Meetings in the Woods - Part Two

The next night Angrboda arrived at the pool as usual and sunk into the water to cry. Loki sat in the darkness and watched her as before only this time he was disguised as a bird so she wouldn’t see him. He waited to see if she would stop crying on her own but she continued for the entire visit and left when she’d tired herself out. Watching her cry did something to him. It twisted his insides in a way that he’d not felt before. She was a puzzle and he needed to solve her.  

This continued for seven nights until he could stand it no longer. When she arrived on the eighth he waited until she was in the pool and then he approached from the darkness.  “I’m beginning to think this pool is made entirely of your doing,” he said kneeling at the water’s edge.

She wiped her eyes and turned to face him in annoyance as he put his hand in the water and brought a mouthful to his lips. “It’s not as salty as I imagined it to be. Perhaps you cry freshwater tears.”

“What are you doing here? I told you to go away and not come back,” she snapped.

“You didn’t, actually. You told me you didn’t expect to see me here again and so here I am, where you least expected me to be.”

She rolled her eyes in disgust but he ignored her and sat down on a rock to take off his boots. “What are you doing now?” she asked.

“Perhaps your eyesight has been ruined from all the crying you insist on doing. I’m taking off my boots.” He gestured to his bare feet and swung them around into the cool water.

“You can’t do that, this is my pool.”

“Maybe your name is written on it then,” he said, making a grand show of looking under the rocks nearby. “Perhaps I can learn it that way.”

“You’re being impossible,” she muttered and turned away from him. She tried to pretend he wasn’t there but she was finding it difficult to ignore him completely. She didn’t want to get out of the pool immediately and give him the satisfaction of thinking he’d scared her off so she remained fixed to the spot, staring into the darkness.

Loki broke the silence that was building. “Maybe I can guess your name instead,” he mused. “I’m good at games.” He leant back and rested his elbows behind him casually. “Since you ‘own’ this pool, perhaps your name is ‘lund’ (nature).”

She glared over her shoulder. “Don’t be a fool.”

“Not lund then…. Maybe you go by the name of ‘όgleði’ (sadness) instead?” She stood still, pretending that she hadn’t heard him.

“Now, I know you’re not the Goddess Hlin (grief), I’ve met her and you’re nothing like her,” he laughed. “She’s exceptionally boring and you’re far from that.”

“I’m not any kind of Goddess, Odinson,” she said with a sigh and turned to face him, “and I’m leaving now.”

Her dress was right beside him so she made sure she splashed him as she pulled herself of out the water and scooped it up.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said cheerfully as she stormed off back towards her home.

“Not if I can help it.” She shouted over her shoulder.