For months, the house was dark, locked. That was not unusual. What was unusual was that they were missing. Parties came and parties went, and they were all… substandard. No Loki. No Angrboða. Everyone assumed they were elsewhere discovering, creating, other parties. Amendment: not everyone thought that. One or two were worried that they had finally met their proverbial matches. All right, it was Sigyn. Pregnant with her own child, the second to last thing she wanted was for Loki to go missing. The last thing she wanted was for Óðinn to. But no one ever mentioned that. Accept me. I enjoy mentioning that. I enjoy it because she played a role that brought great harm to women. It did also harm her, but she didn‘t know it, which in many ways made it worse… for everyone.
Parties were worse. Sigyn was worse. Nothing was better. Keep this in mind. With all the hatred and vilification, when the trickster and the witch were gone, nothing was better. Parties were worse. Sigyn, goddess of devotion, was worse. I was also worse. Love was worse. Without the unpredictable, the magical, the funny—without the testing of the edges, the expansion of life, experience, and consequence—love is worse.
Sex is worse. Death is unchanged.
And then, one day, it all changed; opposite death, life returned. The shutters flew open, the door was unlocked, and the exuberant couple came back… with a complication: a bundled, cooing, cuddly complication… that had complications.
As soon as I heard, I ran to see her, holding out my arms. I welcomed the tiny miracle of life to the physical world. I brushed the blanket back from her face, and had to steel myself, my smile frozen—briefly—as I looked into her eyes: one deep green, like Loki‘s, and one a pale icy blue with thick cataracts. But more stunning was the face: half supple and full, a healthy baby; half with skin pulled so taught as to reveal every crevice and curve in the bone beneath.
Some say that half is, was, and will be, skeletal, which isn‘t quite true. The translucent skin that seemed to barely contain the bones did function as a mildly protective barrier between her and her world, our world, the world.
I decided to visit her: regularly: near daily. She seemed to need in ways that most do not, but not in ways that most do. I sat with her. I held her. I taught her. I loved her. I love her.
As she grew, I asked her what kind of future she dreamed of. As we sat in her vacant home, her parents gone yet again, she said she wanted a family: a big family: a family in which everyone pitched in and lived together. She wanted to spend some time with a few, attractive, warriors.
I took her into the village, and introduced her to the other children. Even with prior coaching, they were afraid. No matter how I tried to cajole them, her translucent side struck terror into their tiny hearts. It was a complication.
So, when I heard she was going to Óðinn for help, for freedom, for a place in the society that feared her, I went to him as well, with an idea—a proposal.
I know that she was aghast when he tossed her from the community to spare her the rejection of being introduced into it. It was another complication: one that I think will, in the end, make her very, very, happy. She’s got a beautiful home, and the biggest family of us all. They all love her, dearly, which is both what she wanted and what she deserves. I‘ve got a few choice warriors picked out I‘ll be sending them her way soon.