Odin's Prize

Springtime

The pressure of silence builds itself up stretching further and further within the space of Morvared's home.

Odin is in the doorway, regarding Morvared with closed mouth contempt. 

"Charlie, why are you here? I thought the note was clear that I left you on the table this morning, that you need to go to training." Behind him, the sun has started to sink down into the sky, casting the entrance way of Morvared's home in the shadow of him. 

"I didn't want to go, so I came here instead." Still sitting at Morvared's table, not getting up off my seat. 

Odin's silence says everything; he's not happy with my decision to skip out on morning training to come here and learn more important things. I've been here all day, cannibalizing her entire first book in a matter of an afternoon. What took her years and years to learn, I've devoured in just a single non-interrupted sitting. It's not that difficult to retain knowledge when you have the passion for the knowledge to be obtained. 

"My sister was at our house all day waiting for you to come home. She left about an hour ago. Next time, just leave a note you will be gone all day, so we don't hold our meals for you." Odin's voice carries a soft undertone to it. 

"Next time, don't hold your meals for her, know when she's at my house, she eats well and will always leave full." Morvared's words make Odin take complete notice of her. He closes the door behind him when he enters her house entirely. Two steps are all it takes for him to violate her radius. 

"How did you do it?" Words quietly seethed out.

"Do what, Odin?"Morvared's mocking voice subtly shakes Odin's controlled exterior. 

"Kill the Singer to the Moon, my friend?"

"Jam, Odin. He loved Rhubarb jam, especially mine. I've been giving him gifts of it for years and years now, almost as long as Charlie has been born." Her smile towards me is sweet, but those blue eyes hold a calculation of cunning that I have never seen before. 

"He likes the sugar in it, the day you set off to get Charlie and bring her back here is the day we sat down at his table and had our last meal together, the three of us. I was always fond of those early morning talks; I'm going to miss them, thankfully, I've got a new partner to talk with now." The sight of her eyes stays on my body. 

Odin's head dips down, the skin of his cheek almost brushing against Morvared's, "your better days are behind you, healer." There is no inflection of tone, no hint of threat just simple words stated out as a fact that somehow Odin knows that he speaks the ultimate truth.

"You need to be careful how you talk to an Elder, Odin. I thought your father raised you better than this? It seems to me you haven't been raised right." Morvared's words bring Odin's eyes towards mine before they cast downwards. Odin has no words for her, he's shocked, and so am I. It's as if she heard our fight last night. 

Odin is now pulling away from her personal space, giving her more room to breathe in fully.

"You don't scare me Morvared," She starts to chuckle a few upward bars of air. 

"Odin, you need to be very careful with your words, think long and hard how you speak to me, you never know what could happen to you, I have no problems sending you to the Moon."

The Wild's flexion from within is abrupt, sharp and keen. There is no fixation to her movement. She assaults with a liquid movement that I have never felt rise so swiftly before. It's not controllable, which is internally terrifying.