---Wedding---
---Vsila’s perspective---
The lights dim, the only parts of the room still being lit brightly enough that I think a Human would consider them visible being those immediately around their [fireplaces].
I adjust my seating position, shifting slightly to bring my front legs forward, away from the bench, and my back legs towards it.
One of the glowing eyed species at the head table stands… Tuun… she’s from the Bright Plume.
The one who seems to be the Queen of this community emerges from a side door, followed by her wife and a few others, dressed in strange garb.
All (except the single nonHuman in the group) holding their holopads to their eyes, to compensate for their dearth of darkvision and allow them to see where they’re going, the Terrans navigate themselves to points that they seem to have agreed ahead of time.
The enormous blonde Queen is wearing a fulsome, fake [beard]. It’s rather amusing a thing to see on a Human woman’s face, having become accustomed to only seeing them on the faces of their men!
Her outfit is a collage of reflective and silvered materials, its construction, like her [beard] is more similar to those being worn by her male [countrymen], suggesting that it codes masculinity, that the character she plays is meant to be a man.
She carries a short handled hammer, the head of which is so large that it must be hollow! Not even a Human could wield THAT!
It’s engraved with jagged lines that I’m not sure of the significance of.
She lies down next to a woman who is not her wife and places the impossible hammer beside herself.
A bright spotlight illuminates Tuun, who speaks.
---Krish’s perspective---
We’re sat by the fire and Hassi has her entire body wrapped around me in a way that would definitely be inappropriate for public… if she were warmblooded!
As it stands I’ve only noticed a few eyebrows raised in amusement.
I’m just admiring the flavours they’ve managed to bring out in the meat dish I’m sharing with her (wondering whether I should ask after the cook, so we can swap notes) when the lights go out.
I look into Hassi’s face, visible by the light of the fire, and we share a bemused expression for a few moments.
Then a spotlight shines on Tuun.
She’s standing and speaks… loudly!
I don’t think I’ve ever heard her project her voice like this!
She’s usually so nervous and timid… it’s sort of hard to reconcile her having such a bold job title as ‘Auxiliary Security Officer’(!)
For this Tuun, who’s just started telling the story I presume must be Thor’s Wedding, it’s completely believable that that would be her job!
---Steve’s perspective---
That harumphing great sheila’s on the ground, wearing a fake, red beard that doesn’t match her blonde hair.
The beard suits her surprisingly well!
She’s almost a handsome enough woman to make me forget which cricket team I bat for… Almost!
There’s another (much smaller) blonde on one side of her and a whacking great hammer on the other.
I guess that makes her Thor, then?
I don’t know much about Viking myths but I’m pretty sure the guy with the hammer is Thor.
“…fair Lady Sif… but there was wickedness afoot. For, while Þórr slept, someone crept beside him and took the hammer, Mjölnir!” says the sheila with four arms, in the spotlight at the head table.
Yep, lady in the beard’s definitely meant to be Thor!
A furry pawhand, that I’m guessing is attached to that grizzly bear uplift I saw earlier, comes from outside the spotlight illuminating the two women and nicks the hammer with those lightning lines all over it.
“When Þórr, the tumultuous, awoke he reached for his hammer and found it not…” says the blue lady, matched by the big one waking up, immediately putting her hand where the hammer was, freezing… then panicking.
The titchy blonde playing her wife shrieks as she’s rolled off the sheets by the giant woman, looking for her hammer.
“There was only one person mighty Þórr could think that might have done such a thing as steal Mjölnir…”
The woman in the fake beard huffs, acting like her rage is building for a few seconds, before thundering at the top of her lungs “LOKI!!!!!”
---Msia’s perspective---
A second spotlight illuminates Tuun’s other mother, between the tables, miming calm conversation with a supporting actor.
Unlike Katrín (whose outfit seems to be an original creation, in rich, reflective silvers and blues, with a noticeable lightning motif) Heidi’s outfit seems to have been lifted, wholesale, from the design of Loki’s clothing in a certain early 21st Century cinematic universe… all greens and blacks and complete with a golden helmet baring two, tall, backward curved horns.
“LOKI!!!!!” booms the enormous woman again, causing both of the other actors to whip their heads in her direction.
Looks of fear play across their faces and the minor character immediately ducks out of the spotlight.
I feel Fliss shake with giggles beneath my arm and I give her a little squeeze.
