#Writephoto: Last journey

For Sue Vincent’s writing challenge.

Odin’s moon rocked drunkenly over the pines; Asgard slept drunkenly or stumbled tipsily off to bed. Freyja turned her back on Odin’s hall and his moon and watched the stars. Soon she would leave, taking only her cats and she would search all the paths beneath the sky for Odr. If he was not to be found, wandering the tracks that led among lakes and mountains, along seashores and wide grassy river plains, she would search among the stars.

The end was coming. She felt it in the air, angry and greasy, belligerent as a hall-full of gods, and it would be bloody. She would not wait for it to arrive, but would sweep Odr into her chariot and go to meet it if necessary. If she had Odr by her side, she would not mind the end.

A cat nudged her hand with his head, and she scratched his ears. “Soon, we will leave this sad place and go hunting together.”

Fressi made a rasping noise in his throat, and Freyja smiled. “Bats perhaps and not mice, I promise, but certainly not owls.”

A second cat stalked over the faintly starlit grass, sleek, red and ring-tailed. They were the only friends she had in the whole of Asgard now that Idunn had gone, following the eyes that shone in the night sky, now green, now blue. Freyja hoped she would find what she looked for. A sharp noise broke the night silence and Fressi hissed. More fighting. Not that they ever hurt one another. Posturing, that was all they were good for.

Fress spoke then, quickly, urgently and Freyja listened. There was no sound apart from the bickering outside Odin’s hall, but the pale ghosts of barn owls circled overhead before taking the path to Bifröst. Fressi howled and Freyja made her decision.

“It will be tonight then,” she said. “The chariot is ready. It has been for months now.”

The two cats bounded off to take up their places between the shafts, and Freyja raised her eyes defiantly to the rocking moon. “You can keep your rotting world, Odin, your magic apples and eternal youth that you have no notion how to use. Your fate is on his way, bringing with him the bloodletting that will unleash the end. Enjoy your junketing while it lasts.”

Somewhere, among the stars that hung low on the northern horizon, the green eyes of Idunn’s Jötunn winked.