(no subject)

[thewidewideworld]

{From here.}

Sinric leads Ragnar up to their rooms, laughing softly as the Viking drags his feet.

"Get out of your dirty clothes and I'll run you a bath." He draws Ragnar in, standing in his tiptoes to kiss the corner of Ragnar's lips.

Comments

[bigarmy_strangepants]

"I feel so pampered," Ragnar murmurs. "This is wonderful. You are wonderful."

[thewidewideworld]

Sinric smiles and kisses Ragnar's shoulder, amused by Ragnar's murmured comments. "I'm glad you enjoy it. You deserve to be pampered."

[bigarmy_strangepants]

"No," Ragnar says, "I'm just lucky, and the gods are generous."

[thewidewideworld]

"Perhaps your gods are good to me also? Or I might not have found you now, and been able to guide to then."

[bigarmy_strangepants]

"The gods have strange plans, and not even they always govern fate," Ragnar agrees.

[thewidewideworld]

"Fate is a higher force still?" He asks, brushing Ragnar hair to a shine.

[bigarmy_strangepants]

"Oh yes," Ragnar says. "Even the gods sometimes cannot escape it."

[thewidewideworld]

"Hmm," he muses, knowing he should start braiding Ragnar's hair up but enjoying running his fingers through it too much. "So who are the arbiters of fate, if not the gods?"

[bigarmy_strangepants]

Ragnar isn't in a hurry; he enjoys being pampered like this.

"The Norns," he says. "They spin, weave and cut our lives. Who makes their patterns -- nobody knows!"

[thewidewideworld]

"What are they like, these Norns?" He asks, curling Ragnar's hair around him fingers.

[bigarmy_strangepants]

"Women," Ragnar says, tilting his head into the touch.

[thewidewideworld]

"Beautiful?" He asks softly, curious now.

[bigarmy_strangepants]

"Powerful," Ragnar says. "And beautiful as well, most likely. They live by a well at the roots of the ash tree of worlds, Yggdrasil."

[thewidewideworld]

"Yggdrasil holds up the sky, does it not?" He asks, pulling together what he knows of Northern belief.

[bigarmy_strangepants]

"It does," Ragnar says. "And it connects all the diifferent worlds the gods made."

[thewidewideworld]

"Will you tell me about them, the other worlds?" He asks, carding Ragnar's hair slowly.

[bigarmy_strangepants]

"Gladly," Ragnar says, and starts telling about Asgard and Vanaheim and Alfheim and Jötunheim, about Hel's halls below, and Volkwangr, and Valhalla, aber the well at the roots, the dwarfs, and even the squirrel that runs over the branches.

[thewidewideworld]

He listens, fascinated. His hands moves from Ragnar's hair to his scalp, massaging and stroking.

He drinks in the stories, saving every word for later.

[bigarmy_strangepants]

Ragnar is happy to tell Sinric many tales about all the people on the ash-tree of worlds, closing his eyes as he enjoys the attention, and pictures those alien worlds before his inner eye as he describes them.

[thewidewideworld]

The storyteller in him follows Ragnar's every word, following him into the swirling beauty of the worlds Ragnar's worlds create.

He leans in to kiss Ragnar's neck. "I love the way you talk of such things. The passion in your voice."

[bigarmy_strangepants]

"It's my world," Ragnar says. "My home. It's what everybody knows, among my people."

[thewidewideworld]

"One day I will walk in your world." He muses, scratching softly at Ragnar's scalp. "When I come to you at Ribe. And it will help if I know some of what everyone knows."

[bigarmy_strangepants]

"You know more than that," Ragnar says. "You tell wonderful stories from all over the world. Fun to think that I told you some of them in the first place."

[thewidewideworld]

"Perhaps we are bound to teach each other stories." Sinric smiles, kissing Ragnar's neck. "And we can spend them to the corners of the world together.

[bigarmy_strangepants]

"I like that," Ragnar says. "We will become part of each others stories, and the stories we tell, which the children we tell them to will pass on into the future."

He leans into the touch, feeling and moving like a very pampered cat.