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Reaching For the Sun
Apr. 18th, 2022 08:48 pmIt's spring in Asvera, not that you'd know it just by looking. A thin layer of snow still crusts the borders of the walking paths, and slicker still is the ice on the rocks where land meets sea. A damp, clammy chill has descended on the small Norwegian village, born of a freezing drizzle that shrouds them in mist. Perfect weather for staying inside by a fire, a warm drink in your hand, enjoying close company.
Thor is doing none of that.
He stands on the edge of the small cliff behind his house, waves crashing below him, well out of reach of their spray. His long wool coat moves in the breeze, heavier and thicker than his cape once did, but it does not feel right to stand before nature's magnificence without it. Not with what he plans to do today. His hair tied back, his beard trimmed and braided, he looks up at the gloomy, gray clouds above and feels a lightness in his heart, a deep Knowing that he is at a loss to explain to anyone else. Anyone mortal.
He is the god of thunder - a god of the skies. A storm is not melancholy, not as humans understand it. It is an untamed freedom, a wildness whose presence demands respect, the natural ebb and flow of wind and water. By its grace the flowers bloom and the crops ripen, and the earth produces her bounty in abundance. Even now, after a bare handful of years, Thor can feel the green beneath his feet as it stirs from its cold slumber, a deep presence that seems to envelop his very soul and grows stronger each year. A locus of life, bound by the one who feeds it. The humans who remain here say that the village has grown greener every year since Asgard came, their nets filled with fish every voyage, their fields heavy with food and medicine at the height of harvest. What will these islands look like in five years, Thor wonders. In a handful of decades? A century? He is growing roots like the mighty oak itself, still shallow with time, but questing ever deeper to bind his heart here.
Once he had found it impossible to look on the shattered remains of his people, sheltered in abandoned homes as refugees from the greatest cataclysm ever known. Now he can hardly imagine leaving it.
Thor thrusts out a gloved hand, and Stormbreaker leaps into his grasp, pulling him into the sky with one swift movement. Wind streams through his hair and his coat as he soars upward, rain flattening against his upturned face and streaming away, the village growing ever smaller beneath him. The clouds loom heavy and low, and soon he is among them, a thick gray fog that seems impenetrable until he abruptly emerges into sun.
The sky rolls out as a dark carpet beneath him, and above, blue sky and golden sun. He slows, stops, the wind all but gone as the storm roils under his feet. And still he feels that verdant thread, the potential sleeping in the earth far below the storm, a land coming to know her king as surely as old Asgard ever had. Not a land inherited from his father, and his father's father, built on blood and conquest. No, never that.
Thor's kingdom is hard-fought and hard-won, a realm of his own making, grown from the ashes of what once was. A sapling, growing stronger from the tests of wind and might. A mighty tree, some day.
He descends as quickly as he rose, emerging into wind and rain again, the village stretching out beneath him. Asvera has more than doubled its borders since its founding, little lights glinting across the archipelago, like small jewels in rough rock, stubborn and defiant. He makes a slow circle of the settlement, and his heart is full of a strange joy that he cannot place. Something he has not felt since before the war. The simple pleasure of flying, not to hasten into battle, but simply because he wanted to.
No gleaming gold palace awaits his landing as he turns toward home. Just the glint of a small lighthouse, and a cozy cottage on the cliff.
This is Asgard.
Thor is doing none of that.
He stands on the edge of the small cliff behind his house, waves crashing below him, well out of reach of their spray. His long wool coat moves in the breeze, heavier and thicker than his cape once did, but it does not feel right to stand before nature's magnificence without it. Not with what he plans to do today. His hair tied back, his beard trimmed and braided, he looks up at the gloomy, gray clouds above and feels a lightness in his heart, a deep Knowing that he is at a loss to explain to anyone else. Anyone mortal.
He is the god of thunder - a god of the skies. A storm is not melancholy, not as humans understand it. It is an untamed freedom, a wildness whose presence demands respect, the natural ebb and flow of wind and water. By its grace the flowers bloom and the crops ripen, and the earth produces her bounty in abundance. Even now, after a bare handful of years, Thor can feel the green beneath his feet as it stirs from its cold slumber, a deep presence that seems to envelop his very soul and grows stronger each year. A locus of life, bound by the one who feeds it. The humans who remain here say that the village has grown greener every year since Asgard came, their nets filled with fish every voyage, their fields heavy with food and medicine at the height of harvest. What will these islands look like in five years, Thor wonders. In a handful of decades? A century? He is growing roots like the mighty oak itself, still shallow with time, but questing ever deeper to bind his heart here.
Once he had found it impossible to look on the shattered remains of his people, sheltered in abandoned homes as refugees from the greatest cataclysm ever known. Now he can hardly imagine leaving it.
Thor thrusts out a gloved hand, and Stormbreaker leaps into his grasp, pulling him into the sky with one swift movement. Wind streams through his hair and his coat as he soars upward, rain flattening against his upturned face and streaming away, the village growing ever smaller beneath him. The clouds loom heavy and low, and soon he is among them, a thick gray fog that seems impenetrable until he abruptly emerges into sun.
The sky rolls out as a dark carpet beneath him, and above, blue sky and golden sun. He slows, stops, the wind all but gone as the storm roils under his feet. And still he feels that verdant thread, the potential sleeping in the earth far below the storm, a land coming to know her king as surely as old Asgard ever had. Not a land inherited from his father, and his father's father, built on blood and conquest. No, never that.
Thor's kingdom is hard-fought and hard-won, a realm of his own making, grown from the ashes of what once was. A sapling, growing stronger from the tests of wind and might. A mighty tree, some day.
He descends as quickly as he rose, emerging into wind and rain again, the village stretching out beneath him. Asvera has more than doubled its borders since its founding, little lights glinting across the archipelago, like small jewels in rough rock, stubborn and defiant. He makes a slow circle of the settlement, and his heart is full of a strange joy that he cannot place. Something he has not felt since before the war. The simple pleasure of flying, not to hasten into battle, but simply because he wanted to.
No gleaming gold palace awaits his landing as he turns toward home. Just the glint of a small lighthouse, and a cozy cottage on the cliff.
This is Asgard.
