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Naglfari
Yuriel stood at the prow of Naglfari, the Jotun Queen’s ship made of human nails, a cursed gift of Ragnarok from her father, as it swelled in the Northern Sea. Steel beams and old rotted wood held the keratin of dead men stripped of their cuticles together, and it stank of rotten meat.
Dominic stood by her side, arranging the rigging of lindworm sinew. In the distance, the Seething Sea churned and boiled, waves of knives and Titan bones stewing to rot in gray-silver waters, as snow fell like dandruff from Ymir. Great icebergs moved as Yuri’s eyes glowed from amber to gold, and she held a piece of driftwood, parting the waters and ice stones as Aegir and Ran granted us safe passage.Rosiel shivered in Yolanda’s arms, my Valkyrie holding her close to ward off the cold. Ice bezels formed in Yola’s dark hair, curls of rose oil whipping in the wind.“Do I have to go? I doubt the fish here will taste good – probablRelated chapters
The Troll Queen's Bride Jormungand
By midnight, we had entered the Lokabrenna Strait, where the Pole Star resided, and Jarnja had not tired yet. Loki’s bondage isle, the Serpent Spit, rose in jagged obsidian cliffs up into the aether.Jarnja cautioned me back. Yuri and Dominic docked the boast. I held a breath I didn’t even know I was capable of taking:“Fylja, manage the steering against the swells as we are docked. Turry and Yola, take wing, and we shall clear this strait of monsters and sea beasts as Heith keeps the tides at bay. Dominic and Yuriel, manage the ship and hold the magick binding Naglfari together. Ask Aegir and Ran’s blessing. Here.” She handed them a flagon. “Offer them this mead.”I looked at Gullinkambi, then at Yolanda, then at Jarnja again.All three grinned knowingly at me – the rooster included.“Gullinkambi, let’s go!” I said, and he swelled into his giant cockere
The Troll Queen's Bride Of the Oni Born
I awoke to a beautiful Eastern woman with scars over her flesh and kohl lined eyes, vermillion eyeshadow like an Oni geisha, and long silken hair frothing in curls over her violet eyes.She smiled, revealing white fangs, as she tended to my wounds.“Huh?” I murmured, agape at this strange woman’s beauty. She was as tall as a Jotun Queen, but there was no fur or wings or claws about her. Simply red nails filed to a serpents tooth touch and berry stained lips of violet.“You came too, my Bride,” the mysterious woman winked.“This must be Vanaheim, where I am to meet the ghost of my mother. My guardian spirit has come to bring me home. Did I die, fair protector?” I murmured, flushing as I noticed she was in revealing Eastern robes, something called a kimono that Yuri was always trying to unsuccessfully replicate from purchases from the Peri traders at the ice markets. I sighed, smiling. “At leas
The Troll Queen's Bride Fimbulwinter Night
I awoke in a canopied bone bed with Jarnja’s human form. She smiled, her knee length black hair spooled around me like the Norn’s web of wyrd. She arched her sleek, sun dappled hips, and spread her arms around me widely.“Do you stay mortal for the three days of the new moon?” I asked, curious. We had done nothing I had remembered, just virginally kissed, then gone to bed.It seemed Jarnja was taking a step back at her seduction game, though with her Oni beauty, I would have been her slave.She had been sweet, told me stories of the Eastern lands, the Spice Kingdom she was raised in, the Orient past the Silk Road, and her fellow bergresar sisters, who would be in Surtr’s court in Vidagol where we would reconnaissance with other Jotun allies like Logi and Hela, Queen of the Dead, in order to foment our negotiation position with the gods of my people.The Northern Gods were not exactly the gods of the Jotun: The
The Troll Queen's Bride Ever of Old
Yolanda was scouting ahead and had been gone since dawn. Jarngrimr paced the deck, in wool leggings, a Waterman fishing jacket, and captain’s broadshirt and piratical black tricorn hat.She spied out her spyglass up atop the rigging, muttered to herself, and climbed down, her long, silky, nixen hair furling out like a nixie’s ruddy black mane.She glimmered at me, hopping off the rigs and sails in gold black boots lined with polar bear fur, and grabbed my waist, hauling me up into her arms.“I ache for a fight, dear Turiel,” Jarnja simmered, yellow fire in her violet black eyes.I laughed, tickling her chin. “Jarnja, we must tie the rigging into half quarterstaff, and move the prow widdershins.”“You know how to sail Naglfari?” she asked, inquisitive.“I’m a quick learner. When Dominic was asking how to woo Yuriel, I asked him to teach me the Watermen Ways in return.”Q
