These kids are back again, even if I did write this months ago.

Svana
Lucky me: walking home with Pala today. The idea of the shaggy new foal didn’t thrill me as much as the possibility of being able to step inside her room, the smell of something baking sneaking past us from her mother’s kitchen. It’s so still here! No little children running around, no sheep milling in from the back. I’ve only been inside her giant bedroom once, and that was briefly, but now every time I come over I have to bite my lip to keep from asking to go up again. I remember a white coverlet. A mushy, squashy pillow and books piled in the corner.

Skipping a bit out, mainly from nerves, I turn to face Pala as we continue past a row of wood houses. Workers on ladders are nailing up big sheets of iron to them. My home and Pala’s are made of stone, though Pala’s is much more grand. “Pala? Why do you think these new people are covering their pretty wooden homes with iron? The light wood is so pretty.”

Pala turns halfway towards me, her step not slowing a bit, “Because of the earthquakes and the cold. Plus, we don’t have many trees left in Iceland, if you haven’t noticed. We can’t use up the remaining wood on new things when old things need fixed. Keep up, please, Svana…we’re almost there and I don’t have much time to show you the foal.” She seems distracted. Probably because of that new boy. If you could call him that, he must be almost eighteen.

I wait until we reach her walkway before I say, “What is the new student’s name again?” Even though I know its Geir, I want to see if she really reacts the way I think she will.

A slight flush on Pala’s pale cheek, “I think he said it was Geir, I don’t know, I wasn’t paying much attention when Herra Jonnson had him stand up. His accent was very provincial; I had trouble hearing him from where I sat…”

“But he sat right next to you! I didn’t have to strain to hear, and I sit all the way up by the front.”

Pala pouts and ignores what I’ve said, “Come, let’s go around the back. She should be out in the grass.” Pala opens the high gate into her walled garden, one of the largest in Reykjavik. Clumps of snow are beginning to fall on the grass, a bit late for November. Pala’s stick straight hair is getting filled with snow, and her red lips begin to quiver a bit as she looks around the garden for her foal. “No, she’s not outside, come into the stable, I think I hear her.” Putting her gloved hand out, I grab it without thinking, thinking only of the warmth of the stable and of her hand. My gloves are on my bed, forgotten this morning.

Pala stoops into the stone stable first, and though the day outside is grey and dim, my eyes blink slowly as I try to adjust to the darkness. I smell sod, hay, and a fresh kind of smell I can’t quite place. “Shh…we can’t spook her. She’s only a few days old, and already I feel like she’s skittish.”

I stoop down, carefully keeping an eye on Snaefell, the mother. She’s remarkably not nervous, slowly munching hay. Her shaggy coat is in, and I see that the foal’s coat is only shaggy and thick at the mane. “What will you name her? Will you get to name her? Or did your father already do it?” Pala rolls her eyes, I always ask too many questions around her.

“His name is Leif. Leif the Lucky. Like the explorer to America.”

Elfs on Ice

So the obsession continues, and I've actually started writing a narrative. This is something I haven't done in close to a decade, and I'm thoroughly enjoying myself. The research has been really fun, but I've found in my haste to get the plot onto paper, I'm going to have to go back and revise place names, detailed character names, and traditions. Seems like I've been given one of the most unknown cultures known to me to write about, but really...I can't help what I dreamed about. I was given this story, it's aching to be told, so tell it I must! Here's something interesting about Iceland, from, icetourist.is :

Supernatural Iceland
Elfs, trolls and ghosts
Surveys show that despite their obsession with modern technology, as many as 80% of Icelanders believe in the existence of elfs. Even today, roads have been rerouted and building plans redesigned or abandoned to avoid disturbing rocks where elfs are said to live. All around the country, strange lava formations were once explained in folktales as trolls who were turned to stone when caught outdoors in daylight. But only children in Iceland believe in trolls today, and the once widespread belief in ghosts is in decline, some say because electricity has taken the fright out of the long winter nights.

Fantastic.

Gary is one of the places that is famously dark as well, Barrow...phone service is limited, as it's well, about the same latitude as Greenland. There's a "sea ice webcam" ... and really? There are no words. Not sure if there are elfs there, their little stockinged feet would get frostbitten.

Could you spare a moment...

...I know we're all super busy, and our minds are jumbled and strained (I know mine is...) but could you spare a moment to pray for my new nephew David? The little guy, not even a month old came down with a raging fever and intestinal problems...which can be very scary for such a tiny fellow. My sister is staying in the hospital with him, which I'm sure is not the way she envisioned her (too short) maternity leave. If you pray, could you send up a little message for David? He's a little munchin pumpkin muffin:



On another note, I've had a very lucid dream regarding a work of fiction I NEED to write down.

On yet another note, I've discovered I have a lot in common with the Icelanders.

Those two notes have something to do with one another.



That's X sledding for the first time.

Over and out.