Doing a fantastic job of acting like she’s absolutely terrified but trying not to show it, the dark haired woman nervously smiles “Nephew… to what do I owe…?”
“SPARE ME, BACKBITER!!! WHERE IS IT!?!?!?” the golden haired woman interrupts, bellowing, teeth bared furiously!
“Where is what, dear Nephew…?” says the smaller woman with alarm, backing hurriedly away from her quickly advancing wife.
“MY HAMMER, LOKI!!! WHERE HAVE YOU HIDDEN IT!?”
“Mjölnir’s gone?” asks the woman with the golden horns immediately followed by her wife grasping her lapels and lifting her, bodily, overhead such that her feet dangle nearly a metre off the ground. Her face is terrified, her wife’s is furious.
“Do NOT lie to me, Loki! I know you took it! Without that hammer I cannot defend Ásgarðr! Your jest has gone too far this time!”
“Nephew, I swear to you, I did not take your hammer!” insists Heidi’s Loki.
There isn’t even a flicker of doubt on the face of Katrín’s Thor as she says “Tell me, Loki, why is Mjölnir’s handle so short?”
Downcast, the smaller woman answer’s “That would be because I transformed myself into a gadfly and bothered the one working the bellows until he swatted at me… ruining some of the iron…”
“And, remind me… why did you want to ruin their craft?” says the large woman, turning her head as if to hear better.
“*sigh*… because I’d made a bet with them that they couldn’t forge three treasures to exceed the three that the sons of Ivaldi had made me… a bet which I lost… and got my mouth sewn shut… and almost lost me my head…”
Nodding and feigning consideration, the giant woman asks “Interesting!… And could you just tell me… why did you originally go to the sons of Ivaldi?”
“*siiiiiiiigh*… Because I cut off your wife’s hair, while she was sleeping, and then promised I’d procure a replacement if you promised not to break every bone in my body…” she answers, defeatedly.
“Uh-huh, uh-huh… so tell me… why, exactly, should I believe that this wasn’t you?!”
The smaller woman looks down into the eyes of the one holding her aloft… and thinks for a few moments before querying “Have I ever failed to take credit for well done mischief, Nephew?”
The large woman frowns, then scowls, then, disgustedly, drops her wife “If it wasn’t you, Backbiter, then find me who it was!”
Tuun narrates again “The unlikely pair made their way to the halls of Freyja to request that she lend them her feathered mantle, Fjaðrhamr. Had it been Loki alone, the Vanir Goddess never would have trusted him with such a treasure but, with Þórr vouching for him, she agreed.”
The two women, suddenly share the spotlight with a third (this one dressed as a woman) who has hair the colour of common milkwort flowers.
This new woman holds out a feathery cloth which Heidi takes and throws around her shoulders before walking away from the other two, the spotlight following her and leaving them behind.
“Flew then Loki, shrouded in Fjaðrhamr, beyond the halls and lands of the Gods… to the home of the Jötnar.” continues Tuun “He found Þrymr, the Jötunn King, sat surrounded by wealth.”
The light encompasses an Ursus sapiens… clad in grey clothes and black armour with a black crown atop his head.
He’s definitely my type… or would be, if I weren’t a happily engaged man!
The man, who I think must be one of the few people in the room who’s larger than her wife, looks down at the gold horned woman and leers “Greetings… Loki, Laufey’s son! How goes it with the Gods? How goes it with the Elves? Why have you come, alone, into Jötunheimr?”
---Brunhilda’s perspective---
I knew this story before tonight.
One of my father’s crew was a Norse Pantheonist and (unlike my father) seemed sincere in his faith and not like he was using it as a licence to behave however he damn well pleased!
However, when Gunnar told this story… he never made it so funny!
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
In fairness, he didn’t have an acting cast supporting him, but still…
I watch the violet haired woman snarl and scowl in response to having been told by Tuun’s mums, after they were done returning her feather cloak, that she’s to accompany them to Jotunheim to be Thrym’s bride so that Thor can get his hammer back.
“You must think me a lustful woman of loose virtue, mad for any man, if you would ask me to go with you to be a Jötunn’s wife!” snarls the woman…
She’s definitely stunning enough to be the goddess of beauty and fertility(!)
Tuun’s mums shrink and cower before the wrath of a woman, who’s much smaller than either of them! It’s a hilarious sight!
“The answer is NO!” shouts the small woman, miming slamming a door (coupled with a sound effect of the same.)
