---Cold---

---Victor’s perspective---

There it is.

Through the shuttle window is a large, rocky planet with a ring system, from 2 of its moons having been torn apart by its gravity, when they crossed its Roche limit, one 45 and another 20 million years ago.

I feel a nauseating swoop in my stomach as if the grav plating had been turned off.

I reflect on the ridiculous way the women I’m about to meet for the first time (in the flesh, at least), have me more scared than I was when I fought those pirates, or in that brief moment when I first met Fluffy, where I thought she was about to try and eat me!

Tuun clearly senses my nerves as she puts two of her arms around my shoulders and bends to give a tender kiss, her lips cool against my cheek.

---Tuun’s perspective---

As the shuttle passes the inner of my home planet’s rings, Vanaheimr, I’m able to make out the shape of my home continent, Nýr Norðlands.

We draw closer and the snow capped mountains resolve themselves from the muddy green valleys.

We’re headed for the southwest coast.

We get close enough for me to make out the shape of a very familiar building; perched above the treeline but below the snowline, on a mountain overlooking the sea, is an enormous langhús.

The ground floor, I know, is a single, open plan room which serves as a meadhall, meeting place and religious space to the local Forn Siðr community, as well as a skáldic recital space. Above the meadhall, however, is a home… the home where I lived from 6 to 21.

The shuttle sets down and the door opens.

---Hasiakh’s perspective---

Cold!!!

This planet is freezing!

Literally! I think those mountains are covered in a layer of solid water!

Having been brought up on Prznith and only visiting my cradleworld, Sahak, three times growing up, I’m, obviously, used to the general ambient temperature being somewhat below ideal for me but… it’s never been like this!

I assumed that Terrans had, more or less, the same temperature range as Sahas!

The last Terran planet was a tiny bit cooler than I set the thermostat for myself, the one before it was just about perfect (well, the inhabited parts were… don’t think I’d like to have tried my luck in that equatorial desert band!)

This planet is so cold that I can feel my muscles seize up as the stone of the path robs them of their heat!

“Krisssssssshhhhhhhh…” I say, only noticing at this point that my mind has slowed down along with my body… I can’t speak properly.

The warm Terran, swaddled in an enormous coat, turns to me, a concerned look on his face.

“What is it, Hassi?”

“Itssssssssssss… cold…” I say, hearing the sluggishness of my words but powerless to stop it.

His eyes widen, in horror “You didn’t bring a climate field?!”

I shake my head from side to side in his people’s gesture of ‘No’, easier than saying the word right now.

“Why not!? Tuun told us her planet was cold!” he asks, aghast.

“Didn’t… thhhhhhink… be… sssssss’bad!” trying and failing to articulate.

“Shit… Hassi!…” he says, pressing his wonderfully warm body against mine before turning his head to shout “Victor… I need some help, here!!!”

---Heidi’s perspective---

I’m just seeing to all the place settings in my wife’s meadhall, ahead of tonight’s party, when I hear a frantic *Bang**Bang**Bang**Bang**Bang**Bang* coming from the door facing downhill, toward the landing pad.

A little alarmed by the urgency in that knock, I hurry to the door and pull it open.

There stands a recognisable, copper haired boy, almost as tall as my wife (though, rather stouter for the missing few centimetres(!))

Over his shoulder is the lolling, half conscious head of a roughworlder but this girl is not my daughter!

This scarlet scaled girl, sibilantly burbling through the scarf gagging her fang filled mouth (presumably to stop her self-envenoming in her addlepated state), with her arms, ending in two, two-thumbed hands, hung limply over his shoulders, is a Sahas… this must be Hasiakh.

Behind them is a slim South Asian looking boy carrying the woman’s tail, seemingly more to keep it from trailing on the ground than to help with bearing her weight. This must be Krish.

Behind him is my daughter.

“Sorry, Ma’am, no time for pleasantries…” says Tuun’s boyfriend, barging past me and not seeming to notice having reverted to calling me ‘Ma’am’ “…You got a place where an ectotherm can warm up?!” he asks.

Having already thoroughly assessed the situation before he spoke, I simply say “Follow me.” And do a small jog to get ahead of him.

