#randivor

Now she lay in fresh linens, sunken eyelids fluttering with copper lashes against the ruddy apples of her cheeks. Her hair was loose from its usual braid, tacky with sweat, tangled from hours of thrashing. The lullaby of the wind rattled faintly against the roof of the longhouse as she dozed, lazy with the tincture Valka had given her to help relieve some of the lingering pain of childbirth.

She was naked from the waist up. And between her swollen breasts was snuggled the tiny, swaddled body of her infant daughter.

Their infant daughter.

She snuffled softly in infant slumber, tiny eyes shut tight against the onslaught of newfound vision. Wisps of strawberry blonde hair crowned her small head, pasted here and there with the remnants of her birthing.

Hervor, Eivor had called her child the moment she was plucked by Valka, wiped clean of blood and afterbirth, and declared to be little girl. She had wailed a mighty cry at the coldness of this new world; a warrior's first bellow; Hervor Eivorsdottir.

Now Eivor laid beside mother and child on their bed, staring. Something within her was broken, she decided, that she could not bare to reach out and stroke a stray hair from her wife's slumbering visage. Something in her chest was shattered that she could not extend a tremulous hand to ghost a finger long the curve of her newborn daughter's little bow lip, which trembled slightly in her sleep.

Eivor's throat was tight, like a stone was lodged in her windpipe. Her heart ached as though lanced through by the head of an arrow. She was cold, mind beset with fear. It was a deep, primordial sort of terror, creeping like fingers to grip her lungs, to squeeze her stomach and turn her skin to ice.

She could not look away.

It was a wicked tableau, like watching a fine horse stumble and break a leg. It spelled imminent doom.

Not because Eivor did not love her wife, her child. It was precisely the opposite. She had never felt a love like this before. So cloying, gnawing, yearning, aching both scalding and frigid in her chest. She could not touch them because to accidentally wake one of her loves would be to invite the moment to end. And if the moment ended, then all of the horror and danger of their reality would come creeping back in.

The baby made a soft hiccuping sound and Randvi stirred, bleary eyes fluttering into wakefulness. She blinked, chapped lips splitting into a smile of disbelief as she beheld her infant daughter resting on her bare sternum, skin to skin. She leaned her neck forward, pressed her mouth to her slumbering daughter's soft crown.

Eivor could hardly breath, her heard swelled with such affection.

She must have made some sort of sound, because Randvi glanced at her, smile fading. The drengr was aware of how mad she must've looked, watching with a lion's gaze, looming protective and terrified. She saw all of it reflected in her wife's gemstone eyes, "Eivor?"

Lips parting, Eivor let out a small, shuddering sound.

"Eivor, my love, are you alright?" Randvi gingerly adjusted the sleeping infant on her chest before she gently laid a hand on the baby's back, cupping the tiny thing to her breast.

"I…" Eivor trailed as Randvi carefully gathered one of the Wolf-Kissed's scarred hands in her own. Her icy eyes flashed with pained affection as her wife carefully guided her palm to cover her fingers on Hervor's back, which rose and fell with small, strong breaths.

She understood then, mind flashing back to the fateful winter's night on which Kjotve had laid open the throat of her father. That cold terror was the frightful memory frostbitten into her skin. And she hated that she had ever blamed Varin for knowing a love like this. A love one was willing, eager, to sacrifice life, limb, honor for.

A single hot tear streaked her icy cheek, golden brow furrowed as though deeply confounded by this sudden realization. The realization that some things were worth more than blood debts and holmgangs and fragile men's honor. Part of her had already known this to be true, but now, with her child sleeping beneath the span of her palm…

Randvi extended a tired hand, thumb brushing that stray tear away.

"I understand, now…" Eivor, suddenly feeling fully possessed of herself, slid across the clean sheets to wind a strong, protective arm around Randvi's waist. With a hand on her newborn, feeling her breaths come steady and true, Eivor shuddered a soft sigh into the flaming crown of her wife's head. Lips brushing the sweat tack skin of Randvi's temple.

Everything else. She'd said once, as Odin stared her down with his one discerning eye, demanding to know why Valhalla, glory, honor, duty, why those things were not enough.

Varin had understood that.

Even if Kjotve was a liar, an oathbreaker, Varin's heart had been true.

Eivor shut her eyes, holding her family tight to her chest. Not knowing what the dawn would bring. But this moment, precious and peaceful, smelling of blood and sweat and newness. This moment she would guard carefully in her heart of hearts.

This was the everything else she lived for.