The advisor offered not hollow platitudes, but a gentle sort of thought — not the sort of thing she may have expected. Not advice, nor the ramblings of a man who thought he knew better than she. The words chosen still do strike her, but not with the intention of cruelty.
No, Freya held her agonies openly, carrying them with both hands. Clutched so tightly to her chest that she could not possibly hope to hold anything more.
❝ Perhaps now. ❞ She concedes quietly, and there was a fragility in it, a confession that she did not offer lightly. ❝ But who can say how I should hold this pain in... even a dozen years? Will I always hold it to my heart, or shall it fade as all things do? ❞
There were two answers in her heart — one she desperately wished to be true, and the other she felt more certain was. A mother's voice cried that the pain would always feel this way, that there was no world where a parent could lessen their agony of losing their child. A goddess replied, whispered that all things faded — like ink on ancient scrolls, until it was left only to the songs.
Kratos had mentioned a child, once. Before Atreus. A daughter... what was the name he had said? Calliope. The agony she had heard in his voice, in so brief a story... His pain remained, and still, he began again.
...but they were not so similar. Not in matters such as these.
❝ And what of your memory, Mimir? Of those times before you found yourself in these lands. You speak of them so rarely... Do you run from tragedies disguised as memory, as the rest of us? ❞
