Arey arrived the next morning to tell us the information she had obtained from Ulric.  The idea that Loki had some mysterious friend he was hanging out with worried me, but I still couldn’t quite get over the idea that he was drinking himself into a stupor every night because I’d foiled his plans one time.  Despite having never met the guy, I’d had built him up in my mind as this great and terrible evil. To think that he went crying into a mug because he lost once was something I was having trouble reconciling with my mental image.

I had other thoughts on my mind, though, and while that information was interesting, it didn’t really play into my current plans.  I had my head set on one thing at the moment, and while musing about the Dark Lord of Whiny Babies was a fun distraction, I wanted to remain focused on my current challenge: Arey Elisdottir.  Not as an enemy, but I was hoping for something a little more than a friend. We’d grown closer over the past two months.

While we discussed plans over breakfast at the kitchen table, Cat caught me staring at Arey.  Cat immediately locked eyes with me and motioned her head back towards the hall where the bedrooms were.  I looked at her, confused about what she was trying to tell me and my mouth hung agape. I probably looked like I was trying to catch flies in it, honestly.  Cat rolled her eyes and pointed at Arey discreetly, then tilted her head back towards the hall again. After a couple more rounds of useless lesbian charades, she finally facepalmed, stood up and beckoned for me to follow her into her room.

As soon as I closed the door behind me, she gently bonked my forehead with her palm.  “Ask. Her. Out! You dolt!”

I opened and closed my mouth a few times like a fish before finally sputtering, “B-but she’s probably not into me.  She’s probably not even into girls at all,” I added sheepishly.

Cat let loose a frustrated groan.  “Well, you’ll never know if you don’t ask her!  Besides, she’s, like, two-hundred years old and hasn’t had a date in her entire life.  It’s not like you’ve got much competition.”

I spent several minutes attempting to justify why Arey probably wouldn’t want to date me before Cat finally convinced me.  I’m pretty sure she had rolled her eyes so many times by that point that she could have probably would have become a pro at eyeball bowling.  I shuffled along behind her as we walked back to the kitchen, trying not to look too anxious and failing horribly. I’m pretty sure Billie’s eyes were laughing at me, but he kept a solid poker face otherwise.

While Dad was engrossed in a conversation with Astveig about jötun architecture in the living room, Billie and Arey sat around the kitchen table, Billie in a high stool by the counter and Arey in a regular kitchen chair as she nibbled at an English muffin.

“Hey, Billie,” Cat blurted.  “Can I talk to you in the other room?  I have an idea about another gadget I want to make and I want to get your thoughts on it.”

“Sure thing!” Billie exclaimed, leaping down from his lofty stool.  Without his fluff of black curls looming over it, the kitchen almost seemed to have entirely different lighting.

Now that we were alone, I looked down at Arey and tried to initiate conversation.  “Soooo…” I tried to lean casually against the wall with my elbow, but my elbow slipped and I stumbled awkwardly.

Arey placed her sword on the table.  “Careful. You don’t want to fall on my sword.”

Oh, right.  She had a sword.  I blushed at the thought of how weird that made this conversation in light of, you know, “stereotypes.”

“I was wondering,” I began, “if you might be interested in, like, going somewhere sometime to do something.”

Arey eyed me curiously.  “‘Going somewhere sometime to do something?’  That might just be the most vague question I’ve ever heard.”

“You know, like, to hang out,” I said.  “Do something aside from training or fighting or whatever.”

“Oh, so you mean a ‘date.’”

I suppressed the urge to pull my head into my shirt like an awkward turtle.

“Well, no, not exactly…” I tried to say, blushing.

“Not a date then?  Shame. I’ve been studying your culture’s courting practices and was eager to give it a try.”

“Y-you were?”

Arey nodded.  “Yes. It looks like fun.” 

“F-fun?”

“Yes, you know, dressing up in fine clothes and going to an obscenely quiet dining establishment to eat undersized meals and attempt to tap glasses together without breaking them.”

At some point in Arey’s description of her understanding of the concept of a date, my jaw had begun to hang looser than a surfer who had caught the perfect wave.  That was not the kind of date I had even considered, and I’m pretty sure she’d completely missed the concept of even that.

