Happy Saturn’s Day

Frigg stood on the porch of her and her husband’s cabin.  It wasn’t much, just a few rooms and a central chamber with fireplace.  Not that the cold mattered to her or her husband as being immortal, cold was simply a hardship to be endured.  The other two rooms were a large bedroom for her and Odin and another bedroom for guests.

She stood puzzled at her thoughts and feelings that morning, a stern look on her milky white face.  She brushed back her long golden hair as the small but steady breeze kept pushing it in her face.  He ice blue eyes scanning the edge of the woods waiting for her husband’s arrival.  She knew he would be bringing someone with him.  Someone who was going to  change everything. She after all was a practitioner of seidr, the magic of fate.  She didn’t use often anymore.  Knowing the future of a person and their fate was, as she discovered, an awful burden to bear.

She used both hands to brush down her dress which was white and made of a slightly see through fabric. She wove it herself. Her body was perfectly curved and her proportions would have made any artist long for the chance to paint her.  The dress she wore shimmered and on occasion one could see her skin underneath.  Perhaps her sister goddess Freya would smile at her lack of modesty in her choice of dress. Freya being the goddess of sex and love was rarely modest about either subject in both action and words.  Frigg was the mother goddess and so hearth, home and marriage were her domains.  A wife should be modest but she was with her husband alone so modestly was less important.

Frigg however was unconcerned about the opinions of another goddess.  Right now her concern was on a vision she had of her husband finding a body on the beach.  She could see the body of a man whose fate was one to bring change to the gods.  Great Change. She could not as usual see all the details. Only that the man over her husbands shoulders was fated to bring change. What and to what extent she could not say.

In a few moments, two ravens appeared and flew to her.  One landed on her forearm.  Huginn.  He whispered to her and she smiled and nodded.  Huginn flew off and joined his brother Muninn.  In a few more moments, she saw her husband and the wolves round the bend of the beach and start approaching the house.  Odin walked with confidence and assurance of the king of the gods.  Her heart always swelled with pride when she saw her husband.

She frowned when she turned her attention to the naked man he was carrying.  Odin’s wolves ran ahead and greeted Frigg and she greeted them back.  Odin’s stride closed the distance between them.

“Frigg, I have a man who needs your attention.”

“I know, but relax his fate is not to die.  Rest your mind, hansom husband.  Take him inside to the guest room.”

Odin sniffed a short snort and carried the man inside. His wolves followed him in and the ravens flew through the open doorway.  The ravens found their place on the fireplace mantel and the wolves lay by the fire in front of two chairs that faced it.

Odin and Frigg then placed the man under the blankets in the guest bed.  Frigg smiled at the man.  Older but still fit and….well equipped.  Freya her sister would laugh to know her thoughts.  Odin smiled at his wife and Frigg actually blushed.

“Looks like I am going to have to get my wife to forget something she saw tonight.”

“Fear not husband, I was only smiling at what Freya would think of our stranger. But still it has been a few days since we…”

Odin laughed and slapped his wife’s backside to which she blushed again and grinned at him.

“Tell me wife, is he the one?”

“Yes, he is fated to bring great change to the gods.”

“Ragnarok?”

“His thread of life ends at the same time your’s does, my love.”

Odin’s smile faded.  His vision of his end was the eyes and teeth of Fenrir the great wolf.

“My love, that does not mean he will cause Ragnarok, just that he will be there at the end of the world. I caution you my love, remember we can think we are stopping fate by our actions but in truth we are actually making it sure.”

“I know, Fenrir taught me that.”

She nodded.

“What’s wrong with him, my wife?”

“Nothing, there is magic at work here my husband.  I need to open my seeing eye.”

Frigg’s face went blank.  Odin waited knowing that she would see a vision of some sort. He hated this part of it though.  There was always some fear in his heart that the love of his life would stay in that glazed over state forever.  But once again she returned.

She turned to Odin.

“It’s him.  The Grey thread, the Grey Wayfarer.  That amulet has allowed him to cross the barrier into our world from his.”

Odin grunted.  Damn.  So change and perhaps Ragnarok after all.

“Well, there is nothing for it my wife but to set him on the path he must walk.”

Frigg frowned, “I know but…”

“Sorry, my wife.  I believe at long last our end has come.  As you said to fight fate might bring it about and hasten it.”

“Should we tell him when he awakens, my king?”

Odin was taken back.  Frigg never called him ‘my king’ anywhere except in court at Valhalla.

“Nothing my queen.  It would only bring on the risk of hastening fate as well  No, we tell him nothing, equip him and then set him on the path.  He must walk it himself and that will bring about the end quick enough.”

Frigg rose to her feet and then walked to her husband and put her arms around his neck.  She kissed him deeply and his arms when around her.  He pulled her close, and when their kiss broke, she whispered in his ear.

“Take me, my love.  Make love to me like it is the end of the world.”

“I shall my love, because it is.”

Odin scooped her up in his arms and carried her out of the room and into their bedroom.  There they made love as only gods who are finally facing mortality can.  After her husband fell asleep, Frigg lay there naked in the darkness for a while but couldn’t sleep.  She left the bed and wandered to the guest room where she looked at the man again.

Tears filled her eyes.  She didn’t know who to weep for more.  The gods who were about to face mortality or the man laying in the bed in front of her.  His fate would end with theirs, but the pain he would suffer would be more than most gods could endure.  Yes, the gods had good reason for sorrow.  But the Grey Wayfarer… may the gods have pity for him.

The Rabyd Skald – Wandering Soul, Bard and Philosopher. The Grey Wayfarer.

Skaal!!!