Tuun narrates “Þrymr had assuredly never met Freyja for, if he had, he would have known that, while she is the most beautiful of all the Goddesses, she is also the most tempestuous, with a temper to match that of Þórr!… Their plan refused, Þórr and Loki called a grand council of all the Gods and Goddesses of Ásgarðr…”
A circle of actors, portraying the gods, gathers into the spotlight.
The only one I recognise is the one wearing an eyepatch and done up in old man makeup, playing Odin.
“They argued long and hard about what was to be done until the wise Vanir, Heimdallr, fairest of the Gods, stood and said…”
“If Þrymr wants a bride, I say we give him one!” announces a man in the spotlight who, I’m guessing, passes for good-looking… to the male attracted.
He smirks at ‘Thor’ as he says “If we dress you in bridal linens, give you Freyja’s torc, Brísingamen, hang the customary keys at your belt, daintily drape a veil over your face and, perhaps, build your chest up with stones…”
The woman with the red beard looks as if she’s just watched someone murder a puppy as she says “I shall be called womanly by all the Gods, if I let myself be draped in a bridal veil!” with disgust.
There’s a chuckle that goes around the room at this woman playing a man so horrified at the notion of playing a woman!
Her wife slaps her face and says “Silence yourself, Þórr! If you do not recover your hammer, the Jötnar shall presently overrun Ásgarðr! If that is not what you wish then this is the plan!” sternly.
The enormous woman frowns for a few moments before answering with a simple nod.
The smaller woman nods as well and then smirks “With my shapeshifting, I shall transform into your maidservant and we two shall go to Jötunheimr(!)”
Gunnar explained to me that there is an untranslatable joke in that line; Loki uses the same gender neutral word for ‘two’ as Thor did about himself and Freya, as one would for a man and a woman, not the masculine, for two men, not the feminine, for two women. The joke is the implied question; which of them is he saying is the ‘woman’(?) Himself, the genderfluid, transforming trickster who has actually been a mother before… or Thor… the most masculine god there is, currently wearing a dress(?)
--- Shí Dǎo Yuán’s perspective---
The giant Norse Martial Artist (who’s older than even me, if the UTCM CQC that shines through in her bearing is anything to go by) is wrapped in clothing, that I infer to be a bridal gown in this culture. A torc is put around her neck and keys are hung at her hip. Her face is covered with a veil which has obviously been designed to leave just a sliver of red beard visible at the bottom!
It is extremely amusing to see how well she pretends to have nothing but distaste for these trappings!
As a person who’s been certain, since his early teens, that he would never be attracted to anyone, of any gender, the fastidious care that others take over their gender constructions has always been a source of great amusement to me!
As they walk, the enormous one turns to talk to the one I’m having trouble not thinking of as ‘the small one’ (given how she’s the same height as I am) just because of how much she is put into forced perspective, by being beside her wife.
“If you can shapeshift… why are you not the one playing Freyja?” she asks, a frown in her voice but her face not visible through her veil.
“Errrrrm…” wavers the average sized woman, with her feminine features and dress being newly restored to visibility, to represent her having shapeshifted into a maidservant “…Oh, look! We’re here and they see us! Too late now!” she says, innocently, pointing at the black armoured bear (zero combat experience) eliciting a laugh from the entire hall.
“Stand, my Jötnar! They send me Freyja, Njörðr’s daughter, as wife!” he says, gleefully.
A small crowd of bit players stand around the towering bearman.
Túdì Tuun continues her narration, making excellent use of the breathing techniques I taught her recently “The Jötnar threw a great feast that night, in honour of the marriage of their King to the Goddess Freyja.”
The woman disappears behind a screen and her shadow is projected on the wall, large enough for the entire hall to easily see.
“They brought forth three tuns of mead…” announces my Túdì, as her mother picks up something that makes a barrel shaped shadow and brings it to her mouth, making exaggerated glugging sounds, a process she repeats two more times “…they brought forth eight salmon…” the silhouetted woman picks up a fish shaped shadow and brings it to her mouth, making exaggerated eating noises, a process she repeats seven more times “…they brought forth many womanly dainties…” more mimed eating of indistinct shapes “…and they brought forth a whole, roasted ox…” for this I am certain the shadow is made entirely in the light and there is no physical ‘ox’ present as the shadow, far bigger than the woman, disappears into her mouth “…Sif’s man ate them all!”
