Quick omake from Abjorn's perspective of Halla.
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My wife is Halla Longstride, and I love her in a way that I simply don't have words for.
She'd have the words, of course. For all that she has the attention span of a sparrow, and the rage of a bear, it is that gleam in her eyes that draws me most to her. The intelligence that lurks beneath her well-toned skin and muscle, the indefinable spirit that is her inheritance as one of Odin's brood. When she jumps from one pursuit to another, it is with forethought and planning; when she fights and releases her rage upon her enemy, it is with a ruthless cunning that has seen the end of the fight before it has even begun. Considering all that, it is little wonder that her fylgja is that of an owl. Though sometimes I feel it should be a magpie, considering her and its penchant for taking whatever shiny thing catches their interest.
I know I love her in all her ways. When we spar against each other, testing our strength against the other's arm; or when we face outwards, backs together, fighting either man or monster; maybe the times when we are pressed together in other ways, enjoyable as any other. Though I think I love her most when we sit in our chairs in our home, as she watches me act the mountain for the children to scale, sitting separately but our souls as close as ever.
Our children are beautiful, all the more so for her blood running through their veins. I can see in their forms my own strength and constitution, but it's a mere physical thing in comparison to Halla's own might. They carry her spark in their eyes, climb upon me with the same determination she moves through life. I see her reflection in them, and I love her all the more for it.
Others occasionally joke about my love for Halla; they would ask if I must ask her first for permission to have a thought, or if I enjoy her leading me around by the cock. They know that Halla is no ordinary woman, but they don't truly understand it, not like I do. They don't see the hours she spends training, deciphering new Tricks and building herself into more than any mere Norseman. They don't hear her whispering under her breath, considering and discarding ideas so quickly that one would need scribes from distant Miklagard to track them all. They know her kenning, but they don't see how she continues to push herself every single day, faster and further with each passing year.
I do not have the words to describe my love for Halla, but I don't need them; not when I see that same love in her eyes when I look over the heads of our children towards her; not when her smile mirrors my own right before we fight a new foe. And so I bind myself to her, to follow her everywhere, to fight alongside her anywhere, until my fated day.
