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There's a gift wrapped at the foot of the bed. Sigrun hasn't moved since she came home and fell asleep, and she can't make herself turn over and confront Sigsverd not hanging there to say good morning. Not yet, anyway. Maybe tomorrow. Her hair is down, but unbrushed. She's washed, but there's still flecks of soot in her hair and bits of makeup in her crows feet and smile lines. She is pale, her inner light dim. Tonight she looks as human as she likely has in years. The weight of grief and sorrow makes her look tired, which lets her look her years. Her beautiful, beautiful years.
Nothing's burning in the alter, no music is playing. Nothing is cooking in the house. She's not singing. The forge is cold. The hammer rests on the anvil. Garm periodically rises. And sits at the foot of the bed. Circles. Settles again. Only to rise twenty minutes later and shift. Trying to find the place to sit that will make mom get up this morning, like the others. (edited)
They spent a lot of the night and into the morning helping Winter. Being practical, inasmuch as a shadow-mirror with a machete is ever practical. Once the tables are put away and the leftovers sent home with people or trucked out to shelters, Teagan melts into shadow and slips under the door, all the better to sneak in without --
-- but Sigrun is still asleep, and that draws Teagan up short. They blink at her once, twice, take in the whole of the room. Take two silent steps forward, reach down, and pet Garm, soothing him with the softest shushing noises. The present gets taken in, as does her state of disarray and slumber.
They shrug out of their coat, hang it on the hook inside the door which is meant for that coat and that coat specifically. Sigknifr and Baby still hang at their hips when they melt back into shadow and curl out under the door again, returning a moment later and melding back upwards into a Teagan carrying a wide-toothed comb, a detangling brush, and a small spray bottle. These are carried on fog-quiet feet and set down on the side table. Teagan is stunningly good at not making any sound at all, even when they're unhooking Baby and Sigknifr from their belt, setting them on their nightstand, too. They head to the end of the bed, gingerly balance there, unlace and kick off their boots. Another scratch for the top of Garm's head, at the good spot right behind his right ear, and then they reach for the present labeled for them.
They pause again with the present in their hands when their broken-mirror eyes spot Sigrun's sword belt sitting there with her hand axe, but Sigsverd's frog missing from the belt. Two mourner's bands of black are tied around where her buckles once bit her belt. The Mirrorskin's head snaps towards their own nightstand, as if missing weapons might be catching, but Baby (and Sigknifr) still sit there.
The wrapping turns out to be a quilted blanket, baby sized, about a third of the size of the one they threw on the fire last night, the last remnants of the years they lived alone, sleeping in their car, ready to drift away down the road, looking for their death. It takes a minute to piece the clever use of shapes together, but a smile starts to play across their lips at the motifs of the motley throughout. A red panda made of triangles. A hyena chasing a cupcake. Made of triangles. A raccoon with the cupcake. More triangles. A mirror. Triangles. They're all there if only in triangle form. And the stitching, he finds as he takes his time inspecting the quilt, is done by hand. Every stitch.
It contains a single yellow onesie with three cats chasing one another in a circle around the belly. A little sabotabby. A little freyja's team. There is a card envelope.
The card envelope contains a card whose only purpose is to hold a name tag sticker. It is prefilled with the last name and it reads.
Hello, my name is:
Teaganson
And the Mirrorskin sits, holding the card, and he stares at it.
"I chose this," Sigrun whispers into the silence of the moment. Teagan will know precisely what she means by that. For the Shadowife to live, the Lightdaughter must die. She can't light the way any longer. Not if she's going to be the kind of mother she promised to herself she would be. And the sort of wife she swore to become.
She reaches out with a hand, resting it on his wrist where it holds the card. "I chose you, husband. The narns showed me your son. And I know what I must do. Say that you are proud of me, and I will see it done." (edited)
They sit there, holding the card and staring at it. Their mouth opens and closes, and they carefully, with great deliberateness, place the card back on the onesie, and then fold it up neatly inside the quilt. Someone else might throw things into the air and whoop or holler, but that person isn't Teagan. Instead, once the gift is set neatly aside on the end of the bed, they very deliberately grab the edge of the blanket and flip it back.
Another day, the series of kisses which starts at her left ankle would detour sharply right in a manner rendering their continuance unsuited for public consumption, but today, they angle more subtly right and about six inches further towards the head of the bed, ending a few inches below her belly button. Teagan presses their mouth against her belly, against the soft skin beneath which cells divide rapidly, learning to be a separate thing, dreaming of heartbeats and toes and eyes. Their face turns up towards hers, broken-mirror gaze reflecting back all of her wonderful disarray to her, and they murmur, "I have never been more proud of you."
For such a joyous moment, Sigrun has never looked more weary. Even despite all the sleep. But the words from Teagan are a permission to do something that sleep doesn't necessarily provide. Rest. Her eyes close and flutter, her expression turning beatific and soft. That sentence soothes her in ways no brush or balm or bath ever could. Finally she can confront the truth of the day, slowly rolling onto her back to give her husband easier access to her tummy. Her hands fall to cradle their head with callouses and scars that will have to become soft.
"Remember this. Remember this feeling. It is ending. Mourn it with me." Her roughness. Her steel. The surety of Summer's armor, the fastness of its quicksilver speed. This is leaving you, too, Teagan. "I gave us this season for us. To understand and process and become. I have asked Winter to use my new name in secret, as I will have to keep up appearances before Summer until my replacement is found. Either way, come Spring I will join them as Sigrun Skoggiskvaena. A name the urdr will know for the blood I have spilled under it. And the truths both kind and otherwise Winter will whisper about me as they help me transition to my new role."