The bear man turns to the mother of my student, who has remained visible, and, uncertainly, says “I’ve… I’ve never seen a bride eat quite as much as this… nor drink this much!”
“The wily handmaiden just smiled.” says my Túdì.
Her mother (not doing the voice of a man pretending to be a woman, rather, simply speaking in her normal feminine voice) smiles “The Lady Freyja has eaten nothing, these past eight nights, so eager was she to come to Jötunheimr to be your wife, my Lord.”
“Excited by this the Jötunn King desired to kiss his bride.” Tuun narrates, matched by the peaceable bear grinning stupidly and disappearing behind the screen. His shadow joining the elderly Soldier’s.
Bearing down, he lifts the veil and shrieks, turning to flee.
“Her eyes! They were red! Like fire! I thought they would burn me!” says the Ursid, playing at being out of breath.
“The wily handmaiden just smiled.”
“The Lady Freyja has not slept these past eight nights, so eager was she to come to Jötunheimr to be your wife, my Lord.”
The ursine man gives another foolish smile.
My student narrates “Then came the King’s sister who had the job of asking what bridal gift was desired.”
A Human woman appears.
I suppose there wasn’t another Ursus to play the sister.
The king booms “Bring in the hammer of Þórr and lay it across the maiden’s knees that Vár may bless our union!”
---Nkasiogi’s perspective---
Tuun’s doing really well with the narration!
I really wish Ami and Lu were here to see this… I’ll have to describe it to them, next call.
It would be a, breathtaking, once in a lifetime experience to share with them! Maybe I could suggest an extended vacation and a holiday to Nova Fennoscandia when I get back… *sigh* in two years!
“Þrymr’s sister went to do as he bade and fetched the hammer.” narrates Tuun.
The small woman goes and comes back with the hammer we saw earlier. She goes behind that screen and puts it on the knees of Tuun’s mum’s shadow.
The woman starts laughing, the slow building laugh of a maniac.
She picks up her hammer and reemerges from the shadows.
She rips off the veil and runs at the bear man.
Still laughing she bashes him in the chest so hard that it’s audible even from here and without any amplification!
He goes down followed by the leading lady miming strikes on all the bit players of his court.
“Thus were Þórr and his hammer reunited!”
A raucous cheer is raised, with the various Norsemen and women pounding the tables rather than clapping their hands.
I follow their lead.
---Tcakqaal’s perspective---
It’s been a while since the play ended and talk resumed.
I watch from the perch (which apparently used to belong to pet [ravens]) behind Mrs Þorradóttir’s [throne], as Mrs Árnadóttir has an animated conversation with Jennie.
“So you didn’t object to having an epithet that clashed with your religion?” asks the small, curly haired woman.
The dark haired one answers “No! Not at all! It’s barely caused any problem since! Occasionally someone will get confused, that’s all!”
“Well, that’s good then… it’d be terrible to have an epithet you hate… like Tuun!”
“I don’t hate ‘Elf’!” Tuun objects “I’m just ambivalent about it… It doesn’t really feel like my name, you know?”
“Yes, that’s right. I think she’d much rather have had her classmates call her ‘Neytiri’…” smiles Tuun’s mother, causing both Tuun and Jennie to freeze and Victor and Brunhilda to look over, curiously.
“‘Neytiri’?” asks Jennie, an unnerving grin spreading across her face.
“Oh, yes, she went through a years long phase where she was massively obsessed with this centuries old media franchise, with aliens that rather look like Don… Oh, it was so adorable! Any time anyone annoyed her, in that phase, they were a ‘skxawng’. She dyed her hair dark, like them… Dived deep into the research, too! I remember her talking my ear off about why the Na’vi were tetrapods despite the fact that all other vertebrate life on their planet were hexapods, like Don are!”
“MUM!?” says Tuun, her mortified embarrassment visible, even to me.
“What, Tunie?” smiles her mother, sweetly.
“That’s so embarrassing!” she says, eyes wide and cheeks purple.
More smiling “I’m your mother, sweetheart… embarrassing you is my job(!)”
Tuun huffs “…I was well over my Avatar phase before I went to uni!”
“We’re never fully ‘over’ the things we obsess about, Tunie… we may think we’re done with them but they’ve changed us, made us different people than we would otherwise be.”
“That’s rather philosophical.” I interject.