I lead them through the long tables to a fireplace, stacked with wood. It wasn’t intended to be lit for a few more hours but needs must!

I take a lighter from its hiding place and set it to the kindling. My wife being an excellent fire builder, the hearth will be roaring in nearly no time at all!

I turn to the boys “Set her down on the mat, try not to let her touch the stone of the floor… Krish, I presume?”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He nods, worry still twisting his features.

“How about you prop her up against yourself, Krish? That way, not only will she have the fire’s heat, warming her up from the front, and yours from behind but you can also make sure she’s not getting burned?”

“Good thinking…” he says bending to pull his half conscious girlfriend against himself to share his heat with her.

--- Katrín’s perspective---

There he is!

The man my youngest daughter has chosen for her own… sitting apart from the others, in my home.

I stride up to him, clap him heartily on the back and say “Victor! Good to finally meet you in the flesh!”

Distractedly, he turns to me then, realising who is hailing him, starts and stands up.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs Þo… Katrín…” he says, awkwardly.

“Likewise, son…” I smirk back before cocking an eyebrow and asking “…are you going to tell me what the long face is for?”

Embarrassed, he looks away “I’m just… nervous, is all…”

“Kid… I know what someone beating themself up looks like… you want to talk about it?”

His face tells me he does… but that he doesn’t wish to say that he does.

“Tell me; what’s up? I assume it’s got something to do with the state that your friend came in in?” I say, sitting down across from where he was sat.

He sighs the sigh I’ve heard, at some point, from every child I’ve raised, sits and says “Yeah… I guess I’m just kickin’ myself ’cause it’s my job to take care of things like ‘does everyone have a climate field who needs one.’… I musta made a terrible impression on you and your wife, showin’ up with a woman unconscious ’causa my negligence…”

“I… see… I don’t suppose it would make a difference if I pointed out that you’re on leave?”

He puffs and shakes his head.

“I don’t suppose it would make a difference if I pointed out that your friend is fine?”

Another shake and a mirthless smile “Nope…”

“What about if I point out that a climate field probably wouldn’t have made a difference?”

He’s immediately intrigued “It… wouldn’t’ve?”

“I don’t think so…” I respond “…the landing pad’s only a few hundred metres away down the hill… I don’t think she can possibly have lost enough heat, just to the air, to put her into torpor! It will have been the heat she was loosing to the ground that will have been the lion’s share! And that’s quite a lot of abstracting to do! It would need to occur to you that, unlike a humanoid, she needs most of her body in contact with the ground to move, that she would dislike clothing coming between her and the ground, that the ground will be cold and that conduction is the most efficient means of heat transfer… then you would have had to convince her to take some countermeasure like allowing herself to be carried or putting an insulating layer on, around her thorax… And, let me tell you, as a woman who’s raised 13 kids, there is nothing so stubborn as a child who’s just been told to put on a layer!”

He laughs “That does actually make me feel a little better… though, Hasiakh is a grown woman(!) I wouldn’t’ve imagined you bein’ the type to argue with your kids about their layerin’!”

“Oh, I definitely wasn’t! How dare you accuse me of being responsible(!)” I wink “If it had been up to me we would have warned every child once that they were improperly dressed then let the cold teach them their lesson! My wife, on the other hand… true to her epithet has the ferocity of a VALKYRIE! She would always insist!”

He frowns “I thought your wife was a Christian… How’d…?”

“She end up with the epithet ‘Valkyrie’?” I interrupt “Simple: I gave it to her…”

“You met at uni?” he asks, astonished.

“We did!” I confirm “She was a second-year, I was in my first despite being a few years older than her, since I did a term in the military, first. This year marks our hundred and eighteenth year together and our hundred and… twelfth year of marriage.”

“Wow!… You two’re really in it for the long haul!” he exclaims, clearly impressed.

I smile “We are… in fact, we already grew old in eachother’s arms… I don’t imagine I’d ever want to be with a woman who was not sat by my hospital bed as I lay dying of old age(!)”

He grins and spends a few seconds clearly daydreaming.