The Troll Queen's Bride From the Depths of the Fjords
I could barely breathe as Jarnja crushed me in a headlock. I bit her wrist hard, drawing blood, and she yelped, releasing me. I rendered her into a half nelson, wrapping my thighs around her to pin her under me.She just sat there, smirking: “You like to be on top?”“We’ve – ugh – been sparring for two hours, Jarnja,” I choked, sweat dripping from my brow.“And we haven’t kissed yet,” she mourned playfully.Queen Jarngrimr stood, about to carry me, but I did an upper reap on her thigh, knocking her to the ground, and she wheezed as I crushed a foot on her ribcage.“Feisty minx,” Jarnja purred, grabbing my leg and slipping me down into the bed with her.“Let me go, Beast!” I laughed, losing myself. “I am bone tired, Queen.”She carried me to bed, laid me down, and began to brush my hair with an ivory comb.I threaded my fingers around
The Troll Queen's Bride Poetic Refrain: The Vulture Queen and Other Songs
The Crane Wife - In which Queen Jarngrimr contemplates her love for TurielThey said I should have loved a crane wife, her bleedingout in snow, onto ivory ice, I would give her my cloak andshe would be the female Christ, her blood stain my kimono,and as I carried her home to rice paper walls, on bent back,she would sing the sister stars down, and those souls departedwould flock around me, and I would know something of the afterlife,offering up my pain and beauty to death, and as her wings marriedmy mind and marred my pain stains into something quixotic, I wouldquicken, and Hell would have no place in my palace, and I would makea thousand like her, all for one wish of peace, after Hiroshima bombedme quite starstruck and desolate, and the grave of the fireflies wept.They say I should have loved a crane wife instead.Bu
The Troll Queen's Bride The Rape of Rind
We were in Yolanda’s cozy bedroom - as cozy as a tiny berth twin bed in a ship of keratin and bone could be.The sea swelled, and I curled up under thick blankets in my girlfriends’ arms as she drew interlacing figure eights on my slim, muscled white arms. Dressed in linen nightshifts like the lindworm bride giving her wyrm prince a bath in milk and lye, we talked of quiet nothings, watching sleet fall onto the gray, bone graveyard of the Seething Sea.Skadhi’s Bow shined bright on the horizon, Northern Lights sparkling as the stars of our ancestors, the female Disir and male Alfar, spackled the black luxurious mane of Nott like white eggshell.“Do ancestors look down on us from above, Yola?” I wondered, wide eyed and curious as I watched Mani the Man in the Moon glow.“Yes. They all do, every one of them, good or bad, small or tall, woman or man, damned to Nastrond or handmaiden in Freida’s halls,” Yolanda
The Troll Queen's Bride In the Midnight Hour, Roses and Sweat
I awoke to a ghostly beam from Mani's boat, god of moonlight, piercing me. It is said he saved two abandoned children starving at their parent's well, condemned to eat dust and mud, and adopted Hjuki and Bil, brother and sister, as his fosterchildren. Now, they guided stars across the sky under sweet lipped, black haired Mani's gentle dozey watch, spilling sweet magick milk to feed cats of ink, whose paws and sweet tongues lapped the milky starlight up, causing darkness to ink out the ancestors.Without the cats of Nott, the night goddess, and the sun queen Sunna and night king Mani's esteemed mother, who she gave to Mani when he turned thirteen, the whole sky would be the milk of Audhumla, our sacred auroch who nursed forefather Ymir, whom Wotan, Loki, and Mymyr had slain to make all the Nine Worlds.Yolanda gently dozed, and I imagined all the Hakkonsdottirs and Ynglings - my mother's surname, supposedly sired by fertility and beer and rain god Ingvi with his wife Ga
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