The man that was standing in the snow looked rather ordinary but he was far from it. He was relatively tall but so were all the inhabitants of the country he stood in. At 6’3”, he wasn’t the tallest but neither was he the shortest. He wore no coat, despite the negative temperature, and his auburn hair hung to just about his shoulders. His eyes were chartreuse or forest green depending on the light, whom you asked, and his current mood. His nose sat crooked on his face from one too many fights, perhaps a drunken brawl or two. The only mark on his face was a scar that ran from the center of his forehead to the curve of his jaw with it just missing his left eye. Looking at him, he appeared to be in his mid to late twenties. But like so much about him, looks were deceiving. Within his eyes, one could see an ancientness lurking in their green depths. He also radiated power. This power was off putting, which was why mere mortals avoided him. He seemed to prefer it that way. Perhaps it was because he was following a merry band of 7 deep into the frozen land that was Norway. Perhaps it had something to do with the screams that pierced the darkness every night. Perhaps not. Who could say? The man himself was a mystery, even to those who knew him (like his wife).

How long he had been following the group of 7 he couldn’t say. But it was long enough that he was beginning to get impatient. His interest never strayed from the object of his impatience. He only had eyes for one of the women. She was the youngest of them but bore an eerie resemblance to the oldest of the women. The young woman had something he wanted. He still wasn’t exactly sure what it was but whatever it was, called to him. He would have never paid any attention to the young woman otherwise. Though, and he would never admit it, the woman did intrigue him. How could a mere mortal hold and contain so much power without perishing from its immensity. Something like that was hard to determine just by looking at a person, even one so intriguing as the one he followed.

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A scream tore through the night. He flinched as the sound pierced his eardrums. If anything, this woman could out scream any of the women he knew. Sobs followed the scream. One look at her and he could tell she was terrified. She flinched away from any touch, even those meant to tend the wounds on her back. The number of wounds on her back would have killed anyone else. Why then, hadn’t it killed her? It had to be linked to the power that called to him. Why did her power call to him so? Granted, he always wanted power but there was something different about hers. Something he kept trying to grasp but it either kept slipping away or it remained just out of his reach. This irked him. He didn’t like not knowing something. He liked having answers and not having them made him anxious. He needed to know and he hated that he needed to know everything. Who was she to make him crave answers? Especially when she was an insignificant human. He loathed humans. Yet, he could not find it in him to loathe her. He so desperately wanted to loathe her. But whatever it was that pulled him to her, rendered him utterly incapable of loathing her. The feelings he found himself mulling over make him feel as if he were one of the humans he so abhorred. He seethed in anger. How dare she make him feel like a pathetic human! Him of all gods! If he could laugh at such an idiotic notion as him feeling like a human, he would have laughed uproariously. In all his millennia, he’d never come across any mortal who could rattle him so thoroughly. What was it about her that made him like a lovesick buffoon? Lovesick? Where in Helheim did that come from? He’d never been in love in his life! How could he be lovesick if he’d never been in love? If he went home, he would never hear the end of it. His brothers, Thor especially, would make damn sure of it. He sighed. He desperately wanted to hate this young woman who called to him, yet he found himself utterly unable to. He was so in her thrall that even the things that he would normally revel in had no sway over him. It was so bad that even Odin had taken notice.