I sighed heavily, realizing this was going to be an even bigger challenge than I had thought.  Not only was I trying to ask someone out on a date, I was trying to ask someone out on a date who didn’t even fully understand what a “date” was.

“That’s not…  Dates aren’t always formal things like that,” I said, before a realization struck me.  “Wait, you wouldn’t mind going on a date with me?”

Arey cocked her head to the side with a confused puppy stare.  “Well, yes, but now I’m not sure what a date is anymore?”

I looked back toward the living room at Cat, who was discussing something animatedly with Billie.  Her back was to me, but I noticed she had discreetly tucked her hand behind her back to give me a thumbs up without even looking in our direction.

“I, uh,” I stammered.  “Well, sometimes we go out to see a movie or just to get dinner or something.  Usually something kinda casual.” I scratched the back of my head awkwardly.

“A movie?” Arey pondered out loud.  “Well, Cat was telling me about a documentary she had watched about Thor.  It sounded interesting.”

I laughed.  “I know that movie, and I’m pretty sure it’s anything but a documentary, but it should be entertaining.”  I was going to have to give “Jane Foster” over there a stern talking-to about playing tricks on the jötnar.  God only knows what she’s told Astveig.

Yes, it IS still awkward speaking American English when you’ve become a demigod yourself.

“So,” I continued, “how about this Friday we grab some dinner, then we can come back here for a movie night?”

“That sounds nice,” said Arey.  “Or, as I’m told they say here in Midgard, ‘It’s a date!’”  She emphasized the last part with a thumbs-up and a goofy grin.  In a weird way, it was endearing to know that I wasn’t the most awkward person in this conversation.

We continued making plans that morning for our trip to Asgard.  We weren’t planning to stay long, but we needed to talk to Odin and hopefully convince him to lead us to Hel.  Billie would come with us to Asgard, but apparently he wouldn’t be able to follow us into the Underworld. It seems the Underworld is governed by strange rules that most other realms aren’t subject to.  Destiny is tied up in death, so only those whose destiny will one day lead their souls to the Underworld may enter. That means only those who will one day die and end up in the Underworld may enter without any detrimental effects.  Even the gods can only enter for a while, because it causes them intense pain. As someone who was only effectively half mortal, it was up in the air whether I could even make the trip.

After some deliberation, I was ultimately convinced not to bring Fenrir along with us to Asgard.  Billie was our “diplomat” in this regard, and he advised against letting Odin know that Fenrir was still alive, as it would almost certainly impact our negotiations negatively.  Astveig and I had both wanted to bring Fenrir just because we wanted to see the look on Odin’s face, but Billie was so adamant that he actually produced an entire musical number to convince us, just once going outside his genre and making it an old-school Hollywood musical set up, complete with backup dancers, top hats, canes and marble staircases, none of which should have been able to fit into our one-story house.

We had planned to set off that afternoon, but I had one order of business to take care of before we left.  Dad wanted to go home, hoping that Mom had cooled off a bit from her outburst the previous night. I suggested he get some flowers, but when I realized that Dad didn’t know what flowers to get, I just told him it might have been better not to get flowers after all.  Dad was not real big on symbols or gifts.

Cat and I drove Dad home, and watched from the car to make sure he got inside before we left.  Things didn’t play out that way, unfortunately. When the door opened, it wasn’t my mother’s dirty blonde curls that we saw but another woman standing there with long, straight, raven-black hair.  It was hard to make out from the street, but it looked like she was holding a wine glass, and she was aggressively pointing a well manicured finger at my father’s chest. A moment later, she slammed the door, and Dad came walking back to the car looking once again lost.

“Dad,” I said with concern, “who was that?”

“That was our neighbor, Leanne,” he said.  “She’s a lawyer. She says she’ll be representing Liz in our divorce proceedings.”

Breefolk

Jötnar now has a chat channel on the Valyn Storyverse Discord server! Come and hang out, chat, discuss, cause a little chaos! https://discord.gg/z2zbScF