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---

He couldn't sleep. He knew that if he slept the storm would pass faster, but the distant rumbling still set his little teeth on edge. He gazed out into the murky, moonlit world outside the den and tried to focus on the steady rise and fall of Bragi's breathing.

It didn't work.

There was a crack of thunder, muffled by the miles of open ocean separating them. The boy still flinched.

His ears pressed flat against his head, he clambered his way across Bragi's sleeping form and pressed an insistent paw into her face. Baggy, he whined, peeling back her eyelid. Story.

✦✦✦

Rest had been fitful since the kid arrived. She tried not to think about why, tried not to show it on her face.

Tried not to sigh openly when he asked her things, tried not to consider passing him off to Cupid instead, or allow her expression to ripple with the resentment she felt toward whatever malevolent force had taken Tove, had taken Trygve, Saga, and Loki, and given them a child, instead. Had ripped the poor boy away from whatever family he might've had and dropped him into the lap of a new one. Like that would fix things. Like it would make everything better.

She tried to get some sleep, and was instead awoken by the feeling of nails in her eye, trying to pry them open.

Huh? She murmured blearily, jerking her head away and blinking in the dim light. What time...? She stopped herself, swallowed the spark of rage that had ignited in her chest. No, not tonight. It's late, just go to sleep, please.

✦✦✦

✷

---

Frowny face. He was trying.

Can't, he whined again, a little more insistently as he flopped backwards dramatically across her shoulder. Story. Peeeeease. He flashed those pearly whites, batting his eyelashes as he stared up at her with the biggest, doey-est eyes he could muster.

---

roughly nine months

He'd had a dream. Or a memory. It was those strange, gossamer moments between waking and sleep, and he saw the sky. It glittered around him, blue as the sky in his twin's eyes, dark charcoal stormclouds rumbling his name like the reverent whisper of a prayer, the sun spilling gold in its wake.

He felt its warmth. His paws carried him around the clouds, the raindroplets misting across his face and the swaying fur of his pelt. He was as physical as the earth and as amorphous as ash on the breeze. Still, within him, he knew he was missing something.

He would have it when his task was finished. He would have it when the sun was broken and bleeding. He would have it when his fate was fulfilled. And then he had awoken, or maybe just come back to himself.

In the very far distant, hidden by the ink of the hour, thunder spoke his name again and again, the sound rabbiting across choppy seas and brine breezes to reach his ears. Restless paws hauled Sverke to his feet.

They're just stories, she had said. And he didn't believe her, even now. He knew what he saw, he knew what was within him. Sverke stumbled through the forest, haste and distraction making his normally smooth pawsteps clumsy as he shook off the last of his strange, lingering sleep.

Her den was easy to find, and smelled strangely, not that he paid it any mind. Sverke chuffed gruffly in an effort to wake her, but then simply lowered himself to squirm his way into the entrance to her den. Bragi. He said, plain and direct, with little of his usual mocking lilt. I need to - He was going to ask her about her stories, what she knew of the prophecies. If he could stop Ragnarok.

Then he saw something small and gold and moving?

His nose scrunched. What the fuck is that.

✦✦✦

Can't. She breathed in, deeply through her nose, let the air whistle from her lungs in a low, rumbling sound just an inch away from a groan. But she wouldn't do that. He was just a kid. He didn't deserve it.

Okay, she relented, her voice still husky with sleep as she shifted to wriggle him gently to the ground. Okay. Fine. I'll tell you a st—

A single ear flicked at the sound of an oddly familiar chuff, and she was cut off as the light in the den darkened and a voice split the air and Sverke was there, weaseling his way into the open space.

Wha— Hey— Language, she chided, placing her paw between the kid's ears like that would at all stop him from hearing. He's just a puppy.

✦✦✦

✷

---

She said okay! A grin split his face, his tail whacking against her flank as he was deposited back onto the soft moss at her belly. He already knew which one he wanted! He wanted to hear about Apollo! No, or maybe Zeus. Wait, wait, wait, Athena. No! Aphrodite!

His jaws parted to speak, but then there was a face in the den, and a paw on his head, and the rumbling of the storm was much quieter. His jaws clipped audibly shut as he started up at the dark blue wolf. He knew Bragi and they even looked strikingly similar. Was this the other dad he'd heard fabled whispers about???

What's that? He asked, his gaze flickering back up to Bragi.

She plopped her paw atop the whelp's skull, as it that was going to shield his youthful mind from the horrors spilling from Sverke's maw. The boy huffed, then proceeded to squirm further into the den, as much as he could comfortably without curling up right beside his sister. And her...strangely golden child. Sverke squinted at the boy suspiciously. Yeah, I can see that. He retorted, as if he hadn't been the one to ask what it was. Whose is it? Cupid's? Yours?

The baby spoke.

Sverke frowned at it.

✦✦✦

Who is that, she corrected automatically as the kid looked up at her, glad that for now, at least, he didn't seem as eager to latch onto curse words as he was names. His name is Sverke. He's a friend.

The "what" in question continued to worm in and she shifted a bit against the walls of the den to make room, her paw slipping from his head to his neck to try and gently coax the kid in closer. Uh, mine? I suppose? It was more question than answer, as her gaze flickered between them. I actually don't know where he came from. He just sort of... showed up. Cupid said he may have been sent by the gods. A soul in need of shelter.

Her mouth twisted, even now, at the possibility. The irony wasn't lost on her, but so much time had passed since she'd first waved away the strange circumstances as divine, and still she wasn't any closer a concrete answer. If anything, the lines had only blurred further. Her memories, her episodes, her blackouts. The poisoned river, the wolves who could ferment fruit into wine, and the child — bright as the sun — deposited into her lap.

If the gods were truly real, they sure had a sick way of proving their existence.

✦✦✦

✷

---

Oooh, a friend. Okay! Seerk, he declared proudly, wagging his tail. Bragi's paw rested a bit heavily on his shoulder, but he was a big boy and stood anyway, feeling it slip as he power posed in front of Sverke the Friend. So not a dad, then?

Wanna hear a story? They were talking about gods and those meant story, so he must've!

Seerk, said Weird Baby. Sverke scoffed. Sverke. He corrected Weird Baby, although even he knew it was likely a moot point.

Bragi said he just showed up - Cupid thought the baby was a soul in need of shelter. Sverke's muzzle wrinkled. And what makes this place a good spot to shelter? We can't protect this kid or any of the others, he wanted to say. Well, congratulations, I guess. He muttered.

But Weird Baby asked him if he wanted a story. Sverke didn't, really, but what he'd come here to do was not clearly not happening. He kicked out his hind paws, getting comfy with a mighty and melodramatic sigh. Sure. Tell me a story.