“Is it you thinking about spending a hundred years with my daughter that’s put that dopey grin on your face?” I smirk.

His face falls an he makes an embarrassed expression.

“Listen, Victor…” I say, putting as much sincerity as I can muster into my words “…I can tell that you’re very serious about my daughter and I could not be happier about that! Just… bear in mind… not every couple is one that can or should stay together for a century…”

His face here looks appalled and he looks like he’s about to try and interrupt.

“…I’m not saying that you and Tuun aren’t destined for the long haul!” I reassure him “I’m just saying that you ought to give it time… don’t rush into anything… Heidi and I waited six years to get married because we realised that how we felt about eachother then might not be how we would always feel!”

He considers that for a few moments, then answers “I understand, Ma’am…”

I nod, approvingly, and change the subject “Would you like to hear the story of how Heidi and I met? It’s also the story of why I called her ‘Valkyrie’!”

Before he has a chance to answer the Valkyrie herself appears, saying “Darling, you’ll bore the poor boy to death with your stories!” before turning to address him, smiling “Victor, please don’t feel any obligation to let this old hag put you to sleep(!)”

“No… I’m actually really interested!” he assures her.

I smirk at my wife, pat the seat beside me and say “You are welcome to help me tell it… if you think I’m a bad skáld!”

She rolls her eyes and explains to Victor “My wife is very fond of reminding me that, while she’s managed to convince all but four of the children we’ve raised to accept her faith, I’ve only manage to convince one… As if the Gospels could compete with Elves, Dwarves, Jötnar and magic hammers(!)”

“Your book has a talking snake, a talking donkey, children getting mauled to death by bears for calling a man ‘bald’, seas getting parted… it’s a poor skáld who blames her stories!”

She laughs and shakes her head then turns to Victor “You should have seen the looks on her parents’ faces when I told them I was a Christian… It was as though they thought I was about to jump onto the table and scream ‘Deus lo vult!’ at the top of my lungs while chopping their heads off, or declare that they were heretics and needed to be burned at the stake!”

“In fairness to them, dear… you did do all of those things…(!)” I say, making the same tease I must have made literally over a thousand times.

She turns to look up at me, her lips pursed and twisted in mock irritation, and the same way she must have done literally over a thousand times, answers “In fairness to me… darling… I never did any of them! People calling themselves ‘Christians’ might have but the God I pray to is one who loves all of his children more than he wants all of them to go to the ‘right’ Church every Sunday(!) Holding me responsible for the actions of crusaders and witchhunters makes as much sense as blaming you for the Sack of Lindisfarne!”.

I grin “If you say so, my Valkyrie…” giving her a squeeze.

She sighs, turns to the boy and, dispassionately, says “She originally called me ‘Valkyrie’ because, while we went to Akureyri together, she was reenacting a longboat landing and I was volunteering as a first aider. I was up on a hill, on a landspeeder, to be out of the way. This idiot…” she thumbs at me “…got herself cut by a sword that some other idiot had accidently swapped for their (blunt) reenacting model… as she lay in the sand, dying, I was lowering down overtop of her and because she had tunnel vision and was addled from blood loss, she thought I was a Valkyrie coming to take her either to Valhǫll or Fólkvangr…”

“Sweetheart!…” I bellow, incredulously “…If you tell it like that, ANY story will be boring!!! Where’s the buildup! The fact that you recognised me from having seen me around uni? The fact that the girl you were with was too busy trying to flirt with you to notice something not being right?! The fact that you barked orders at a host of armed and armoured people and they obeyed you like you were the most frightening thing they had ever seen!? The fact that you rode in the ambulance with me!? And how could you leave out our first wager!?!?!?”

“First wager?” says Victor, curiously.

I nod and gesture for my wife to tell him.

She gives a fond sigh and says “This one wakes up, massive great gash along the side of her chest…” she gestures to where my scar is “…and blearily asks me if she’s dead or not. I tell her she’s dead-stupid but her heart is still beating, though, I can’t say how much longer that will last! She grins and says…” she gestures to me.

I do the same grin I did on that day (as best as I remember), and say “I’ll wager you a date that I live!”