An anxious but older woman quietly shuffled around her empty house, a haggard expression on her lonely and wizened pale skin; milky blue eyes that saw only darkness where covered with long pale lashes, but despite the wrinkles that adorned her face, it was evident that she once had been a beauty in her youth, when she could see and could smile.
Now that her eyes were lost, and her daughter had died, she'd been hard pressed to smile at much of anything. That was until a small, bumbling but warm child had come into her care, uprooted from her apathetic family to live with an old and blind woman.
It was her granddaughter from her deceased child, and though everyone screamed that she was the cause of her beloved child's death, the woman wouldn't hear it; this child was a precious person that her daughter had gifted to this world, and though her tears still wet her cheeks and her smile had sunken into the long forgotten lines of her cheeks, she still raised the child with care.
It had been hard in the beginning especially, but aren't all things hard when one isn't used to them? The little girl was terrified of adults, and always seemed to shy away from men in particular; whenever she was bullied for being a motherless child, she'd grit her teeth and cry silently, hiding her bruises and pain behind a warm and forced smile in her voice.
Even so, the woman loved the child, and even moved when the bullying got too bad—bad enough for her to discover it, with a broken leg and arm, and a trip to the emergency room. It became harder to tell whether or not the child was okay, but still, the woman fought to keep a smile on her lips for the child.
Despite the hardship they'd gone through and the poor footing they'd started on, over time, she and her grandchild were able to grow close, with her whispering stories of her ancestors and their legends to her whenever nightmares haunted her every step, and the child teaching her how to feel joy again.
"'Granny, I wanna become a hero!'"
"'I'm certain you will my dear—and I will be here cheering for you when you do.'"
"'Hehe, thank you Grandma—I love you!'"
Oh, where had those childish and innocent words gone to?
Where had her sweet child hidden, trapped in an infernal reality that was inconsequential to their own?
Now, she, a blind and old, but still strong woman gently climbed the stairs to the child's room, opening it to clean the motionless body, her hands trembling while reaching for her.
'Four more steps Maribelle, four more steps.'
"'What is this child's name?'"
'Three more to go, just three.'
"'They don't have one...'"
'Two more, and then you'll reach her.'
"'Why ever not? She's your own child Erik!'"
"'She killed Celine before she got her name—I refuse to name such a monster!'"
'One.'
"'...Very well. I can't see you, child, but you seem to be a very warm and small thing. I can see this foolish father of yours has not treated the way you deserve, but if you're anything like your mother, you will be a lovely child. As a lovely child, you deserve love, don't you? I will name you a name that means "love" in my home country, as that is all I shall give you. Your name will be...'"
Maribel's desperate hands touched nothing but the soft material of a bed, and the child she'd loved so dearly had seemed to have disappeared; she frantically skittered her hands all over the bed, begging to find her child, but only the VR set she'd bought for her remained.
A slow, broken sob tore from her, and she whispered her child's name again and again, as of in prayer:
"Asta, Asta... oh my Asta... Come back... please come back...!"
———
He was surrounded on all sides by suffocating waves of golden blossoms, rooted in place and immobilized.
The breeze tugged at dark clothes he'd never worn before, and the sky was a horrifyingly bright blue; the image of a huge, ratty red-haired man with eyes as blue as this gleamed at him, a cruelty and hatred in them as lightning had gathered around him before he'd attempt to electrocute Jörmungandr.
It was the color of the man whom he desired death upon the most, and he despised knowing that same symbol that led to his silent imprisonment completely shrouded his body; though there wasn't billions of tons of water weighing him down, there was unescapable sense of pressure that lingered over him.
He shifted, uncomfortable with the things he sensed even with his eyes closed, as the picture scratched itself into his mind unwillingly.
In this suffocation, the quiet footfalls of a person entered his tired mind. It was only when the steps stopped, and a touch so warm that an unfamiliar lump was brought to his throat, that he could find the courage to finally breathe; he was used to the ice and the water, not to the flesh and the warmth.
A voice that tugged at his chest broke through his haze, and it left him breathless, since he hadn't heard it in a long, long time.
"Jörmungandr..."
Slowly, his eyes had opened to see a sight he'd never seen before—the last human-like contact he'd had was back when he'd been thrown into the ocean, and aside from red hair and the fall, he didn't remember it.
It was a person—a pale one at that, one that looked tired, and lonely, with tears bubbling up from large, pale blue eyes and trembling pink lips on white skin, their hair long and an ashen blond that swayed in a braid.
It was like a something in his heart had clicked into place, and suddenly, he felt like all that was right and fine in the world was in that tiny, warm hand, and he didn't mind letting the rest of everything live if it made her happy.
'I know you, and you know me.'
The smile that had burst to life at the sight of her was the beginning, and for the first time in all his millennia, he felt like it would be okay for him to go against the Norns.
———
A sense of breathlessness; quietly moving limbs that touched nothing; a suspension that was one second away from a fall, yet utter security was all she experienced.
Asta felt like she was floating, tethered to someone she didn't know, but unconcerned; she just wanted to sleep for a little bit longer...