Between the Lines

The True Nature of Chaos

          Eibhlin was alive. My Little Dove had not perished after all. Despite my jubilation, our reunion had been cut short once more as I had had to focus on getting Thor and his quickly deteriorating love out of Asgard. I watched as my Little Dove flew through the air beside the man I had once called My Arrow, each landing on one of the guard ships following closely behind. I could see why Mother had thought they'd be a match; they complimented one another well.

   With a heavy sigh, I turned my attention back to the task at hand. Skillfully guiding the vessel toward the mountains, I aimed it where I knew the secret entrance was. It had taken many hours of trial and error to find and decipher it, but this one I knew would take us directly through the roots of Yggdrasil and into Svartalfheim. Thor grew anxious as I urged the ship faster and faster toward the cliff face, muttering my name with a firm warning in his voice. "If it were easy, everyone would do it."

    His blue eyes widened as he gawked at me over his shoulder, holding tight to his mortal love. "Are you mad?"

    "Possibly," I grinned, adjusting our course for the nearly invisible crevice. We sailed through almost effortlessly, the sides of the clipper scraping along the edges of the narrow passageway sending sparks soaring into the air around us. As the passage grew narrower and narrower, Thor began to mutter my name, not noticing the prismatic colors beginning to spiral around us as the tell-tale throom of the Bifróst echoed in the cavern slowly overpowering the shrieking metal and straining engines of the clipper. In a brilliant burst of light, we soared out of the mountain, bouncing along the desolate wasteland that was Svartalfheim. "Ta-dah!" I held out my hands as far as they would go in the cuffs, ever the showman even in captivity. Thor, however, remained unamused. His focus, as always, on his love.

    I sat down on the edge of the ship, remaining within reach of the steering rod as I worked to maintain our course. Thor moved, setting a blanket over his beloved just as I had done for Eibhlin many times... I sighed, I wondered where she was, if she had been returned to her cell like I presumed the others to have been. Odin would never have stood for such betrayal, not even from his best warriors; not even while he stood on the brink of a war different from the one I had been so ready to rage against the Dark Elves. "What I could do with the power that flows through those veins..."

    "It would consume you."

    "But not Eibhlin?" The look he shot me said everything. He was no longer proud to be the son of Odin, the real monster of the Asgardian royal family. "Hurts, doesn't it? Being lied to... Being told one thing and then learning it's all a fiction?" He looked away from me, focusing once more on Jane as he covered her with a second blanket from the pile. "She's holding up alright, for now..."

    "She is strong in ways you'd never even know."

    "Wouldn't I?" Once more he glared coldly at me, yet the sigh that escaped him was not one of annoyance but of acknowledgment. "You think you're the only one who has someone worth fighting for, worth dying for? That you will what, find a way for the All-Father to accept her after all this time; a way to prolong her life beyond the next fifty years? You should say goodbye while you still can."

    "Not this day..."

   "This day, the next, a hundred years- it's nothing," I muttered, rising once more to look down upon him. I didn't want to care, it was his life and it wasn't as if he had ever attempted to put much thought toward my wants, needs, or desires as I now was his. But I knew he needed my brutal honesty as much as I had needed his many times before. "It's a heartbeat. And you'll never be ready; the only woman whose love you've ever prized will be snatched from you-"

    "And will that satisfy you," he growled, voice rife with emotion.

    "Satisfaction's not in my nature."

    "And surrender is not in mine," Thor snapped back, rising from Jane's side to face me. "Not when it comes to those I love."

    I chuckled softly, staring down at my feet for a moment. "Is that why you let me fall into the abyss? Why you allow Eibhlin to be tormented by your father, cast aside as if she truly is nothing more than a dog running loose through Asgard?"

    "You speak of things you do not know or understand-"

    "Do I? Or do I speak of things you let slide because you had to be the perfect son of Odin?"

    "I was not just the son of Odin," he shouted, grabbing ahold of me as he shoved me back against the covered stern of the ship. "You think you alone were loved by Mother all these years? By our sister? That you and only you have cared for them? You may have had Mother's tricks and Eibhlin's heart but I had their trust!"

    "Trust... Was that her last expression when you sold her out to the All-Father and allowed her to be banished to a cell you couldn't even bring yourself to watch her be put into," I snarled.

    "She knew the consequences, she knew-"

    "She looked up to you! She trusted you to protect her and you-"

    "She risked her life for you!"

    "And who made it so she had to? Who forced my hand, who denied me the right to a throne?" I stared into his flushed face; his fist raised.

    With a growl, he shoved me back once more, releasing his grip on my collar as he moved and sat down in his seat once more. "You will never change... And I will never be able to trust you the way I should..."

   "That can't shock you."