Njord's Domain had long been the object of much wonder and awe to Valo growing up. As a boy, he'd often been taken fishing during the warm months and sealing in the winter months if his father, and later his brother, were gone Viking. When he got older he was trusted to take one of the family karfi on his own. He'd been caught out in squalls many times and once chose to ride out into a storm when he was bored. Valo thought with Blood of Njord, he had little to fear in his ancestor's kingdom.
He had been wrong. They'd been taken by a storm that sang like a great Christian Chorus. Sleet and hail assailed their mighty prows, and animals taken along were cast into the grasp of the Net-Keeper*. Now of the surviving ships, there were but a few Jarl-souls, foremost among them Grimfari Jarl. In order to keep the remaining contingent of ships together ropes were being knotted to tether their meager fleet. Men were sent between taking one of their ropes with them, twice Valo had gone out, and twice he'd returned. First to the Jarl's ship, then the Seer's steed was his father's vessel secured. He wanted so dearly to cry, so dearly to simply let the enter the embrace of the sea. Yet, knew he did, that his kin needed him. Queer his hobby might have been but his Guiding-Light Kunna and status as Njord's kin gave him a unique chance to succeed where others would fail. Next was the ship that held his mother and remaining siblings. Valo had not yet failed, and by the gods, he would not do so, least of all for this one.
"Come on Vidar. One more, give me one more." said his Father.
Valo looked into the eyes of Halvar Sunshaft, they were wet, and not just from the rain, they were empty, and not just from the need to escape his body's strain.
Vidar had been his pride and joy, the son of his heart. Valo had often heard the long and loudly sung poems of his brother's deed, every glory earned, every enemy slain. He could not begrudge his father thus, he too had done much the same and so too had his brother been kind and taught him all his father should have. Yet, it was his father's whispers that Valo seethed at. Whispers of a wife unfaithful, of a son not his own. How could the great Sunshaft sire a boy so strange?
"Yes, father," Valo responded after catching his breath, as a fellow ties the third line secured around the mast.
"Vidar, you needn't rest. I've seen you swim in rougher waves and through worse storms! You've got this, my son!" Halvar lightly chided a shine returning to his tired eyes.
"This one was merely waiting for the tether to be tied. Your son, Vidar will go now father," Valo says bitterly diving into the frothing waters line secure around his waist.
As Valo breaches the surface his Kin-seeker trick leads him to his treasured family. His sister's holler of encouragement could be heard even over the waves' roar and the storm's clangor. Their cheers soothed Valo's aching body and filled his drained soul.
"You did it Valo!" says Astrid Halvarsdottir, pulling him into the hull.
"Thank you, little brother, I told you just needed time to shine," says Lilja Honeyward, so-called for her feat of wrestling a bear stealing a jar of her honey, and pulling the rope, still tied around Valo's, waist for more slack.
"Leave those inane comments for after we've secured the line girls! But yes. Congratulations boy, you've done me proud." your mother, Brunhild Shatterspear, so-called for throwing a spear so hard it shattered a bronze shield, yelled as she untied the knot at your waist and began to secure the rope around the mast.
Valo, exhausted by his journey lies against the mast and a rowing bench. Yet just as he began to nod off, he heard a creaking. His eyes shoot open as he sees Mother desperately holding two parts of the rope and pulling them together. By the mast and bench he rest on he sees his sisters preparing more rope to knot a length before the now fraying end.
Valo scrambles up and towards the side of the hull, hoping, praying, grabbing the perilous fraying rope. He tries to pull the entire ship closer to the rest of the fleet, to give his sisters the time they need, but his reserves are empty, the mind is willing, the body unable.
Snap.
Like the crack of thunder, the fraying rope cracks like a whip as the gleeful wind blows in the opposite direction.
The rope pulls him towards his kin as the wind pushes his family away.
*Kenning for Njord
