#lightofthenine

Insufferable, Sif muttered to herself as she stalked through the crowd toward the drinks table. Who did Thor think he was? Whenever he was left with Loki too long the result was always the same; He always became uncommonly snide.

Sif stopped before the plates and pitchers, grabbing an empty goblet and picking up the nearest golden container, pouring the orange liquid from it and into the waiting cup. The pitcher came down to the table once more harder than she had intended, but Sif ignored the glances she received, picking up her goblet and taking a long pull.

She had never been so insulted in her life.

Alright that wasn’t true. She had been insulted far worse, but the insult seemed to sting sharper by who she had received it from. She swallowed down the sickly sweet beverage with a wrinkle in her brow, coughing a little at the burn of it before she could stop swallowing.

Their house seemed claustrophobic about them, heavy with the scent of dust and stale spices drying in the window. Amina’s head still pounded, her body heavy where she lay against their mattress, shame and anger making a taut line out of her form.

The yelling of the crowd, and the confusion that had ensued, still haunted her though she was no longer captured there. She felt prone even in their cozy, one room, house. The house they had fled to after Skerrig had cut himself off from them. The house she had thought would be theirs for some time.

And now?

Amina wanted to leave Asgard. She was tired of the Aesir’s views of herself and those others that had come from Vanaheim. She was tired of being whispered about, and derided. She was tired of watching Skerrig suffer at the hands of his own family.

"And I suppose that you believe that education should not be available to the masses too," the words dropped from her tongue like venom, her face hot from the argument. Her opponent grinned with bright white teeth at her, and Amina glared back, waiting for his response.

"What good is educating the masses? Most of them don't know what to do with the knowledge put in front of them, nor do they care." She threw her hands up in the air, giving a grunt in her exasperation.

"There is no talking reason with you," growled out, her response fell into the space between them and announced her brief leave-taking of the conversation. She needed to regroup -- calm down and think about what else could be argued.

He enjoyed being the advocate for her prospective opponents far too much, and not for the first time that week she wanted to throw her fist across his smug little face. The masses should be given every opportunity to study -- her sisters should be able to afford schooling just as much as her. Her father and mother should not have had to choose who to send.

Reasoning against riches to the rich was never an easy task.

She stalked across the carpeted floor of the library, her footsteps jarring their way up her legs as she proceeded. The flat, felt, slippers that she wore on her feet did little to shock absorb, especially on the marble floors of the school's largest library.

Her hair hair swing in a curtain over her shoulders as she went, and Amina turned the corner into some stacks with the certainty of one who knew her surroundings. She knew exactly the book she was looking for and the area it would be in.

The stack of books reached far up, and she craned her neck as she came near to the shelf, scanning the titles with lavender eyes. Ah...there it was. The title gleamed out at her in silver script from the spine, two or three rows out of reach. The small Vanar woman cast about for a ladder, grumbling to herself when she found none.

Of course.

Amina arranged her features into a look of determination, brow drawn low, and she stretched up onto her tip-toes, straining with her arm for the volume she wanted. Her fingers brushed the bottom of the spine ineffectually, falling back down again as she was forced out of the stretch, panting vaguely before she tried once more, in vain.

The warm feeling in Gerdr's gut from the meal had yet to cease, though the mulled mead might have had something to do with it. While Sjofn's seafood delicacies had been a treat, nothing truly beat a traditional roast a Yule--at least so far as Gerdr was concerned.

The house had gone quiet for the evening after the meal and long session of warmed drinks and catching up, and after some time of watching her husband settle into one of his many books again, she had grown restless, shuffling on her dressing robe and heading down the corridor in a motion that she had not performed for some time, yet still felt a familiar habit as she came before the bedroom at the far end of the hall.

Her hand gently rested over the latch of the door. Balder was a grown man now--he did not need any checking up, the rational part of her brain reminded her.

She turned the latch. The rational part of her brain could stuff it. They only saw the boy so often.

The door cracked open smoothly, not making a sound as Gerdr peered into the room. Her keen eyes picked out the shapes by the light of the dying fire, and noted the guest-palette on the floor was unoccupied before she swept her cinnamon gaze to the bed. Her eyes widened a fraction before her face spread into a warm smile.

Balder lay on the bed, wrapped warmly with Sif's arms about his middle, both of them deeply asleep.