Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Skåne
The dark emptiness of grief —
She shouts her enticements to my back as I am walking away, inland, maybe, following this river back to its source.
She raises her voice, “You’re right. We don’t have any rune for this, and even laying one rune on another we have none!”
“There is nothing to say, Sjókona. I’m grieving.”
“Consider ‘dagaz’ for light of the gods… You need to learn more before you can know anything. You are walking into a day of darkness.”
As I set enough distance between us now, I can barely hear her shouting unknown words at me. Maybe they are accusations cursing me with some kind of holy darkness.
I’m pretty sure a dearth of explanation isn’t the cause of my grief. Grief happens among Christians and Pagens as well. Simply, love is missing. We, who are of earth, tend to make this love thing — this all-encompassing God and heaven who is a god bigger than words can say — into something small and earthly or simply an afterthought to impose a waxen seal on a document of words. If love is real, so is the void when it is gone. And if love is small and manageable, so is the void it leaves. But I’m not managing the void well.
Walking toward the mountains, what looks to be a river is really a deep bay, a long finger of the sea reaching between the rising mountains. The river of tide water curls into a harbor, here, and even the sea drinks from the fresh springs off the mountainsides.
As I had guessed a shipyard is here. It is a busy place in this season. Fresh streams, flowing free of ice again, and the wanderlust of human loves billow where the west winds don’t go. So, yes, rowers are needed. I don’t need complicated words to sign on to this work.
I find one of the sailors who rode across the sea with Sjókona and I on our journey here. With the few words I know, and some scratches in the sand, I can let them know she’s alone there. Maybe that’s as she wishes to be. If it isn’t, she can ask them to take her home. I will be a rower on a different boat then.
There are no expectations or obligations owning me so I’ll take up an oar and go wherever this ship goes. There is very little difference between being free and being lost.
(Continues Tuesday, April 8, 2025)
Lazarus Ink 