Chapter 8 - A Protector
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A Protector
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Once, before Rask's granddam was born, the brilliance of the old sun had entrapped bergsr?r, tryllan, and nisse alike in its fury; its merest touch transforming all their kind to stone.
That sun was long gone, like so much else.
The light made by the Daybringer to replace it was pitiful in comparison, and held none of its predecessor's terrible power.
It was not the same; how could it be, after so much was lost?
In the new sunless lands Várvorsága had forged for them from the bones of the Devourer, day was rendered utterly toothless.
Bergsr?r, and even their lesser cousins, need fear little more than a brief nap should they dare stray from the shadows.
But lightning? Ah, now — that was a different story. Storms still retained all their old danger, and the sparks leaping from cloud to ground held an ancient grudge for bergsr?r in particular.
The night Hjarta set out to drive the thurs out of the human's valley, Thor's mewling whelps had fought viciously over their dead father's hammer; the skies above ringing and flashing with every blow.
Kissing him thrice, Rask sang Hjarta the songs of protection, of strength, and of the luck of old fools.
And then he'd stayed back, like a coward. Hiding in their cave and telling himself Hjarta was being the unreasonable one, Rask ignored the small knot growing in his chest as he watched his mate go.
He could still recall with perfect clarity that last sight of his mate; Hjarta striding so bold and strong and gloriously stubborn into the Mist. Could remember mumbling about wasted heroics and rock-headed fools as he'd set about making their dinner. He’d hung the pot to the side of the fire, keeping it warm where it wouldn't get burnt up by the time Hjarta finally returned home.
And as Rask fell asleep in his chair by their hearth, lulled by the warmth of the fire into dreams of a passel of tiny bergsr?r playing around his feet? Hjarta had fought the thurs, brave and determined.
And to Rask's shame; so very, terribly, alone.
The fire had gone out in the hearth by the time Rask woke; their soup bubbled away to a thick sludge.
Hjarta must have been caught out by the daylight, Rask had told their empty home.
That he was sleeping like a stone on one of the meadow’d slopes, and Rask only need wait for night to fall until his mate would return to tell the tale.
As soon as dark had fallen and the storm cleared, Rask had gone out into the Mist. Round and round the mountain he'd looked, his search becoming increasingly frantic as day bullied its way across the sky.
And there, in a small scar torn into the mountain's low slope, Rask finally found his missing mate — Hjarta's body tangled with the broken thurs.
Their mingled blood darkened a little pocket of previously covered stone, glowing and pale under the light of the triple moons.
Rask used some of that very same stone to mark the place he'd buried Hjarta; a meadow on the southern slope his mate had liked to take the goats to graze in during the summer.
He'd return each morning with long strings of flowers; a rainbow of colors Hjarta would loop over Rask's shoulders with a laugh, before pulling him in for a kiss. Rask didn't know how to make the loops. He hoped being where the flowers grew would be good enough.
The body of the thurs, Rask left for the humans to deal with, whenever they emerged like hibernating rabbits from their Mistide shelter.
As industrious as ants happening upon a corpse, in no time at all the little human cut a quarry deep into the stone Hjarta's death had revealed.
Those first few years, Rask had watched in dulled disbelief as both the scar and village had expanded; quarrymen singing, children laughing, their community growing — bursting at the seams.
Until one day, Rask could take no more. Leaving it to the humans, he'd stopped going to that side of his mountain at all.