i was maybe one thousand years too early — helene.

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

h e l e n e

“Hela,” he says your name with the rasp of an unpolished bone-flute.

You look up from threading your bow and he is in the place he always is, a few steps behind you. Your brother, your shadow. On most mornings he looks younger, the exact picture of the boy you fed goat milk to put to bed, the boy you never once heard the cries of. This morning, though, cast in half-light and half-darkness, he is taller and starker than you remembered him to be.

“Tell me a story.”


A wind combs through the trees, carrying pines and snow in its scent, fresh upon your senses as you walk.

The sun hasn’t risen yet, and the forest remains in deep slumber. Everything dwells in that twilight state; the veil between the body and spirit is the thinnest at this hour. You love this time best, wandering past dying trees and sleeping flowers like a Landvættir bound to its sacred land, ready to incur bad luck and rain havoc on those who trespass. You feel incorporeal, more part of the forest than you are of your body.

Less girl, more the frost-tinted air. You take a breath, and press on.

However, his absence is like iron manacles around your ankles, the sort they trap the great animals with.

You may have been older by minutes, but you are still twins. When one half goes missing, the other that remains is forever incomplete, a piece rather than a whole. This is no way to mend; it’s only the challenge of growing used to the emptiness they leave behind.

You rein yourself back, turn away from the forlornness. It is much too early for dirges and eulogies. None can escape the Great Death’s shadow, but the two of you served her purpose, carried out her will. If there is to be death, it will be to those around your brother.

There are always more, until the day it is only them.

“And then will you run from me?” Fenrir once asked.

You look up at the newborn winter sky, muted grey everywhere. It feels so vast. You close your eyes to it, right as the first snowflakes land on your cheeks and stain it like icy tears.

“I would never run from you, Fenrir.”