"In Spring I will nest. I will create the bassinets, and the clothing, the nappies, the toys. We will learn baby sign together. We will settle on parenting regimes. Co-bed or crib and so on. In Summer, when I am fat and miserable and angry I will scream about it at my old companions just to remind them I am watching. Then autumn will bring the child and with it the fear of ensuring we do it all again for one year more. And every year Freyja will have her blood. And the rest of the year, we will have this."
She looks down at his face, and suddenly the missing sword doesn't ache quiet so terribly any longer.
"I've thought of everything." (edited)
There is something in the weariness of her that makes their expression turn softer, even more affectionate, somehow. Their hands pillow on her belly, their cheek pressed against it except when, now and again, they turn their face down towards it. Kiss, kiss kiss. His head turns into her hands, and he listens. Everyone talks to the Mirror, and no one more than Sigrun.
"It isn't ending. It's just changing." There's that little shimmer in their skin, the one that happened before, when the skin of their hand changed to glassy mirror, but their skin stays that black-opal with all its strange and crackling rainbow hues, that newness of them when they leaned into their shadow-self all the more. "I know you too well to think that you'll hang up your shield and spear forever. The shield wall protects a home, and a spear permits its wielder to defend what stands behind them. Yes, it will change. You will change. I will change. I will have to be more of one thing because you are more of another." Another kiss for her belly. "We're always changing. You can just see it right now."
They lay their cheek on her belly again, listening, listening. Nodding quietly along with all of the things she's thought of, until, at the end, they roll their lower lip into their mouth. The silence goes on for longer as they think, perhaps going through some internal, some long-ago, something unearthed from a corner of their mind blocked off like an attic corner by old boxes and cobwebs. Finally, there's the tiniest nod, as if they've been conversing with themself, and reply to her very last sentence.
"His name was Erik." As if she'll know, without further elaboration, who he was or who this could be, whose name Sigrun wouldn't know, whose name Teagan hasn't spoken aloud since before he met her.
"His name is Eiríkr." A subtle shift in pronunciation. Older. Sharper. Original.
On the nightstand, Baby's edge subtly gleams. (edited)
"Eiríkr, Eiríkr, Eiríkr, Eiríkr." Sigrun murmurs the name until her chanting of the word takes on the characteristic of lyric. The way Janelle Monae can pass from song to speech to song in a breath. "Eiríkr Teaganson."
"There is no finer name you might have chosen for the son I will give you than this. Sigsverd is honored on the walls of my lady's hall by this namesake to her sacrifice. Eiríkr Teaganson, Sigverd. Tell Freyja." She sends a look over to the empty belt and the dangling strips of black. They say nothing back, of course, but Sigrun smiles anyway. She has always been good at telling her own stories. "Thank you, old friend."
Her focus returns to her husband, fawning over her stomach as though there were evidence of something there to fawn over.
"No, you have the right of it. But I will stand behind you. With my bow and with my spear, yes. But behind you, Teagan. I will answer you every time you call for my spear, you know that. The life I choose for myself ends with you. I will not flinch from that. And when you are away from home, yes. I will put myself between whatever comes and the hearth. But the hands will soften, Teagan. I will never again fight so well or so fast or so safely as I do now. My wrath has kept me safe and warm, and I will have to find a new way to be within Spring. And that worries me. Frightens me. Saddens me. I know you are-- I know what you mean, Teagan. I do. And you're right. But I promise you you will want to remember this. The years go by so fast, Teagan. The urdr showed me several. They were moments I will never forget so long as I live, but they are moments that had I first lived would have found ... entirely unremarkable. Gone in a whisper. Lost on a thought."
"Please hold on to this, Teagan. Please try, at least." (edited)
She's told him there is, and that's evidence enough. Teagan nuzzles against her stomach, kisses it once more, then dissolves once more into shadow; this time they deliberately leave their clothing behind, allowing tank top and jeans, socks and boxers, to tumble across the bed. The shadow whorls around her, and they come back into being first as a hand which grabs the edge of the blanket they pulled off of her, tugging it back over a body which comes back into solidity as an arm pulling her onto her side so they can curl up behind her.
Soft future-Springs get to be little spoons, if they want to.
"I have always been out ahead of you," and this is true. "And I will always stand in front of you and protect you. I always have. I always will. I know it'll change, but it won't change, too. You will always be my coin-flip opposite, the light I reflect."
A small smile slides across their face as they bury their mouth now against the crook of her neck. "I remember everything," they tell her, and that is new, and it is a secret. "These days, I remember everything." A mirror forever watches, and one of the secrets of the most mythic mirrors is that they remember what they have seen. "Whoever you become, I will not leave you, and I will not forget who you have been. Whoever you become, I will be proud of your striving, of why you do it, of how hard you try for us." Their voice is quiet and soft as smoke. "I remember everything, now."
"Mimir's well, everything?" Sigrun is the absolute best person to be in a relatioship with to instantaneously seize upon the abject horror of benevolent sounding conditions. Oh, how her durance was filled with benevolent sounding conditions. "Wh-- Can it stop? Can you not? Can you turn it off, Teagan?" Teagan can spot the start of a minor Sigrun spiral soon enough to head it off before it starts. Wrapping her up in a blanket on the bed makes it a pretty easy tea up. But he gave her something to distract her from her grief, and of course it was worry for him.
"I don't have to," Teagan explains, as if this is all the explanation required. "But I do. And it's okay. I chose that." Yes, they know what a Sigrun spiral looks like, and they know several ways to derail that sort of spiral. "It's okay," they murmur, both arms around her and one hand sliding down her belly. "I promise. I chose that. I choose this. All of it."
Their mouth presses to her throat, and their hand curls over her stomach over and over as if soothing a fussy cat. Put a pun in here about methods of soothing and cats, and gently fade out the camera on a thousand murmured assurances.
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