Looking over the endless white expanse, I was starting to sense a theme.  “You jötuns seem to have a very white color scheme,” I glibly remarked.

“Jötnar, dear,” corrected Astveig, as she did some apparent calculations in the air.  “The plural of jötun is jötnar. And you’re one now too, so you probably ought to get used to it.”

Growing up in SoCal, I never got to see much snow.  There was a couple times as my family made trips elsewhere around the western U.S. during the winter, but actual snow was rare during our trips.  I’d only seen it once or twice, and it was always a big deal to those of us who had lived in the warmer climes. The ridge that the entrance to the Library had been built into stood out of a vast plain of white that spread out as far as the eye can see.

“How is anyone supposed to find this place?”  I asked. “I don’t see any roads or even any landmarks.”

“They’re not,” Astveig replied sharply.  “That’s sort of the whole point of having a hidden sanctuary to protect the Guardians’ secrets.”

Arey closed the Library’s door as she came out to join us.  Lines and runes on the door glowed ice blue briefly and the door seemed to meld back into the stone it had been carved from.  “Only a few people know the spell to open a rift directly to the Library,” she added to Astveig’s terse explanation. “Some of the Guardians we work with have special compasses designed to lead them here, mostly to bring supplies and food.  The alfar built the Library to be extremely difficult for our enemies to find.” Arey shrugged. “It has the unfortunate side effect of also making it extremely difficult for our friends to find.”

The wind was far colder than I was used to.  Fortunately, Arey had lent me some of her clothes.  They were a bit big on my now much tinier frame, but it was much more comfortable and vastly warmer than my oversized jeans and t-shirt.  My, uh, “breasts” - the word still seemed weird for me to use - were still hanging footloose and fancy free. I might need to sort that out soon, particularly if what Arey and Astveig were planning now plays out as I expect.

Astveig’s hands lit up in fiery light, and an orange circle appeared around each of her hands, like some sort of holographic interface.  She poked at various symbols and turned layered rings into the positions she wanted them in like they were mechanical dials. Then she pressed the palms of her hands through the circles and they burst into motion, flowing out over the snow covered landscape, creating glowing poles and platforms floating in the air, made of some translucent substance that looked like ice or glass.  It was like a level from a video game, with a path of various sized platforms spiraling up to a peak.

“Wow,” I exclaimed.  “Is that, like… magic?”

“Yes,” said Astveig and Arey in unison.  Okay, I guess they figured that should have been obvious.  In retrospect, it did seem a silly question.

Astveig gestured to the first platform.  “This is our standard athletics training course.  Arey trained on this same course. No one is expected to complete the course their first time.  For the most part, given your current state, we don’t want you to exert yourself too much and create another monster, so we’re going to take this slow.  I want you to jump to the first platform.

Okay, that sounded easy enough.  It was only about three feet off the ground.  I walked toward it, but Arey held up an arm to stop me.

“Not so fast, Snowshoe.” Arey walked me back several paces.  “The start position is back here.”

“Oh,” I said.  “So I run from here to the platform?”

Arey shook her head.  “No, you jump from here.  No running start.”

My mouth hung agape.  It was a good fifteen feet to the platform from here.  “That’s impossible. I can’t jump that far, standing or running!”

Astveig shook her head.  “As I said, no one is expecting you to succeed the first time.”  I was getting the feeling the librarian was rather annoyed with me.  “Just try. It will give us an idea of where you’re at, physically.”

“Okay,” I nodded.  I took a deep breath and tried to psych myself up.  No problem with trying, right? I bent my knees and leapt into the air.

I couldn’t believe what was happening.  I was soaring through the air, flying farther than I’d ever jumped before.  I was never very good at jumping before. Or, really, anything physical. But here I was, airborne, the wind in my hair, gliding over the snow.  Flying… and then falling.

Honestly, snow may seem a novelty to my warm weather ass, but it’s a lot less appealing when you’ve got a face full of it.

Astveig brought up her “mage hands” again and seemed to be scanning the area.  “About ten feet.” That meshed with my estimate that I was about five feet short of the platform.

“I’m kind of surprised you measure distance in feet,” I said, standing up and dusting the snow off of me.  As much as would come off, anyway.

“We’ve been using these measurements for centuries.”  Astveig’s mood seemed to brighten as she shared this information.  Apparently jötnar can be nerds too. “We adopted it from Midgard - your ‘Earth.’  The language has changed slightly, but the measurements remained largely the same.”

I spent the afternoon trying to make that jump.  Apparently, I was pretty bad for a jötun, which is still above average for a human, so overall it’s an improvement for me.  I eventually was able to catch the lip of the platform. I was surprised: it felt more like stone than I had expected based on its glassy appearance.  With the sun going down, however, the temperature would drop rapidly, so we headed back into the Library, Astveig dismissing the obstacle course with a wave of her hand.

Arey had kindly permitted me to sleep in her old bed.  She didn’t mind sleeping in a rougher position. Apparently, the Disciples had held her prisoner for months in a dark cellar with only some basic necessities and no furniture.  I couldn’t even begin to imagine how awful that must have been.

As we were getting settled down for the night, I finally worked up the courage to ask something that had been on my mind all day.  “Arey? Do you think you could take me home tomorrow? My friends and family would probably want to know what happened to me.”

Arey was in the process of wrapping her long braid into a bun so she didn’t strangle herself in her sleep.  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Going back to Midgard would leave you exposed, and right now Loki’s followers would do anything to get their hands on you.”

“Oh,” I said, leaning back into the pillow.  The bed was very firm. Apparently the jötnar are not big on fluffy things.

“I’ll talk to Astveig about it in the morning.  She may have some ideas on how to keep you safe while on Midgard.”

I closed my eyes.  I guess I was a lot more tired than I thought after this crazy day because all I could remember saying was “Thank y-.”