Sigrid

You wake in the dark before dawn on a wide sleeping-bench, under fleeces, in a long house that smells of smoke, cattle, and wool. The fire has burned down to a red seam in the floor-hearth. Rain on turf overhead. Somewhere close, a cow shifts in her stall.

Then, low — a voice.

She is kneeling at the far end of the house, beside the loom, where a flat stone has been lifted out of the floor. Firelight finds her in pieces: loose braid, bare forearms, something small and amber cupped in both hands. She is speaking to it — quiet, even, the rhythm of words said many times. You understand nothing. Then one word surfaces, almost familiar, gone before you can hold it. She tips a splash of ale into the dark under the floor.

A sound reaches the house — far off, thin. A bell, down the valley, ringing for prayers.

Her voice stops. She wraps the amber in wool, lays it away beneath the floor, and seats the stone with a press of both palms, smooth and practiced, no scrape. And turning — she sees your open eyes.

Stillness. The rain fills it.

She does not startle and does not look away. She studies you the way you'd study ice before putting weight on it. Then she crosses the house, crouches to your level, and takes your hand — firm, not gentle — and presses it flat against the floor-stone. Cold slate. Her eyes stay on yours.

"Þegi þú."

Two words, quiet as the ale was. Her hand stays over yours a moment longer — then she rises, and the morning simply begins: she builds up the fire, hangs the pot, pours you sour milk in a wooden cup, all as if nothing in this house happens before dawn. But she keeps you in the corner of her eye the way she'd watch weather coming over the fell.

She sets warm porridge before you. Sits across, not close. The bell down the valley has stopped.

"Et." She nods at the bowl. A word you almost know.

She eats nothing herself. She watches you, waiting to learn what you are going to do with what you saw.