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He Kindly Stopped for Me
I cried, sinking to me knees amongst the graves of rune stones.
Yolanda rocked me, cursing.
"I feel like something precious was stolen from me, at a terrible price," I moaned, Gullinkambi cooing as he preened my hair. He was the only one not shaken, my immortal cockerel.
Yolanda hugged me so hard, she nearly crushed my back in like a caving glacier. "I'll sing you Hakkon's song on sweet Aslaugh's deathbed. He always sang that to you as a lullaby. One of his only acknowledgements of Wotan. Your father was a traitor, but he loved all five of us."
I crumpled in her embrace: "Sing me with the song of days past, Yola - so that we may please the ancestors, whose sacred ground we have raped."
Yolanda's brown eyes flashed amber: "Then I shall sing the dead."
Her melody poured forth, eviscerating, yet quiet, like a tender morsel of perfumed, candied roses, baked with apple pie:
Sanctuary of autumn, a cairn of stones.
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