Talking with my good friend," said Ratatoskr. "Veðrfölnir, I'm hurt."
Veðrfölnir stepped forward on the eagle's brow and flipped her head around that she might fix the eagle with the grimmest of stares.
"Why is he here?"
"He has news," said the eagle.
"He has gossip," Veðrfölnir corrected. "I have news. Ratatoskr has nothing of interest to say. He'll only upset you."
"I most certainly will not," Ratatoskr protested. "I am a gentleman, and I have only the best interests at heart for your ladyship."
"Thank you," said the eagle gravely. "I will hear Veðrfölnir's news first."
Veðrfölnir straightened. She preened at her breast again and made sure Ratatoskr could see every stroke of her beak through her feathers. Oh, she hoped it stung him to know his gossip came second to Veðrfölnir's news.
"Well?" he asked when Veðrfölnir was not quick enough for him. He pulled at his whiskers. Feigning coolness, she thought smugly. "What is it? Nothing so interesting as what I have to say," he assured the eagle.
"We will see," said the eagle.
"Thank you," said Veðrfölnir. She threw her head back. "There is movement in Múspellsheimr. They build fires and vessels to cross the stars."
"Oh, vessels," Ratatoskr began cuttingly.
The eagle turned to look at him and he grew small and quiet. Of Veðrfölnir she asked: "What sort?"
"War," said Veðrfölnir. "With the Bifröst broken, Asgard's power is no longer absolute. The other realms are free to move, and Múspellsheimr would move against Asgard."
"Have they ways?" asked the eagle.
"Not now," said Veðrfölnir. "But in time. They will find them, or they will make them. Asgard royally fucked up when they appointed their selves kings of the cosmos."
"So," said the eagle. She was silent a time.
Veðrfölnir had more to say, but she had learned that when the eagle said "so" in that fashion and was subsequently quiet, the eagle thought deeply. Beneath them, Yggdrasill swayed. Her branches cut through the clouds ringed so thickly about her trunk. Scoops of storm fled in the wake of her vast leaves.
"Worrisome," said the eagle at last. She made as if to open her wings then settled again. "The Bifröst breaks. Loki falls. Yggdrasill wakes. Múspellsheimr burns. Some thing is coming."
Ratatoskr peeked out of the nest. His eyes were huge and watchful. His ears were perked. Veðrfölnir would have chased him away, snapping at his head, for Ratatoskr could not grow so large as Veðrfölnir; but a thought struck her.
"You," she said to him. "Gossip-monger."
"I have a name," he said irritably.
"I don't give a shit," said Veðrfölnir. "Have the norns said anything to you of this? The norns would know," she said to the eagle. It was a question.
"The norns would know," the eagle agreed.
But Ratatoskr chittered and pawed at his face and said, sulkily, "That middle one cut off my tail last time I drank from their well. That was three centuries ago. She won't have forgot."
Veðrfölnir looked on him with disgust. She thought the eagle looked on him thusly as well; but, as the eagle was known to like most everyone regardless of how purposefully vexatious and cruel they were, she rather doubted it.
"It's a shame your tail grew back," Veðrfölnir said.
"It's never been the same," Ratatoskr said sadly. He flicked it out for them to consider. Veðrfölnir thought it as bushy and ridiculous as ever.
The eagle stirred again and said, "We will see," then she looked to Ratatoskr and said, "You may speak."
"Finally," he gasped. "Well, I was talking to Níðhöggr just earlier today about your ladyship, and I said to him how very fine a specimen of the flying variety your ladyship is, and do you know what he said to me?"
"No," said the eagle.
Puffy with righteous indignation, Ratatoskr said, "He said to me that your ladyship cannot even fly! That your wings have atrophied, and you might as well be cooked on a fire and eaten."
The eagle began to swell dangerously. She made a noise deep in her throat. Veðrfölnir shouted, "Ratatoskr, you little shit! I'll peck your eyes out! Don't you listen to him, my lady," she said soothingly to the eagle. "He only wants to upset you. You're a fine bird, the finest bird I've known." She preened the eagle's head feathers, smoothing them against her crown again and again.
"You may tell Níðhöggr," said the eagle in a voice which rang like thunder, "that he is a worm, and I will eat him."
"Can't you be a little more inventive?" Ratatoskr wondered.
"I wish the second sister had cut your head off," Veðrfölnir snapped.
So consumed with hatred for Ratatoskr was Veðrfölnir that for a time she forgot Múspellsheimr; but later, as night twined about Yggdrasill and the stars spun out from her branches, Veðrfölnir found she could think of little else but the smoke which had billowed in thick and ashen clouds from the forges, and the fires stoked higher and higher so Múspellsheimr knew not night, and the forests felled to feed the conflagrations.
Yggdrasill shivered. Veðrfölnir tucked her head against her breast and thought of fire and smoke and emptied forests, and the eagle spreading her wings to fly as she had never flown from Yggdrasill the vast, Yggdrasill the unending, Yggdrasill the world tree.
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