“Thank you!” smiles back Árnadóttir.
“Victor…” I say, addressing the man.
“Err… yeah, Cap?” he answers distractedly.
"Explain to me again what this story your about to recite is?"
“Bēowulf, Cap… It’s an Epic, written in Old English… Kinda wish I didn’t have to follow the play that we just had!”
“Nonsense, boy!” booms Þorradóttir, hoarse from ministering her congregation “We love a good story regardless of when it’s told! Bēowulf’s just far enough outside of our regular wheelhouse that the younger folk here might not know it!”
“Thanks, Katrín…” he smiles, nervously.
“You say ‘Old’ English? Is that like the Shakespearean works we’ve watched together?” I ask, remembering how confusing it was to have explained to me that the informal pronouns ‘thou’, ‘thee’, ‘thy’ and ‘thine’ are often mistaken for formal by modern speakers, because of the prestige that Terrans asign to age.
He shakes his head “Older than that, Cap… though, I’m a bit ashamed to say, the only reason I speak it at all is ’cause I thought learnin’ it’d be a doddle, when I chose it at school! It definitely weren’t!”
“Surely… since it has ‘English’ in the name…?”
He laughs “It’s like havin’ a conversation with my 8 year old self(!) Tell you what, Cap… I’m gonna start soon. When I do, turn off your translator… see how much you get with only your knowledge of Modern English… All you’ll miss for the first minute or two is the fact that the story’s being told by someone who selfdescribes as a ‘Spear Dane’ and that there was once this amazin' King called Scyld Scefing, who kicked a lotta arse and didn’t have time to take a lotta names ’causa how much tribute he was collectin’ from folk who didn’t want their arses kicked(!)”
“Alright, Victor… I will try to listen to your story with my translator turned off, at first.” I say, curiously.
“Speaking of…” says Þorradóttir, gesturing to her wrist in the inexplicable way that Terrans do to make eachother aware of time.
“Oh, shit… Yeah, I should probably start!”
He stands and unlike Tuun, who narrated from her spot at the table, he makes his way to the open performance space.
The lights dim, rather than extinguishing, as the spotlight falls upon him.
I turn off my translator.
He raises his hand and cries “Hwææææææææææææææææææt!”
Alright, that didn’t sound like any English I’ve ever heard but it was a pretty clear ‘Hark’, ‘Listen’, ‘Shut up, I have a story to tell!’
I’m beginning to wonder if I might be able to infer the meaning of the entire story that way, when he dashes that hope “We Gardena, in geardagum, þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon! Hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon! Oft, Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah, egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad! [-activating translation-] Waxing, under the heavens, in honour he thrived, until such time as, unto him, all the tribes, across the whaleroad, submitted and yielded tribute! THAT… was a good King!”
That language has NO business being called ‘English’!
---later---
The feast has wound down and the congregation have departed, including the Bright Plumers, aside from myself and the Triple Ms, who have been invited to stay.
Victor’s story seemed to go down well. It seems that his worry about following a better story was unfounded!
Qorak is already roosting with our child.
I’m just admiring a photo that Tuun’s mothers have displayed.
I hear loud footsteps and swivel my head to see one of Tuun’s mothers approaching.
“Mrs Þorradóttir, I just wanted to thank you for your hospitality and congratulate you on an extremely entertaining party!”
She smiles and answers “You’re welcome and thank you!”
I point to the towering, blond bearded Soldier, in the photo I was admiring, and ask “Is this Þórkell Þórsson here your brother, Mrs Þorradóttir?”
She leans in and puffs through her nose “Yes… a brother long since departed for Valhǫll.”
“Oh, I’m... sorry to hear that.”
She smiles “Don’t be. Ancient history… Also, well done for seeing through the patronymic! That throws off most Terrans if they aren’t used to it!”
I preen “Well, Ms MacLeod has explained to me, recently, how she used to be ‘NicLeòid’ but most people who don’t speak Gaelic are much more familiar with the masculine ‘Mac-’ than the feminine ‘Nic-’, so she changed it after university. I was rather primed to notice them.”
She shrugs “Still impressive.”
“Truth be told, the first thing I noticed was how closely you and your brother resemble eachother!… Only afterward did I notice the name… If you weren’t the opposite sex from eachother I’d say you were the same person!”
She laughs “Alright… you should probably go to bed, now… We’ve got another busy day tomorrow!”