He Kindly Stopped for Me

I cried, sinking to me knees amongst the graves of rune stones.

Yolanda rocked me, cursing.

"I feel like something precious was stolen from me, at a terrible price," I moaned, Gullinkambi cooing as he preened my hair. He was the only one not shaken, my immortal cockerel.

Yolanda hugged me so hard, she nearly crushed my back in like a caving glacier. "I'll sing you Hakkon's song on sweet Aslaugh's deathbed. He always sang that to you as a lullaby. One of his only acknowledgements of Wotan. Your father was a traitor, but he loved all five of us."

I crumpled in her embrace: "Sing me with the song of days past, Yola - so that we may please the ancestors, whose sacred ground we have raped."

Yolanda's brown eyes flashed amber: "Then I shall sing the dead."

Her melody poured forth, eviscerating, yet quiet, like a tender morsel of perfumed, candied roses, baked with apple pie:

Sanctuary of autumn, a cairn of stones.

D